RMI Expeditions Blog

Monday, June 1st - 12:45AM PST

Hello blog readers! We awoke this morning to the sun blessing our tents. It took sometime to get our momentum rolling but soon we were headed downhill. The sweet thick air below us was calling our names! We descended the 16k ridge in stellar weather with almost the entire thing to ourselves. Then back down the fixed lines for the final time. Next thing you know we were back at 14k camp! We were greeted with great hospitality from the RMI team lead by Seth Burns. After an hour of so of R&R and repacking, we continued on our journey downward. After 6,000 feet of descent, we were back at our nemesis - 11 Camp  but this time on better terms. This time it’ll only be a short layover with a few hours of sleep before we finish our descent to the Kahiltna International Airport where we hope to catch a ride on a Turbo Otter to Talkeetna!

Cheers,
Jack and the Team
(fingers crossed for flyable weather!)

Sunday, May 31st - 8:30PM PST

We awoke at 7am to 4” of fresh snow blanketing the camp. Since then, it has continued to fall at a steady pace. Temperatures are just below freezing. Little to no wind. Visibility is much reduced compared to the last 3 days, but still a good 3/4 mi.

There was potential we would move camp today, leapfrogging where we buried our cache yesterday and continuing on to Camp 2. However, Jackson warned us that the mild conditions at our current 7,800’ can be dramatically magnified above at 11,000’. Heeding this, decision was made to take our first rest day. A time to relax, take care of ourselves, and recharge the physical stores we would desperately need in the coming weeks. (Note: as of 12:35pm “Camp 2 just reported 2’ of snow since last night!”)

While the body, pushed hard over the last two days of hauling heavy loads, certainly welcomed this respite, I knew the mind could be more finicky. Since landing in Alaska, we’ve been hyper focused on travel, gear lists, packing, re-packing, logistics, learning new skills, meeting new people, adapting to our life on the mountain, and then hours of step by step by step to reach Camp 1. Now it seemed we have nothing to fixate on besides sitting in our tents and…thinking.

We inevitably start asking ourselves those questions. Why the hell are we here? On paper, the entire endeavor makes no sense. Each of us has voluntarily left our boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, children, pets, friends, and family to spend weeks slogging up into one of the most remote, desolate, and entirely hostile places on Earth. Thousands of dollars. All of our paid time off. Bruises, blisters, headaches, and countless other torments. Temperatures lower than you thought physically possible. Our cozy beds replaced with -40 degree sleeping bags on lumpy snow and ice. Our kitchen tables replaced with benches and counters cut 6’ down into the packed snow. Our bathrooms replaced with a Ziploc bag of wet wipes and a literal bucket. To any rational person, this is madness. Why then?

But here, everyone knows. No bewildered looks from a co-worker as you try to explain. We all innately understand the desire to be in this place. We come here to find the things that are so rare in the modern world. Adventure. Simplicity. Persevering over physical hardship. Proving that who we were will never stop us from becoming who we are. Standing in awe of nature, both in its breathtaking beauty, and in horror of the enormity of its sheer power. Feeling truly mortal. A small speck in a vast system that we cannot fully comprehend. Letting go of our pride, our hubris, our fear of relying on others. Connection. Bonds that can only be forged through shared sweat, trials and tears. Knowing that there really are other people out there as crazy as we are. That is why we came. And that is why we will remain here together, taking on each day as it comes.

-RMI Climber Peter

Sunday, May 31st - 8:30PM PST

Today Seth, our benevolent lead, let us sleep in for one extra hour. We woke to crisp, clear skies. Many hot beverages were served, paired with  granola bars and an air of white gas. Post “breakfast” we headed downhill to collect our cache. There were tears of joy as people were reunited with precious snacks, and for some, toilet paper. After our short adventure, we settled into the posh, ate blueberry pancakes doused in maple syrup and enjoyed the heat from the stoves. Full on cakes, we moved to our next task: fortify our walls for the incoming wind. Graham is the undisputed block building champ, and after some time in the sun our labyrinth was complete. Thankfully this included higher bathroom walls, hopefully decreasing awkward interactions at the pee hole. The rest of the day was spent training, and then greeting our friends from up high. Continuing the food trend, we finished with a green coconut curry. All in all, the day was good, and somehow, the food was even better.

- RMI guide Marge

RMI Guides Mike King and Avery Stolte and the Five Day Climb Teams reached the summit of Mt. Rainier at 7:50am this morning. Mike reported a chilly morning with light winds. Both teams are on their descent back to Camp Muir and will head back to Paradise tomorrow. 

Congratulations!

On Saturday, May 30th at 8pm, Delaney and team were on the summit of Mt. McKinley!

More info coming soon! 

Saturday, May 30th 10PM PST

Today was our final decision day, the final day of no dehydrated meals, the final look at weather before making a decision to head up to 17 camp, or make our way back to the airstrip. The morning started off calm and beautiful, and after a breakfast of eggs and hashbrowns the whole team walked out the edge of the world where we got expansive views of everything below and out for miles. Throughout the afternoon we got more weather information, and the clouds began to build in camp. 

The window we were looking for was moving up Sunday, trying to summit Monday, and heading back downhill Tuesday. The more we checked the weather, and the more we heard it appeared as the low pressure pushed out, and the high pressure moved in, high winds were moving in with it. Both the winds and the temperatures (still in the -30 range…brrr) sadly took the Monday summit window off the table. 

After much consideration, we are going to have to start making our way back down the mountain and towards the airstrip. 

We will check in tomorrow as we begin our descent. These decisions are never easy, and the team put so much effort in. We are proud of everything done up until this point.

Saturday, May 31st, 11PM PST

Burns Team Makes it to 4327 meters
We woke early to a very cold morning and started packing our things. Today was the day we would move to camp 4. After a breakfast of granola, and powdered milk for the brave, we packed our backpacks until it seemed they would bust. The sun broke the rim of the mountain as we prepared to set out. We underdressed as we expected to warm up as we climbed, it would be the theme for the day as the hot sun battled the cold wind. After we climbed each steep hill we were rewarded by another steep hill to climb. On our brakes we pondered if we would rather be a strawberry with humans thoughts or a human with strawberry thoughts. As I climbed I thought it would be nice to be a strawberry, no mountains to climb or life to worry about, just sit on the vine and enjoy the sun. I tried to have strawberry thoughts as I climbed, no fatigue or suffering, just enjoy the sun on my face turning it a nice ripe red. Finally camp 4 appeared on the horizon like Shangrala, we had made it.

- RMI Climber James

Saturday, May 30th 8:30PM PST

Today we pulled our sleds from camp 1 to establish a cache just below camp 2. This was our first real elevation gain, and it feels like we’re nearing a turning point where in the coming days, the challenge of hauling loads and staying cool in the heat of the day will transition to hauling mostly just ourselves and keeping warm.

I’ve taken a hundred of photos already, but every time I return from a new place, I scan through my photos and realize that, in looking for a wider and wider angle lens thinking I could capture everything about that place, in fact I capture very little of what it’s like to be there. I feel this already here. The sky is deepest blue and the snow brilliant white, but our days are spent focused on the tiniest details which no photo will capture. The way the rope cuts a groove in the snow as it slides the length of each step. The texture of sunscreen layered on sunscreen layered on sweat. Tiny adjustments to backpack straps which cut either into our hips or into our shoulders. Analyzing every twitch of our guide’s arm to see if it signals the next rest break.

I struggle to conceptualize the innumerable tiny tasks and footsteps separating us from our goal next to the scale of the mountains which surround us. The mountains still seem impossibly big to me and, in alternating waves, oddly small. Glaciers stretch on for miles and seracs the size of houses hang thousands of feet above our heads. But houses align into city blocks, city blocks cluster into neighborhoods, and what hiker would think twice about passing through a few neighborhoods to get to the other side of town? I rationalize to myself that the next turn in the track is only as far away as the next stop light.

So too, the whoops of exuberance and sighs of commiseration between teammates stack into shared experiences, and these shared experiences stack into friendships. I’m grateful for these new friendships and for the opportunity to be here, even if it’s accompanied by separation from everyone back home and a certain amount of discomfort and trepidation.

8/29 - A well deserved rest day! Again, sleeping in and waking with the sun - we enjoyed our final bagel, cream cheese and smoked salmon meal of the trip. Nick was running the stoves, and taking orders, and the morning was leisurely around camp. We spent the day pondering weather, and making a game plan for the coming days. We ate snacks, played some games, and continued to put off walking to the edge of the world. The day wrapped up with Mac and Cheese and some team rounds of heads up. We are continuing to look for a 3 day weather window to move up hill, summit, and return to 14 camp. Let's see what the weather brings!

RMI Guide Nikki Champion & Team

5/29 - We left Kahiltna Base camp just after 9 a.m., passing out of the mountain shadow and into the full sun. The day glittered around us, sunshine glinting off the snow and washing over the surrounding peaks. The previous night, a park ranger had warned us that it had been a challenging season. Only a few people had managed to summit. But the day we flew onto the glacier had brought the best weather he’d seen since March. Perhaps the misery that had haunted other climbers — coined a “lovely hell” in an earlier blog post — was finally passing.

We marched forward, saddled with heavy packs and even heavier plastic sleds. We carried the essentials, like fuel and climbing gear and “clean mountain cans” — their sanitary name failing to convey their unsanitary purpose: to carry out all of our poop. But we also carried the ineffable, the comfort those items brought worth more than their use. A beloved red beanie, an iPad with 48 hours of movies, including Interstellar, and 300+ gummy bears. (Harbaro, the good kind.) A blue towel, honey-covered macadamia nuts and, in a single pack, 60 packets of instant coffee. (Might need to call in a mental health check on that climber.) Smoked salmon from cousins in Anchorage and two blocks of cheddar cheese that weren’t from Wisconsin, though it would’ve been better if they were. Nice headphones. A best friend. Knitting needles and yarn. Twelve premiere Belgian waffles. More than five pounds of cookie dough.

We were different ages — 33, 35, 38, 40, 41 — and called different places home. Salt Lake City, Oakland Philadelphia, Denver, Bellingham, Kyiv. We hailed from cybersecurity, the military, journalism, entrepreneurship and business. We probably never would have met in the “real” world. (Who even knows what that world will look like when we return.) But we were creating our own little world, the climb a uniting force. We needed each other to cover the heaviest five-and-a-half miles toward the mountain — and onward, hopefully to its very top — tethered together by rope and carabiner. Our footsteps crunched over the glacial rolls, and sweat tie-dyed our shirts. Our hiking poles stabbed pinpricks of blue light in the snow, the thick ice — nearly 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep at points — shining up at us from below.

Soon enough we’d pull into camp. (The smallest member of the group was in disbelief that she’d managed to carry a load that weighed nearly as much as her.) We’d build a neighborhood of red-and-blue tents and listen to the whoosh of the cookstove, snowmelt turning to drinking water. We’d talk and laugh and prepare to climb Ski Hill the next morning to cache food near Kahiltna Pass.

But for now, there was only the long and grueling climb, both a torture and a revelation. Ahead of us, Denali stood on the horizon, cloaked in a sifting haze of clouds. Visible one moment, it was gone in the next.

Daily recap:
Mileage: 5.64 miles
Total time: 5:25:49
Elevation gain: 1,129 feet
Pace: 57:48/mile

RMI Climber Lizzy

Note from the author: All my love and gratitude to Kyiv, Omaha and Anchorage. You know who you are. (And big hugs to little Claire and Emma.)