Success!
The gang went to bed with another deceptively improving weather trend only to wake up (for the third time this trip) in the middle of the night to more stormy weather. We decided that since this was our last chance we'd give a hail Mary attempt. After a quick breakfast and some tinkering with gear and backpacks the time came for us to push out. Surprisingly, the winds had started calming down, which heartened the guides at least a little bit. As it turned out, that abatement was indeed only temporary...
We climbed to the edge of the glacier and roped/cramponed up, and after only an hour or two in the elements we were starting to ice up. Somehow everybody kept it together and we continued upwards into worsening winds, winding our way through a jumble of a glacier and then skirting around the massive rock face of Yanasacha. Weather was bad most of the day but after reaching the upper slopes of the mountain we were fully exposed. When we reached the summit (half of us crawling) we were elated but couldn't stay long because of the blastingly continuous 50 mph wind and the fact that were covered with over and inch (yes an inch!) of ice from being in a freezing lenticular cloud all day. The guys were a little beat but pulled it together to descend like champs all the way back down to the refugio. All in all we were out in the storm for a little over 10 hours, managing to bag the summit and safely descend.
We were greeted back at the refugio by Victor, our driver, who had hiked up from the parking lot to hang out. Knowing our ride was waiting down the hill, we celebrated with a quick beer and crammed all of our crap into our packs. A short walk down a scree field brought us to the van which brought us back to civilization in Quito!
The team showered up and hit the town for a fabulous multi-course meal complete with wine and pisco to celebrate properly. Hopefully folks weren't too ragged making their early a.m. flights.
I'd like to thank a great group of guys for making this such a fun and memorable trip (pako's ipa, triple cheeseburgers, two left crampons, pansies, sock boiling, knee taking, etc.) and thank Jaime and Diego for being awesome guides and a pleasure to work with. Thanks again everybody!
Signing off, for now...
RMI Guide Billy Nugent
Update at 12:12 pm PST: The team is flying into basecamp! The weather cooperated for flights and we expect to hear from the team once they are settled on the glacier.
12:00 am PST:
The plan was for us to get started with our Denali expedition today. We needed good mountain flying weather. We had high hopes, but as it turned out, we also had low clouds. It was on the dark and rainy side if things as we finished breakfast and walked out toward the airstrip in Talkeetna. During the course of the day, the cloud cover would lighten here and there and we monitored alternating reports that it was getting better or worse now and again at our intended basecamp on the Southeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier... But in the end, the upshot was that conditions never really got good enough for our pilots to risk flights into the range.
The team took the delay without great concern, we passed the time hanging at the hangar, playing ping pong, listening to music and catching up on email and current events. We enjoyed fine Talkeetna meals at various restaurants and we took advantage of the comforts of one more day of civilization. Into the mountains tomorrow. Possibly.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Mike Walter called at 12:00 a.m. Friday morning and reported that he and the team had reached 17,000’ Camp on Mt. McKinley. They had a nice day of climbing with light snow and no wind. They rolled into camp at about 5:00 p.m., and are now resting. The team may take a rest day at 17,000 but if everyone is feeling good they might just go for the top.
Good Luck Team!
Delighted you had the chance to move onward and upward, well done team! A promise of beer, the weather cleared…tricky, isn’t it??!
Continued success for all,
liz
Our Four Day Summit Climb Teams led by RMI Guides Win Whittaker and Eric Frank reached the top of Cathedral Gap today, but strong winds and heavy precipitation forced them to turn back. The teams have left Camp Muir and we expect the back at Ashford Basecamp in the early afternoon.
After a few snowy days at our 11K camp, we hoped for some kinder weather for our move to 14,000'. We all agree we got too much of a good thing. Yesterday's move validated the old mountaineering saying that "you either freeze or fry." Wednesday morning was clear, but quite cold at 11K. We ate our warm breakfast, anxiously awaiting the sun to warm our tents before we packed up to move. The cool morning climb up Motorcycle Hill quickly turned into a sweltering overly sunny slog through the Polo Fields and around Windy Corner which lacked the then desired wind of which it got its name. After refueling and rehydrating the well-oiled machine we pulled into camp 4 (14,000') at 5 pm. We were welcomed by our other RMI team, light snow, and many other climbers at this small makeshift alpine village.
Today (Thursday), we returned to Windy Corner to retrieve our cache of food and equipment in much of the same weather conditions as the day before. We are now resting back at 14,000' awaiting our possible carry up the fixed lines to 16,000' tomorrow.
To our many fans out there who are leaving messages on our blog, rest assured they have reached us!
Tuesday night over dinner we passed the iPhone around for all to read the kind words from friends and family. Keep them coming!
Until tomorrow,
RMI Guides Mike Uchal, Adam Knoff, Zeb Blais, and our team at 14,000'
Stay classy lower 48!
Hi to Mike R and fellow climbers. I am soo amazed by your courage, strength, and perseverance, you should be very proud of yourselves as I am of you Mike!I luv reading all the messages including the other teams as well, Its absolutely unimaginable to me, what you must be experiencing. Enjoy what you can. Thinking about you. Love Cheri
Posted by: Cheri on 6/29/2012 at 6:54 pm
Greetings John!
We are all so excited about your amazing adventure! Deann is on the phone with me right now and we are still talking about you! Enjoy your travels!
Good Evening, good evening from the Carstensz Pyramid team. We are at Gamagai Village and we have had an incredible day. We had a beautiful flight over the jungle, we were greeted in Sugapa by hundreds of people, friendly, welcoming, and we began our trek on jeeps, very fun. We rode for about 10 minutes and then began our jungle walk. Although we expected a lot of rain and there were clouds all around, it did not rain on us as we went through first couple of villages. It wasn’t until the last couple hours that we experienced the deluge of the jungle. We set up our tents once we got to Gamagai Village but we are not wet a bit, and the reason why is that they welcomed us to do some indoor camping at the local church.
We are enjoying a dinner of cheese and all kinds of good food. We are going to get ready for another big day tomorrow, a great fun day. We are looking forward to what the mountain has in store for us and we will catch up in a day or two.
All the Best,
Alex Van Steen, Mark Tucker and the first inaugural RMI Carstensz Pyramid Expedition team.
Our Four Day Summit Climb Led by RMI Guide Brent Okita reached the summit of Mt. Rainier today. The team experienced clear weather, but strong winds. They were able to spend a short amount of time on top and are now descending back to Camp Muir.
RMI Guide Andres Marin and the Expedition Skills Seminar – Kautz Team made a summit attempt this morning, but experienced much different conditions on the Kautz route and were forced to turn back due to strong winds. The team will spend the rest of their time on the mountain honing their mountaineering skills.
Congratulations to today's teams!
We've finished one of the more challenging days of any Denali climbing expedition... Packing, sorting gear and generally getting organized for leaving Talkeetna and getting on the mountain. It wasn't all hard work and suffering though, we certainly enjoyed a great breakfast at the Roadhouse. National Park Service personnel at the Talkeetna Ranger Station gave us a warm welcome and Joe Reichert delivered a fine and informative orientation slideshow. Our flight team out at K2 Aviation made us feel right at home in their hangar, which was where we got our food, tents, stoves, ropes, pots, shovels, fuel, snow saws, snow shoes, packs, ice axes, boots, crampons, sleeping bags, etc, etc, and etc. ready.
Finally, we'd earned a break and a relaxing dinner at The West Rib Pub. Folks then drifted home early for a last comfy night in the Talkeetna Motel. The plan is for the team to meet bright and early for breakfast and then to hustle on out to the airstrip... If all goes well and the weather is stable, we could be loading airplanes shortly after 8AM and then winging our way toward the Alaska Range.
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
To my son Brian, Have a safe and happy climbing adventure! I am keeping you and the team in my daily prayers. (Inez read the blog to me, and it sounds like an exciting trip!)Love always, Mom
Posted by: Mom Bulatao on 6/30/2012 at 3:20 pm
Good Luck everyone!!
Tell Dr. Kelliher his A-Track students are sending him (and the whole team) love!
We will be tracking the journey
=)
Posted by: Jenni Lentenbrink on 6/28/2012 at 10:50 pm
We went to bed with clear skies and a forecast for 12-18" of snow overnight. The clear skies persisted overnight and we didn't get any new snow. There is a lenticular cloud on top of Denali today, indicating strong winds. We're also seeing snow blowing off of the West Buttress between the top of the fixed ropes and high camp. The current winds and the increased avalanche hazard from yesterday's foot of snow are keeping us at 14k for another day. The sunny weather at camp today is welcome, and is helping to keep our spirits high. It looks like some better weather is approaching for the weekend, and we're hoping we'll be able to take a crack at the summit then. With any luck, we'll be able to move to high camp tomorrow and be in position for the arrival of the more favorable weather. We'll keep you posted!
RMI Guide Mike Walter
6/26/2012 4:00 pm Hey Everybody it’s Billy calling to check in from the Jose Ribas Refugio here on Cotopaxi (16,000’ ft). We elected to head up the hut early so we could give ourselves a full night and a little bit better of a chance of getting to the top because the weather has been so poor. So we are going to get up in the middle of the night tonight and hopefully these winds will die down a bit and the lenticular clouds will clear. If the weather is not very good we will attempt a day climb. So we will check in again tomorrow and let you know how things played out.
6/27/2012 7:00 am Hey Gang, it's Billy again. I'm calling to let you know that we got up in the middle of the night last night and it was blowing pretty hard so we decided to wait until the morning to see if we could attempt a day climb. We got up around 6 and we had a big lenticular cloud and pretty steady wind of 40 mph here at the hut. It is blowing a pretty consistent 50 mph just above where we are at right now. We are back into a holding pattern. So tonight will be our last chance to go climbing. We will head out into it unless it is just absolutely insanely awful. So wish us luck. Hopefully the winds will have died down and we will have chance to get out and do some climbing. We will check in again to let you know how things went.
RMI Guide Billy Nugent checking in from Jose Ribas Refugio on Cotopaxi.
Hell of week for cotopaxi huh?
Posted by: Nate on 7/3/2012 at 10:45 pm
Wow!I’m impressed and awestruck. You guys still have all of your toes?? :-)
Posted by: Paula on 6/30/2012 at 4:18 pm
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