RMI Expeditions Blog

Friday, June 20, 2025 10:02pm PDT

You must go up to go down, and go down to go up.

The team started the day with a simple yet efficient breakfast of cereal and coffee before donning their crampons, roping up, and beginning their walk out of camp at roughly 8:30 a.m.

The climb out of 14 Camp quickly gains elevation, built up by rolling slopes that offer brief stretches of reprieve before reaching the base of the fixed lines. A steep and icy headwall, the fixed lines provide both access to the upper mountain and a formidable challenge to anyone seeking passage. Installed each season by climbing rangers and maintained by guides, the fixed lines serve as a two-lane highway to Denali’s flank—the West Buttress.

The team made great progress, gaining elevation quickly as they found a rhythm in the often awkward and unfamiliar technique of fixed-line travel. After nearly 1,000 feet of “jugging” up various rope sections, the team broke through to the ridge, rounded a corner, and found shelter at the base of the Buttress—the high point for the day. Sheltered by rocky outcroppings, the team took a well-earned break while the guides collected gear to be left behind and dug out a cache.

Once the gear was stashed, the team turned and began the quite different, yet equally challenging, descent down the lines. Using arm wraps and steady footwork, they made their way down in a timely and stylish fashion.

Good snacks, a cozy tent, and the promise of a rest day awaited them upon return to 14 Camp.

RMI Guide Michael Bennet & Team

This morning, RMI Expeditions guides Jack Delaney and Joey Manship led their Four Day Climb teams to the summit of Mount Rainier—an incredible achievement for all involved!

The teams reached the top under dynamic mountain conditions, reporting broken clouds, light precipitation, and a cloud deck hovering around 8,700 feet. Despite the weather, spirits were high as climbers stood atop the 14,410-foot peak, many for the first time.

At 9:20 AM, the teams began their descent, and are currently en route to Camp Muir. 

Congratulations Team! 

Thursday, June 20, 2025 9:36pm PDT

We were up and at ’em at 3 a.m., trying to beat the heat. This had us moving up the glacier from our 8,000 ft camp by 5 a.m. First up was Ski Hill—a steeper and longer incline than anything we’ve tackled so far. It was tough, but conditions were excellent after a solid overnight freeze.

It took about four hours to reach our goal: the head of the Kahiltna Glacier at 10,000 feet. There, we dug a deep, raven-proof hole in the snow and cached food and fuel.

The descent was pleasant, with lighter loads and easy walking. The team rolled back into camp at 11:30 a.m. and sheltered in the tents to escape the afternoon sun.

Tomorrow, we’ll move past the cache and camp at 11,000 feet.

RMI Guide Sam Hoffman & Team

Thursday, June 19, 2025 9:27pm PDT

Today was, oxymoronically, an “active rest day.” Yesterday, we endured a grueling move of 3,200 feet with half our gear and established a new camp at 14,200 feet, so our bodies needed rest. But as any fitness enthusiast or doctor will tell you, it’s important to move a little even during recovery so your gears don’t get rusty.

We woke up to our first frost at 6:30 a.m. A quick granola bar for breakfast, and by 7:30 a.m., we were on the move. Our first task of the day was a back carry. We took a quick 15-minute jaunt down to our cache site at 13,500 feet, where we had stored half of our gear three days ago. Our dutiful guides dug out our belongings, and then we returned to camp in an hour.

We had a leisurely breakfast of pan-roasted bagels with cream cheese and bacon—a method of warming my Tarrytown bagels I’ll definitely adopt upon my return. After a brief respite, our second task at noon was to refine our campsite. Snow walls were built around our tent structures to protect us from high winds, and the bathroom and kitchen structures were spruced up.

The third activity of the day was a mid-afternoon refresher on how to walk along fixed lines with an ascender. By dinner, many of us were questioning whether we had experienced “active rest” or rather “restful activity.”

This location has me, a psychiatrist, reflecting on the psychological challenges people have spoken of during this trip. Retracing your steps on a back carry day can be a bit of a mind trip. Above us looms the steep hill that the fixed lines run along, rising 2,000 feet to the ridgeline of the West Buttress. It harkens to the long journey ahead.

However, two things keep me inspired and motivated. The first is the story of Barbara Washburn, who was the first woman to summit Denali in 1947. While at Camp 2, I read her memoir The Accidental Adventurer, which recounted her pioneering journeys. I tell myself that if she could accomplish so many feats with initially little experience and training, surely I can dig deep and find that grit too.

The second is remembering my emancipated ancestors on today, Juneteenth. So many people of that time, over the centuries, and even today, take long journeys of hundreds to thousands of miles seeking a better life. My journey on the mountain is pleasure-seeking and limit-pushing, but there are parallels in that the conditions are inhospitable and decisions here have life-or-death implications. Therefore, I am motivated to keep going despite my fatigue, trepidation, and excitement—knowing that my ancestors couldn’t stop, and I’m summoning their strength now.

Onward to more adventure.
Happy Juneteenth.

Adjoa Smalls-Mantey

Day 1: We left Ashford at 7:30 this morning and enjoyed good views and generally cool weather on our approach to the kautz. We’ve made an excellent camp on the lower castle and are batoning down the hatches for rough weather tonight—an essential expedition skill. - RMI Guide Eric frank

Day 2: Today we practiced a variety of skills including fixed line travel, crevasse rescue and avalanche beacon searches. We even took a little time for yoga before our summit talk! - RMI Guide Tom Skoog

Day 5: SUMMIT!  The Kautz Seminar team left camp and ascended the Kautz Ice Chute and reached the top of Wapowety Cleaver before gaining Point Success and then contining across to Columbia Crest. The team enjoyed some time in the crater before starting their descent. The team climbed strong with 100% of the group reaching the summit. They will return to camp and enjoy some rest and a final tent night.  Tomorrow they will continue their descent to Paradise and conclude their program.

Nice work team!

Photos: Tom Skoog

The Four Day Climb June 16 - 19 led by RMI Guides Brent Okita & George Hedreen reached the summit of Mt. Raineir this morning around 7 am.  It's a beautiful day with blue skies, light winds and cool temperatures.  The team enjoyed about an hour in the summit crater before starting their descent from the crater rim shortly after 8 am.  Once back at Camp Muir the climbers will have a short rest and repack, then continue 4.5 miles down to Paradise. They will have a short celebration at Rainier BaseCamp later today to conclude their adventure.

Congratulations to today's climbers!

Wednesday, June 18, 2025 - 8:49 pm PT

Cripes alfrighty we did it! We finally made it to Camp 3 at 14,200 feet. Pardon me and my french, we are just a little excited. And don't let those tabloids play tom foolery on you, we're 14,200 feet, not 14,000 feet; those silly newsfolk, they'll really get ya. Anywho, we got to tinkering with our stuff last night for the move and got up real early. You know what they say, early bird gets the cheese. So there we were at 11,000 feet, we scootered up Motorcycle Hill, squirreled our way around the next, galloped through the polo fields and then roasted our tushies off like when grandma leaves the pop tarts in the toaster for too long. See what I did there? I'm just joshing yous. Anyways, so now here we sit at 14,200 feet and you might be thinking to urself, what's so darn important about that? Well we'll tell ya. Gosh the views are something else, but ya, so, now that we're at camp 3, we're sitting pretty good to, ya know, get acclimated and stuff before we launch like a potato from a spud gun and get our bums to the summit of this thing! So ya, we're pretty excited and all that. Thanks so much for tuning in. Tomorrow we gotta walk back down and get our goodie bags we left just below camp, but gosh, it'll be a lot easier than today was. Okay, thanks for listening, tell your folks we says hi and watch out for deer. Ok, bye now.

RMI Guide Ben Luedtke and Team 

Wednesday, June 18, 2025 - 10:16 pm PT

Well, this one is a couple days late. Like most members of the team, I have also been through quite a time warp. As I sit here tonight and am thinking about the trip, it occurs to me that just four nights ago we were still making our way back down to 17,000' Camp from the summit. Time flies when life is just a series of naps in between hard walking, unpacking, repacking and digging up caches. Truly the final 72 hours of a Mt. McKinley expedition is one of the hardest pushes most of us will make in the mountains. In that amount of time we: move from 14 Camp to 17 Camp, sleep, have our summit day, sleep, descend from 17 Camp to 11 Camp, sleep just a couple of hours and then descend from 11 Camp to Base Camp. All of that is assuming good weather.

This time around we had the fortune of great weather for a summit day and for our exit. Upon our arrival to Base Camp we waited only a short amount of time for the planes carrying Dave Hahn's team onto the glacier to arrive and take us off. It's quite a funny position to be in, tired and haggard from 17 days on the glacier and looking at another team with fresh clothes on, perfectly packed and with a bunch of empty CMCs (poop cans) just arriving. It feels like there is so much to tell them, but they will all learn their own lessons in due time.

Anyhow, the next moment you find yourself in a small plane, diving through a hole in the clouds and speeding along at the edge of a cloud ceiling about 1,000 feet above the Tokositna Glacier, which your pilot is using as a handrail as you take a long exit from the range. Your cell phone finds service and depending who you are and where you work, you have some incredible amount of unread messages and emails and normal life comes roaring back in an instant. There is still unpacking to do in Talkeetna, checking out with the National Park Service, returning the full CMCs and a celebration dinner in a town full of tourists, at which I could barely keep my eyes open, the past few days catching up to me.

The next day we all headed for the airport in a van driven by the only guy keeping it low key at the Fairview the evening before. I think Bill is mostly there to sing karaoke and may have just been having a cranberry juice, straight. Having booked a flight just a day prior, both Will and I sat in middle seats for the flight back to Seattle, the people to my right and left having to deal with the sunbaked guy next to them sleeping open-mouthed.

Finally, most of us had our first day back at home or first day of an extended vacation in Alaska today. I'm sure we all tried to find our way back in to some routine, just to be reminded by the burnt lips, tongue and nostrils that we just had one of the wildest and most memorable experiences of our lives. I know that for myself, those nights walking down the lower Kahiltna Glacier to basecamp are forever etched in my mind as some of the most rugged beauty I have ever witnessed.

RMI Guide Dustin Wittmier

Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 9:12 pm PT

Rest day, what a glorious phrase, after 6 days of moving ourselves and our supplies up and down this mountain, we were able to sleep in. We awoke at the late hour of 9:30 am to a leisurely breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, and salmon. After that per our leader Dom’s insistence, we all took laps around the 11,000' Camp or up to Motorcycle Hill to get our blood pumping and make sure our “gears didn’t rust up”. The afternoon was a mix of reading, chatting, napping, grazing on our heaviest snacks, and playing games, the hottest dice den on the mountain is right here at 11,000' Camp.  Tonight we prepare for tomorrow for our move to 14k and to the next stage of our journey up this mountain. 

Today is also extra special for this blogger, I want to wish a happy anniversary to my wife Sophia here on the mountain with me. It’s been an amazing 8 years of marriage with my adventure partner for life. I’m so lucky to be here with you tackling this challenge together. I’ve loved spending every day of the last year with you through all the training, debating every ounce, gram, and calorie in our packs, and supporting each other at home and on the mountain.

I love you dearly Sophia, and am thankful for every moment we get to adventure together.

- RMI Climber Tait

Wednesday, June 17, 2025  - 10:20 am PT

Well, like all good things, this too must come to an end. Sorry we’ve been a bit MIA since summit day—those final days all start to blur together. You don’t get much downtime until you're either sitting at the airstrip waiting out the weather or lucky enough to fly straight to Talkeetna.

Three days ago, on June 14th, we stood on top. The following morning, June 15th, the team packed up camp and began the long, challenging descent. We dropped down the West Buttress around noon, descended the fixed lines, and stopped at 14,000' Camp for a brief six-hour nap.

After our rest, we had a quick dinner at midnight, then loaded up all of our gear from the last two weeks and began the march back to basecamp. We made our way around Windy Corner, down Squirrel and Motorcycle Hill, and finally back to 11,000' Camp. There, we whispered hellos to Dom’s team—who were sound asleep—grabbed our cache, transitioned back to snowshoes, and continued past Camp One to basecamp.

By around 9 a.m. on the morning of June 16th, we arrived at basecamp to good weather and the chance to fly straight off the glacier. By noon, we were back in Talkeetna wearing flip-flops, and by 2 p.m., we were sharing beers and laughter, wrapping up our expedition at the Brew Pub.

It’s all been a bit of a haze—amazing, exhausting, unforgettable. In the moment, it felt like it moved slowly, but now that we’re back on dry land, it’s hard to believe how fast it all went by.

If you've been following me for years, you know I'm a fan of Hiakus...

Fresh socks, frozen boots
Glacier sunburn, summit views
Fly me to a beer

RMI Guide Nikki Champion