The Four Day Summit Climb teams led by RMI Guides Win Whittaker and Elias de Andres Martos reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning. Win reported hazy skies and a light wind. The teams are on their descent from the summit en route to Camp Muir. Once at Camp Muir the climbers will repack their gear and continue their descent to Paradise. Today's climbers have spent the last several months raising money for The American Lung Association in Washington's Climb for Clean Air.
Congratulations to the climbers for their efforts of fundraising, training and climbing!
We all slept very well after our successful summit climb yesterday and didn't get up until 8:30 this morning. After casual breakfast and coffee we slowly packed camp all the while looking up at the astounding route we had just climbed. It was impossible to ignore to smiles and feeling of accomplishment throughout the group. Eventually, by about 11:30 we hoisted heavy packs again and began our descent to Base Camp. Late in the afternoon we arrived to popcorn, chips and guacamole, and black corn juice (very tasty). We shuffled gear around a bit and then sat down for dinner and Peruvian wine! Truly a celebration.
Tomorrow we will finish packing duffel bags for the mules and choose our horses for our ride back to Cashapampa and then on to Huaraz. Though our trip here is almost over everyone is already talking about the next adventure.
Thanks for staying with us throughout this incredible trip.
RMI Guide Geoff Schellens and the Alpamayo Team
Everyone, congratulations and enjoy the trip down. Please take pics of the farmboy on the horse. John, I hope your horse is nicer than your dad’s pony Tony. Love Tante
Posted by: Lisa Stenderup on 8/2/2015 at 2:37 pm
Glad to hear you all are safe and enjoyed your expedition. We cant wait to see you home!!! Love Angela, Liana, Avery, Bella and Buster Brown.
Hello again everyone!
It started as a beautiful day here on Kilimanjaro but once again the clouds enveloped us as we left Karanga Camp and made our way uphill to our high camp, Barafu Camp. This camp sits on a ridge line around 15,000 ft which eventually leads to the summit of Kilimanjaro. It's a relatively large camp spread up and down the ridge and we are sharing it with all the other climbers using this route; I'd guess that there are ~100 other climbers here with us.
Everyone is doing very well and we are excited to start our climb early in the morning. The team will have a early dinner and if all goes according to plan we hope to have breakfast and be hitting the trail shortly after midnight. We'll have a nice slow pace that should take us around 8 hours to reach the summit. So keep your phones handy as I said, one lucky climber will get to call home from the "Roof of Africa." That will be around midnight for those of you on the east coast.
Fingers crossed!
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Hi Giulia - so you´ve reached the top of Africa - well done - hope you get a wonderful view up there & a good celebration & rest before the descent. Great to get your PC- Look forward to seeing a Photo of you all up there. Take care - love Tessa
RMI Guides Dave Hahn and Solveig Waterfall led their Four Day Summit Climb teams to the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning. Dave reported perfect weather on the summit - clear, calm, and sunny. The teams began their descent to Camp Muir just after 7:30 am. They will continue their descent to Paradise this afternoon.
Congratulations climbers!
Peter….Wow! Congrats to you for such an accomplishment! We are proud of you…hope to toast to you sometime soon.
Posted by: zoppetti - fischbachs on 8/1/2015 at 1:48 pm
Jeff, we are sure the sights make all the training worthwhile. Hayden was sure she saw you on the mountain last night when we viewed it from the Wallmart Parking Lot and Indi recognized your green eyes in the photo.
Summit day.
This morning we got up a little after midnight to a starry calm night. We ate breakfast and put the final touches on our packing and just before two o'clock in the morning we marched out of camp. Within 40 minutes we encountered steep snow slopes and began pitching it out. We slowly worked our way up our route climbing close to 2,000 feet of beautiful ice and snow. The whole team did a fantastic job today. We reached the summit of Alpamayo just before 8:00 AM. Tired as we were, everyone stayed focused for our decent and we walked back into camp tired but extremely happy. We will begin our descent to Base Camp tomorrow.
Thanks so much for following along on our climb. It has truly been an honor to climb such a beautiful peak with such a great group.
RMI Guide Geoff Schellens
Congratulations to the team! Well done! It seems as if we crossed paths just yesterday. Happy trails out.
Posted by: Wolf Riehle on 8/1/2015 at 7:11 pm
Excitement and “Vivas” !!!
Congrats and pat on the back for each of you… GREAT JOB!!
A huge hug from your family, Jesse
Mom, Dad, Virgie, Evencio Jr, and Zelda
<3 you!
Jambo Everyone
Things are going well and the team is doing great here on Kilimanjaro.
Today the team had a leisurely start as we wanted the sun to warm us up before our only semi-technical part of the climb. The trail out of camp starts off relatively mellow and then quickly ramps up as we ascend the great Barranco wall. It's truthfully not as intimidating as it looks, but when does a thousand foot cliff ever look easy. Thankfully the route winds its way up the cliff through ramps and small rock steps and eventually on to easier terrain. Everyone did a great job of taking it easy and I actually think they all enjoyed the challenge we had. It was a very busy day and there was fair bit of traffic on the route as all the porters and climbers slowly made our way to the next camp here above the Karanga Valley.
Today was a relatively short day for us as this will be our last camp before we move up to our high camp tomorrow.
As usual we've had a trivia challenge that one lucky winner will receive a satellite phone call from the summit. It won't happen until we reach the summit, but that's not too far away. I'll let everyone know when that might happen on tomorrow's dispatch. So stay tuned!
We are spending the remainder of the day relaxing and enjoying the royal treatment by our gracious staff here on Kili.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
The Four Day Summit Climb led by RMI Guide Lindsay Mann called from the crater rim at 7:30 am as they were ready to begin their descent. Lindsay reported a beautiful day with a light breeze. The ESS-Paradise led by Ben Liken was also leaving the summit to return to Camp Muir. Both teams will continue their descent to Paradise this afternoon.
Congratulations to today's climbers!
Update: July 30, 2015 11:31 pm PST
Family and friends we are back at camp safe and sound. Again, every one made the summit. Stay tuned for the summit video!!
July 30, 2015 8:50 pm PST
Hey, everyone. This is JJ Justman with the Elbrus team. I will give you one guess, just one guess as to where not one, not two, not five, but every single team member is right now. That is right! We are on top of Europe! We are on the summit of Mount Elbrus! The team did just a fantastic job today. We are a day early than expected. We have some weather coming in tomorrow and the next day. It is supposed to snow pretty darn good. As a guide I kind of hemmed and hawed and made the decision that the best day to go was today. And I'll tell you what, the team today is just strong as can be. We are on the summit of Elbrus. We are taking some more photos, and then we are going to head downhill. It is a beautiful day right now so we just made a terrific call as a team and I'm really proud of everyone. [Team cheers!] That's right, a big holler. Everyone says hi to family and friends. I will touch base with you guys when we get back down, but boy, we are just doing great. Thanks for following along. We'll talk to you again soon.
RMI Guide JJ Justman calls from the Mount Elbrus summit.
Nice! Looks gorgeous!! Congrats to all and a special shout out to my honey, Brian. Love you baby!!
Posted by: Victoria on 7/31/2015 at 8:01 am
hi Brian and team-
Wow! Sounds like some great decisions as to when to summit! Congrats to all!! Be safe and have fun coming down.
Love you-
Molly and Mike and family
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No matter where your highpoint was this morning, congratulations on your great effort and teamwork!!!
Posted by: Frank Yandrasits on 8/2/2015 at 9:09 am
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