Fernanda Maciel sets a record on Mount Vinson – 01/18/2023 – Sport

Mount Vinson, the highest in Antarctica and one of the seven peaks whose climbing is the object of desire of every mountaineer, as they represent the highest on each continent, has just witnessed the record of a Brazilian woman, Fernanda Maciel.

The ultramarathoner from Belo Horizonte managed to climb and descend the 4,892 meters of the mountain in just 9h41, when the route is usually done by traditional climbers in five to seven days. Its brand was confirmed by the specialized platforms Sky Running and Fastest Known Time.

This was not Maciel’s first achievement, an athlete since he was nine years old and has run 14 high-mountain ultramarathoners for the past 14 years. In 2016, she had already been the first woman to climb to the summit of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America, at 6,961 meters, in 14 hours – a normal 21-day climb between alternating ascents and descents for acclimatization.

She also climbed 5,895 meters of Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest point, in seven hours, compared to seven days for regular climbers. Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe, at 5,642 meters, was reached in five hours, against five days on average for climbers. She prepares her breath to conquer Mount Everest, in the Himalayas, with its 8,844 meters in 2024.

Living in Chamonix, opposite Mont Blanc, Maciel relies on the glaciers of the Alps to train his races, in which the main challenge is, as he says, always the cold. In the case of Vinson, somewhere between -30°C and -40°C.

“Upon reaching the top, I took off a glove for a few seconds to activate the camera and I had frostbite on my fingertips. It will take a couple of months for the skin to regenerate”, says she, who had been training since October in Nepal, climbing the mountain Manaslu, eighth highest on the planet, at 8,163 meters high, where he escaped an avalanche, and in the Alps themselves, in December, with temperatures ranging from -5°C to -20°C.

Even so, the challenge of running Vinson uphill required specific logistics. To get to know the difficulties of the path, she covered it in three days walking, or almost that. “I needed to know what clothes to wear that day to go faster, for example”, she explains.

And he adds: “To run, you need a lot more than knowing it’s going to be cold. Because of the wind, you need to cover yourself completely, because exposed skin freezes, but you also can’t have too much clothes to not sweat, because sweat also freezes . So I bring warm clothes to every stage”.

The main difficulty of the route, according to Fernanda, was a 1,200-meter wall on a 50-degree slope, which required a climb of six ropes. “You have to have a lot of strength in your arms, in addition to your legs, and everything with altitude sickness, which is inevitable, because Antarctica has a more rarefied air that makes a mountain of less than 5,000 meters an atmosphere equivalent to one of more of 6,000”, he says.

If she insists on doing her exams without supplemental oxygen, water is a separate issue. “I calculated that I would have water for four hours, and I carried it next to my body so as not to freeze, but it froze anyway and I had to refill it with another half liter of hot water with someone who was waiting for me at an agreed point.”

Among other perrengues, Maciel had his crampons (metal clips adapted to shoes to give traction when climbing on ice) broken and his goggles (goggles that protect his eyes to prevent the wind from freezing them) frozen. “But somehow I managed to see the way to the top”, says she, who ran connected by a rope to guide Sam Hennessey (mandatory safety measure), and paid tribute to Hilaree Nelson, a climber who died in a fall on Manaslu Mountain in September 2022.

“She has inspired me a lot and given me strength in projects in high mountains. I am happy to experience the incredible emotions and sensations that experiences like this offer me. I love the feeling of achievement and contemplation that only such high mountains offer me”, he adds. .