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Posts from 02/2012

Kilimanjaro: Team Simba Sita Completes The Big Five at Tarangire

Posted by: Jeff Martin | February 23, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Kilimanjaro

Hello from Kikoti Camp,

We had a bit more leisurely start to our day today and we were on the road by 9:00 heading to Tarangire National Park. En route there was a huge downpour, but all the rain stopped by the time we reached the entrance gate. From there, we worked our way south, stopping at every opportunity to view the animals. After yesterday, it seemed like we were in a dry spell because nothing can really compare to the amount of animals you see in one day in Ngorongoro Crater. In Tarangire, you have to find them! The usual suspects were all present, but the day was coming close to an end and we had still not seen a leopard. Then our safari driver decided to take a little detour, and 15 minutes later we were stopped in front of a tree with a leopard resting on a branch about 10 feet off the ground. Our viewing of the “Big Five” was complete. The last sighting of the day was a baby elephant, just a week old, with his mother spraying water on the both of them to help cool off in the afternoon sun. It was incredible.

Now we are at the Kikoti Camp, sitting out on the porch, looking out over the African landscape and listening to all the sounds around us. We’re going to take a short hike before dinner and go out and watch the sun set, and take a few customary “sun downers” to enjoy as the sun dips below the horizon.

Unfortunately, this adventure comes to an end tomorrow, and we start to make our way home. It has been a great trip and we have enjoyed it. Thanks to all of you who posted comments and gave your support for us safely reaching the summit of Kilimanjaro.

RMI Guide Jeff Martin & Team Simba Sita

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Kilimanjaro: A Visit to the Ngorongoro Crater

Posted by: Jeff Martin | February 22, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Kilimanjaro

Jambo from Plantation Lodge,

When you see Ngorongoro Crater for the first time, it almost leaves you speechless. It is massive; the crater is 26 miles in diameter, and you look down almost 2,000’ to the crater floor. There are countless little black spots scattered throughout the 125 square miles of the crater floor. You can’t really make out what animals they are from this distance, but there are thousands of them, with most estimates claiming 25,000 residents.
We have to drive about 1/2 way around the crater rim before we come to the “descent” road, with impressive views the whole way down.
The luck from yesterday continued today as we saw so many interesting animals. From new born wildebeest and zebras, warthogs, lions and lion cubs, cheetah, cape buffalo, black rhinos, ostrich, elephants, to hippos, and gazelles, we were very fortunate to see them all.
We ended the day with a visit to a Masai village and then headed back to the lodge for a little relaxing time before dinner.
Tomorrow is our last stop on the safari circuit, ending at Tarangire National Park. While not too far away, it is very different from the first two parks we have visited, and should give us our best chance of seeing leopard.

Good night,
RMI Guide Jeff Martin

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Kilimanjaro: Tree Climbing Lions on Safari!

Posted by: Jeff Martin | February 21, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Kilimanjaro

Hello from Plantation Lodge,

Today we had to say good bye again to the wonderful Dik Dik Hotel and headed out on our safari. First stop on the safari circuit was Lake Manyara National Park. It’s not talked about as much as some other parks in Tanzania, but it has a lot of game viewing and is the perfect introduction to safari. I have heard for many years that this park is most well known for the tree climbing lions, and after many trips without ever seeing one, I was beginning to think that this was all made up. To my surprise, this would be the day that we saw not just one, but six tree climbing lions. The lions will climb the trees to seek refuge from the hot afternoon sun and they are really hard to spot because only a leg or a tail will be hanging down from the tree branch. It had been over two years since our driver had seen one, so we were definitely lucky.

The entire park sits right below the Great Rift Wall, and as we continued to tour around the park, we saw lots of elephants, impalas, hippos, zebras, wildebeest, and giraffes. We left the park feeling very good about the day’s sightings.

Tomorrow is Ngorongoro Crater with its 25,000 resident animals. It going to be a big day and people are excited to see this natural wonder.

RMI Guide Jeff Martin & Team Simba Sita

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Kilimanjaro: Team Returns to Arusha

Posted by: Jeff Martin | February 20, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Kilimanjaro

Hello from Arusha,

We are safely off the mountain and back at the Dik Dik hotel. The team did great yesterday and everybody in the group made it to 19,340’, Uhuru Peak. The day started at 11:45 pm and we were walking out of camp by 1:00 am. It was a solid six hours of climbing to reach Stella Point, and at 8:15 am we were standing on the Roof of Africa. Our timing was perfect and we pretty much had the summit to ourselves, a rarity on Kilimanjaro. The Park Service recently replaced the old summit sign with a new larger green and yellow sign. Consensus amongst most climbers is that they like the old sign better, but either way, it marks the spot of the highest free-standing mountain in the world. We took a bunch of summit photos, and then we started our descent back to high camp.

This summit day was a little tougher than the usual. What started out as some light winds, soon turned into a solid 30 mph wind by the time we reached 17,000’. As the eastern horizon turned orange as the sun began to rise, the winds picked up to 40 mph. We slowly climbed onward, but it was soon becoming apparent that we might not even make the summit today. We added our shells, covered up our faces, and decided to keep going for another stretch. An hour passed and without any relief from the wind. Without stopping, we climbed for another hour and fortunately, the winds lessened as we approached the crater rim. By now it was looking a little more optimistic that we would reach the top despite the winds. We were cold and tired, but with the summit in view, we added our down parkas, and made it the last hour to Uhuru peak.

We quickly descended back to HighCamp and were greeted by congratulations and a table loaded with fresh fruit and french toast. Re-fueled and re-packed, we headed down to Mweka Camp for the night. This morning we completed the trek down to the Mweka gate and then back to the Dik Dik Hotel.

Now we get to put our climbing gear away and focus on the next part of our adventure - 4 days on safari. First up, Lake Manyara National Park.

RMI Guide Jeff Martin & Team Simba Sita

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Kilimanjaro: 100% of Team Reaches Summit

Posted by: Jeff Martin | February 19, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Kilimanjaro
Elevation: 19,340'

RMI Guide Jeff Martin called from Mweka Camp (10,000’) after the team’s summit day.
The entire team reached the summit of Kilimanjaro today in great style.  They left Barafu Camp after midnight with their headlamps lighting the way and reached the “Roof of Africa” as the day broke over Tanzania.  After a quick celebration on top the team began their descent back to high camp where they were greeted with drinks and breakfast.  They continued down to Mweka Camp and the thick air of 10,000’ tired but in great spirits.

Congratulations to the team!

On The Map

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Mexico’s Volcanoes: Team Returns to Tlachichuca After Orizaba Climb

Posted by: Jake Beren, J.J. Justman | February 18, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mexico

Hello from Tlachichuca,

Upon our arrival to the Piedra Grande Hut, we heard from fellow guides that they had been turned due to bad weather the night before on Orizaba. It appears as though Central Mexico has been getting hit hard these days by the weather demons, and not just on Ixta. When we woke last night a different story was being written. It was downright balmy!  It did cool off as we climbed, but we enjoyed near perfect weather as we climbed through a little bit of new snow to the glacier where most fresh precipitation had been blown far away.

The team did a great job on a huge day and we all stood on top together, with great views of Mexico’s volcanoes even Ixta came out for the first time all week.

Thanks to a great team, Mexico crew and fellow guides JJ and Fernando for an awesome trip!

RMI Guide Jake Beren

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Mexico’s Volcanoes: Orizaba Summit!

Posted by: Jake Beren | February 18, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mexico
Elevation: 18,701'

Hello everybody. This is Jake, JJ, Fernando, Mike, Mav, Bob, Jim, Peter, April, Cyrus, Christopher and Matt. We are all on the summit of Orizaba! Everybody did super well. We got 100% of our team up.  Everyone climbed super strong.  Light winds, beautiful day. We can see all the mountains in Mexico that we’ve been around and everyone is doing super great. Wish us luck on the descent and we’ll call in later.  Nice job everybody.  Thanks a lot!

RMI Guide Jake Beren

On The Map

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Kilimanjaro: Preparing for Summit Day

Posted by: Jeff Martin | February 18, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Kilimanjaro
Elevation: 15,000'

Jambo from Barafu Camp,

The team did great today on our move up to high camp. The hard work over the last five days has paid off and we are now ready for our summit attempt. Today was our shortest day of hiking so far, and we made it to Barafu Camp in just under 3 hours. Now we have the whole afternoon to rest up and sort through our gear one last time, just to make sure we have everything we need for tomorrow.

You would not be able guess we are at 15,000’ right now. The sun is finally winning out over the clouds and it is warm, especially inside the tents. It won’t last long, but we’ll take it while it does.

An early dinner is the plan for tonight and hopefully we will be horizontal by 6:30 pm. The alarm is already set for 11:45 pm, and hope to be walking by 1:00 am. We should be arriving at the crater rim around sunrise and then one final stretch up to Uhuru Peak, the Roof of Africa.

Our group is really strong and up for the challenge of tomorrow. Thanks the positive comments on the blog.

Will try and check-in from the summit tomorrow, or when we get down to Mweka Camp.

RMI Guide Jeff Martin and Team Simba Sita

On The Map

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Aconcagua Expedition: Celebration in Mendoza

Posted by: Billy Nugent | February 17, 2012
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Aconcagua

Great news everybody!

We are back in Mendoza after an arduous 3 days walking off the dreaded beast that is Aconcagua. Sunburned, dehydrated, exhausted, all of the fun stuff about mountain climbing had finally caught up with us and the team was really feeling it by the time we hit the trailhead at Punta de Vacas. But all of that was nothing a cheeseburger couldn’t fix… and after a great lunch with a few beers in Penitentes we shuttled back to Mendoza and checked in to our hotel. Showers and aggressive cleanup are definitely in order before we head out tonight for a celebratory steak dinner! Thanks to everyone who followed along for the duration of the expedition. We had tons of fun and appreciate all the support from back home.

Until next time,

RMI Guide Billy Nugent

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Adam Knoff Recaps His Experience at the Teva Mountain Games

Posted by: Adam Knoff | February 17, 2012
Categories: *Guide News

February 10th, Vail, Colorado.  The day had finally arrived.  The Teva Mountain Games were on and I was ready for my first real climbing competition in years which included a wild race format and bar-none the highest caliber field of competitors I have ever faced.  The competition was set up so two competing climbers would scale a 55-foot artificial wall plastered with regular plastic climbing holds like those found in the gym and a new experimental high density foam that was made to mimic real ice.  The structure hosted two identical routes, a right one and left one that mirrored each other with every hold being exactly the same on each climb.  When the bell went off, both climbers had six minutes to reach the top of the climb but with fast competitors taking less than three minutes per route the winner was decided by whomever climbed the top anchor first.  Both climbers were then lowered to the ground and a three minute rest was issued.  Then a swapping of sides ensued and a second race began.  The combined winner of both races moved on to the next heat.

I almost did really well!  Winning my first heat, I went into the second feeling unbeatable.  All the fear and intimidation I felt by the big guns waiting to eliminate me vanished.  I knew for certain I could hang.  This all evaporated when on my first climb of the second heat I placed both tools in a foam hold and while trying to remove the upper one, the lower one blew out and I came whipping off the climb with an audible groan from the crowd.  I had been leading the race when I fell and on my second climb of that heat posted the fasted time of the day out of any competitor.  And so the hope of an unknown underdog sliding in and cleaning up at the first ever Teva Mountain Games was dashed.  Not to worry, I will be back. 

I owe RMI a huge thanks for supporting my trip to Vail and giving me the chance to represent them.  It is gratifying knowing such a worthy company has my back.

RMI Guide Adam Knoff

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