RMI Expeditions BlogRSS

Mt. Everest: Getting Ready to Climb from the South Col

Posted by: Dave Hahn, Seth Waterfall | May 22, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Everest
Elevation: 26,000'

Hey this is Seth Waterfall checking in from the South Col, Camp 4.  We just woke up a little while ago and are getting set to have breakfast, which is kind of strange for this hour. But the winds have died down - what little wind we had. It looks to be a nice night for climbing so we are going to give it a shot.  In the next half hour to hour we will put our packs on and head up towards the Triangular Face, then of course to The Balcony, South Summit, and, hopefully, for us the summit of Mt. Everest.  A few teams have already started and a few more are getting ready to go.  But it doesn’t appear to be a very crowded night.  That all works in our favor.  So if everything works out for us we’ll check in again from the top of Mount Everest -  High Point on planet Earth. Wish us luck.  Ciao

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Mt. McKinley: Mike Walter and Team Retrieve their Cache

Posted by: Mike Walter, Solveig Waterfall, Ben Liken | May 22, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 14,200'

The weather was beautiful today, sunny and warm, and barely a breath of wind. We took a quick trip back to Windy Corner (13,600’) to retrieve the cache we left there well over a week ago. The hike back to the cache took us 15 minutes, and about an hour to ascend back to the 14,200’ camp that we established yesterday. The rest of the day was spent buffing out camp and practicing fixed rope travel techniques in preparation for tomorrow. Tomorrow we plan on carry supplies up above 16,000’ to get ready for our summit bid. The weather looks good for the next few days; hopefully the forecast pans out. Tomorrow will be two weeks into our expedition, and we’re all excited to get up high soon.

We’ll let you know how our carry goes. Stay tuned…

RMI Guide Mike Walter & Team

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Mt. Everest: Team Reaches South Col

Posted by: Dave Hahn, Seth Waterfall | May 22, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Everest
Elevation: 26,000'

Voice mail received 3 am PT
Hey, this is Dave Hahn calling from Mt. Everest.  We are about a mile higher then when I spoke to you last night.  Seth Waterfall and myself along with Tshering, Kaji and Gyaljen got up super early this morning.  We woke up at 1 AM and we’re walking by about 2:15 AM.  We skipped Camp 3 and went all the way up to the South Col, just a hair below 8,000 meters.  It was a big day and obviously aiming for a summit tonight if conditions allow.  We don’t have a whole lot of ability to wait at this point and the forecasts don’t really reward us for waiting much.  This expedition is almost at its end.  So this is our shot.  We are all feeling really good up here at 8000 meters.  Seth and I are sitting in the tent right now and it’s nice and hot. There is sun coming through the tent walls.  There is a little breeze and there are some clouds, but it’s not necessarily bad weather. Things are looking good.
While we were climbing, we were keeping track of Lam Babu and Dan Johnson.  They made great time, great progress to get down to base camp. They arrived there about mid morning – nice and safe and sound. So that is great news all around.  We’re going to try to keep you updated with the start of our climb.  This climb again will be a middle of the night start, with the hope of being up high and close to the summit when the sun is first getting around on Mt. Everest.  That is all for now.  Bye now.

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Mt. Everest: Birthday Celebration & Summit Climb

Posted by: Mark Tucker, Dave Hahn, Seth Waterfall | May 22, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Everest
Elevation: 17,575'

The climbing team is at Camp 4 readying for their summit bid on Mt. Everest tonight.  For me, that means sleeping in the communication tent tonight. Dave and Seth will get some rest at the South Col.  Hopefully a few hours of sleep but very important time for resting, hydrating and self care.  Can you believe they are just hours away from the start of the Summit push?  Kaji, Tshering and Geldgen our super Sherpa put Camp 4 together before Dave and Seth arrived. Nice work boys!  Our Sherpa staff are doing fine as well.

I celebrated another birthday (twelfth time I guess) here on the Big E yesterday. Our wonderful Sherpa staff at Everest Base Camp had all the trimmings for me. I enjoyed a moonlight hike, no headlight needed, a very peaceful and surreal scene surrounding the jaunt. This is a truly amazing place to spend time. The horseshoe pit is still up and it’s tough to get the better of me on the home pit advantage. 

I’ll be sending updates on the team’s progress as they attempt to summit Mt. Everest tonight.  Good luck!

RMI Guide Mark Tucker

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Mt. McKinley: Billy Nugent & Team Move to 11,000’

Posted by: Billy Nugent, Kel Rossiter, Levi Kepsel | May 22, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 11,000'

In the movie “Spinal Tap” there’s a comical part where the rock god explains to an interviewer that, whereas most amplifiers only go up to ten, his “goes to eleven” in case he’s really rocking out and “needs that extra push.”  Well, our strong team definitely needed no extra push in making it to 11K camp today.

After a calm night at 9600’ we woke to clear skies and prepared to “go to eleven.”  After caching some gear and food in a snow hole ( which we’ll pick up tomorrow) we enjoyed the feeling of dramatically lightened packs and sleds as we moved up.  Arriving in camp the team had its first experience with building a true Denali-style fortified camp.  Some people were shoveling, some were cutting blocks, some were carrying them:  everyone was working hard and in an hour or so we had a veritable Great Wall in place. Everyone enjoyed the upper body workout and the concrete results.  The sun sets late at 11K (it’s about 10pm now and still brilliant) and folks are settling in to a well-earned sleep.

Tomorrow will be a “half-rest” day: we’ll be making a three-hour trek to retrieve our cache, but without the work of breaking down and setting up camp we’ll be able to also rest and acclimatize.

RMI Guide Kel Rossiter

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Alaska Expedition Seminar: Team Enjoys Pulling Sleds and Glacier Climbing

Posted by: Andres Marin, Garrett Stevens, Katie Bono | May 22, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 7,300'

After our unsuccessful attempt climbing Radio Tower due avalanche conditions, we spent our last day hiking to the first camp on Denali. We all had the opportunity to pull sleds and go for a long glacier hike. The group enjoyed the views and exercise that took to get there. We finished our day climbing up Heartbreak Hill back to Denali Base Camp. All and all a fantastic day.

Tomorrow we will be packing our camp and be flying at noon back to Talkeetna.

RMI Guide Andres Marin

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Mt. Everest: Dave Hahn Checks in from ABC

Posted by: Dave Hahn, Seth Waterfall | May 21, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Everest
Elevation: 21,300'

This is Dave Hahn calling form Mt. Everest, and again tonight we are at Advance Base Camp.  Our Plan had been to move up to the Lhotse Face and we tired we went out this morning with that as the goal, but unfortunately with Dan’s cough has not gone away and it has turned out to be debilitating as far as preventing us from going higher.  It is not a danger to him, but going higher with it would be a problem. So, quick change of plans Dan is going to head down to Base Camp in the morning with Lama Babu, and Seth and I are going to try and keep up Tshering, Gyaljen and Kaji and our plan is to go all the way to high camp tomorrow and attempt the summit on the 23rd.  The complication is that the weather forecast is kind of breaking down for those days and might be kind of dicey weather – We will have to see. We figure that will be our one chance and so it is up or down for all. Things should be moving around a fair amount for these next couple of days…we will see what happens. We are going to miss Dan as he heads back down to Base Camp, Lama Babu is happy to guide him down and we are expecting they will have a smooth descent and will be in Base Camp about the middle of tomorrow morning. That’s what’s going on here at Everest. 

We watched a lot of people tired people coming down from the Summit and from the Lhotse Face again today but it has starting to get though crowd a little bit, we have noticed traffic slacking a bit and that works in our favor.

That’s all for now, Bye!

RMI Guide Dave Hahn

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Mt. Everest: Dave Hahn Sends an Update from Camp 2

Posted by: Dave Hahn, Seth Waterfall, Mark Tucker | May 20, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Everest
Elevation: 21,300'

This is Dave Hahn calling down again from Camp 2, ABC, on Mount Everest, 21,300’. We took a rest of day here today as plan, tried to catch up on our hydration and rest obviously. We were pretty much observers today watching a lot going on, watching a lot of climbers coming down from the top and a lot going up. Easy to look out at any time today and see over 100 climbers on the Lhotse Face. We were particularly interested in the efforts of Lam Babu, our Sirdar, who went up in the middle of the night last night and led a team of Sherpas that were determined to help a man high on Lhotse who had been in distress for a couple of days. They did a great job getting up there. They were up there at Lhotse Camp 4 by out about 4 in the morning, or I’m sorry by about 6 in the morning. But sadly it was just a little too late for the man who’d been through too much. But very proud of Lam Babu and the team that he led up there. He’s back safely at camp now. And we’re getting ready for our efforts at moving up tomorrow, moving to Camp 3 tomorrow on the Lhotse Face. So that’s certainly occupying all our thoughts as we go to bed. Hoping everything’s in order and that we have a good day tomorrow. Bye for now.

RMI Guide Dave Hahn

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Mt. Rainier: Expedition Skills Seminar Moves into Camp Muir

Posted by: Casey Grom, Adam Knoff | May 20, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount Rainier
Elevation: 10,000'

RMI Guides Casey Grom, Adam Knoff and their teams headed up to Camp Muir today.  The weather was magnificent!  Now they have settled in at 10,000’, they will spend the next four days learning mountaineering skills and as well as a summit bid on Mt. Rainier.

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Mt. McKinley: Walter & Team Move to 14K Camp!

Posted by: Mike Walter, Solveig Waterfall, Ben Liken | May 20, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 14,200'

Hello All!

We awoke this morning to calm winds and relatively warm temperatures; a welcome change from the last week of stormy living at 11,000’.  We had a quick breakfast and broke down tents just as the sun began to thaw out camp.  Eager to make our move, we started our ascent at 10 am and arrived at our camp in the Genet Basin at 14,200’ at 3:30pm.  Everyone did great and we enjoyed the warm sunshine and lack of chilly breeze getting around Windy Corner.

We spent the rest of the day working hard building walls and getting our camp in order.

Looking forward to getting a good nights rest and getting our cache tomorrow!

RMI Guide Mike Walter

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