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Rest Day for RMI Team at Aconcagua Base Camp

Dave Hahn reporting from Today was our planned rest day. All is well and all are feeling good. We enjoyed a calm night with a huge moon that kept Jake Norton out snapping pictures until quite late. There were a few minor headaches reported and some of the normal insomnia that comes with a first night at real altitude, but for the most part our team was bright-eyed and ready for action today. That action consisted of a relaxed breakfast and then a few sessions of organizing gear and supplies for going higher. The event of the morning was Seth Waterfall's arrival with the last of our cargo. Production people dove into cases full of new gadgets and guides sorted a few more bags of upper-mountain gear and all were happy to see Seth who'd come in at an accelerated pace to catch up with us. Basecamp is a fairly elaborate village of tents with a few semi-permanent structures thrown in for park and medical personnel. There are about five outfitters here with independent "kitchens" and communications set-ups along with dining tents and latrines for their customers and staff. We set up the RMI tents within a stone's throw of our own outfitter -Grajales Expeditions, and they've been taking great care of us. Peter, Ed and Chad worked today to help our climbers choose what to carry higher while Melissa made contact with the park rangers and finalized the permitting process. We became aware of an intense and sad story which had played out high on Aconcagua during the days of our trek in. A team of five had apparently been caught out in the open near the summit and had needed to endure several days of extremly bad weather before a rescue party could reach them. From what we are hearing, the rescue effort was massive, with perhaps fifty people trying to get to the stranded team from both sides of the mountain. Ultimately, there were three survivors and tragically, two deaths. Our entire team was saddened and sobered by this news, but our guide team was particularly saddened to learn that we'd lost a friend and colleague in the accident. Federico Campanini guided his own programs internationally, but on Mount Rainier he'd become one of RMI's hardest working and most dependable guides over the past three summers. We have each spent the past days and nights thinking of his skill, strength and competence as a guide... but also of his unfailing good humor and friendly nature. He will be missed. Our best wishes go to his family. Our plan for tomorrow is to carry loads to 16,000 ft and to then return for a final night at basecamp before moving up. We'll hope the weather improves some as today finished with a fair bit of cloud and and some light snow on Basecamp. All for now, we'll let you know how things go tomorrow... new heights and new sights.

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