Yes, it's possible. For a variety of techniques, see
Language Learning Forum: Super-fast vocabulary learning techniques
For learning the ideograms, it should be possible to learn a few thousand of the most common in as little as a few months, if you approach it intelligently. I'm personally a fan of Heisig's book, "Remembering the Kanji", but it's for Japanese - he's supposed to release one for Chinese eventually (possibly as early as this fall, but it's been delayed before).
The basic idea of "Remembering the Kanji" is to put them in a logical order, based on their radicals, and then use a useful memory trick (association with absurd imagery) rather than using the conventional ordering and drilling. I vaguely remember having seen a similar book for Chinese once, but I'm drawing a blank on the title and author.