The current height (4,892 metres (16,050 ft)) of Mount Vinson was measured by a GPS survey that was conducted by the 2004 Omega Foundation team comprising Damien Gildea of Australia (leader) and Rodrigo Fica and Camilo Rada of Chile.

[9] From 1998 through at least 2007, the Omega Foundation kept a GPS receiver on the summit for a suitable period of time to obtain accurate satellite readings.

It consists of 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) of shallow-water, mostly marine, tan, green, and red quartzose sandstones (quartzites) and argillites.

The steeply inclined strata of the Crashsite Group are part of the western limb of a major syncline that forms the core of the Sentinel Range within the Ellsworth Mountains.

Though the annual snowfall on Mount Vinson is low, high winds can cause base camp accumulations up to 46 centimetres (18 in) in a year.

[citation needed] Over successive years, the limited amount of snow that falls on Vinson Massif compacts and is transformed into ice, forming glaciers.

In the months prior to its departure for Antarctica, the expedition received considerable press attention, primarily because of reports that Woodrow Wilson Sayre and four companions were planning to fly in a Piper Apache into the Sentinel Range to climb Mount Vinson.

Sayre had a reputation for problematic trips as a result of his unauthorized, unsuccessful, and nearly fatal attempt to climb Mount Everest from the North in 1962.

In December 1966 the Navy transported the expedition and its supplies from Christchurch, New Zealand to the U.S. base at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, and from there in a ski-equipped C-130 Hercules to the Sentinel Range.

On August 17, 2006, from nomination by Damien Gildea of the Omega Foundation, US-ACAN approved naming the subsidiary peaks south of Mount Vinson for the AAME 1966/67 members Nicholas Clinch, Barry Corbet, Eiichi Fukushima, Charles Hollister, Brian Marts, Samuel Silverstein, Peter Schoening and Richard Wahlstrom.

[13] The climb of Vinson offers little technical difficulty beyond the usual hazards of travel in Antarctica, and as one of the Seven Summits, it has received much attention from well-funded climbers in recent years.

The GPS reading gave the elevation of the highest point in Antarctica as 4,900 m (16,077 ft), eclipsing the earlier established heights recorded in 1959 and 1979.

Another first was the successful aircraft landing of a Twin Otter on the Upper Dater Glacier on the eastern slopes of Mount Vinson.