RMI Expeditions Blog

The Mt. Rainier Four- and Five- Day Summit Climbs, led by Billy Nugent and Jake Beren respectively, reached the summit this morning! It was a cold day on top with winds steady between 10-15 mph. The teams are doing well as they descend through a cloud cap hovering on the mountain top. Congratulations to today's summit climb teams!

The last week before the start of an expedition or climb can be a hectic and stressful period. Between packing and repacking your bags and squaring away your work and life to be gone for a few days (or a month!), there is a ton to do. It might be tempting to forego your workouts during this period in order to rest up. Still others might channel their stress into a last week of intense training. Rest is important, but so is maintenance of your fitness. This is the period to taper your training plan, striking a balance somewhere in between the two extremes. The ultimate goal of the taper period is to reduce fatigue (physical as well as mental and emotional), while maintaining fitness. There are four main parameters that you can vary in your training to create a taper: intensity, volume, frequency, and duration of the taper. Intensity is the only variable that doesn’t change. You should continue to do your workouts at a similar intensity to what you have built up to. This means that your aerobic workouts are still slow enough that you stay in your aerobic zone, but at the same time, your intensity workouts such as intervals and strength are still done at or above the level that your have been training at. Achieve the reduction in fatigue that is requisite of these workouts by varying the volume and frequency instead Volume should be greatly reduced during the taper period. Research recommends that training volume be reduced by 50-70 percent for endurance athletes. While this may seem like a radical drop in training, the reduction in volume will eliminate training fatigue, while the maintenance of intensity will maintain your fitness. Reducing your training volume also opens up time in your day to complete other tasks that need to be taken care of before you go! Frequency of workouts can also be reduced to lessen the training fatigue. If you have been doing multiple workouts a day, drop to just a single workout per day. Duration of the taper can vary. For a very aerobic and endurance based sport such as mountaineering, about a week is ideal. To apply this to your training regime, think about the schedule of workouts that you have been following already. Your aerobic workouts are a great place to dramatically reduce your volume; a two hour workout could be reduced to just an hour or 45 minutes of easy aerobic work at the same pace you have done your longer workouts at (resist the temptation to push the pace harder). In your interval workouts, take longer rest breaks between intervals, and cut the number in half, while still doing a quality warm-up and cool-down. With strength workouts, maintain the same weights, but reduce the number of sets and repetitions per set. This period is also a great time to focus on stretching and recovery for your body. Take special care with your nutrition, recovery routine, and sleep habits to allow your body to recover from the training fatigue of the last several months, and you will show up in peak form! Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!

Hi this is Seth along with the group. We are on the way to the airport after a great last day on Safari. We awoke this morning in Kikoti Camp and after a great breakfast we hit the road. We traversed back through Tarangire National Park and were lucky to catch a few more glimpses of a pride of lions. After that we made our way back to Arusha, did some shopping and came back to the Dik Dik Hotel. Everyone has had a great trip but after two weeks away, I think most everyone is excited to return home. As for me I am sticking around for another trip and I am really looking forward to heading back up on the mountain. I'll be checking in again soon! RMI Guide Seth Waterfall

RMI Guides Garrett Stevens and Casey Grom led their teams of Four Day Summit Climbers to the summit of Mt. Rainier today. Garrett reported a thin cloud cap starting to form but a pretty nice day overall. Winds were very low on the lower portions of the mountain but had increased near the summit. The teams will spend a bit of time in the crater and then descend back to Camp Muir. After a short break the teams will continue down to Paradise and conclude their program with a short celebration at Rainier BaseCamp. Congratulations to today's Summit Climb teams!

Well, we're all safely out of the mountains after a great week of climbing and training on Mount Shuksan's Sulphide glacier. Our climbing team gained proficiency moving in diverse terrain in the mountains, including crevassed glaciers, steep snow and ice, and 4th & 5th class rock. We also practiced lots of knots and hitches and crevasse rescue systems. We packed a lot into the past week, and the weather was perfect throughout. Our team was strong and cohesive and we all reached the summit Mount Shuksan in good style. It was a pleasure to climb with everyone. Nice work team! RMI Guide Mike Walter

The Four Day Summit Climb teams led by RMI Guides Geoff Schellens and Adam Knoff reached the summit of Mt. Rainier today under sunny skies. The teams spent a little time on the crater before starting their descent around 7:30 am. Once at Camp Muir the teams will take a short break and continue down to Paradise. Congratulations to today's Summit Climb teams!

Mambo poa... We are full on safari pros now. We left the Plantation Lodge at a relaxed pace this morning and after a couple of quick shopping missions we made it into Tarangire National Park. This is the 'Garden of the Elephants' and true to its name we have already seen about 50 of them before lunch. We are going to make our way through the rest of the park this afternoon on our way to Kikoti Camp. I'll check in again tomorrow. RMI Guide Seth Waterfall

Another excellent day on Mount Shuksan in the North Cascades...this time we woke up before dawn and cramponed up the Sulphide Glacier to the base of the summit pyramid, where we ditched the crampons and ice axes and climbed 4th and 5th class rock for 800 vertical feet to the summit! Our entire team reached the summit in good style. The weather was perfect so we hung out on the summit for over an hour before descending. We were back in camp around 2 p.m. for a round trip of a little over eight hours. The training over the past week really paid off and nobody struggled with the technical terrain at all. Congrats team! RMI Guide Mike Walter

8/26/14 8:30 pm PST We had another great day of training today here on Shuksan's Sulphide Glacier. We spent the bulk of the day ice climbing in a crevasse and practicing crevasse rescue with mechanical advantage systems. There was barely a cloud in the sky all day, and the forecast looks similar for tomorrow. That's good news for us, as we're planning to make our summit attempt tomorrow. We'll let you know how it goes! RMI Guide Mike Walter

Hi this is Seth. We are spending the day in the vast Ngorongoro Crater. The animal viewing here is excellent and we've already spotted our first lion of the trip. Everyone's legs are almost completely recovered from summit day but its still nice to relax in the vehicles. We'll be staying in our same hotel tonight before making the switch to Kikoti Camp tomorrow. That's it for now. RMI Guide Seth Waterfall