Hello from the Dik Dik,
Our mountain adventure ended today with 10 very happy climbers. Even though we had a very long day yesterday, the team wanted to get an early start and hike down to the Mweka Gate. You could tell that everyone wanted showers as we made record time descending the 4,400' to the end of the trail. You can feel it is the last day as porters are ready to get paid, and the climbers are still on the high of summiting yesterday. We had a big lunch spread waiting for us at the gate and then we tipped out our mountain crew for all their hard work over the last seven days.
Now we are back at the hotel and sitting down for drinks before our celebration dinner. We are all cleaned up and have packed away all our mountain gear.
Tomorrow we are heading out on our safari. The perfect way to recover from the physical effort expended to reach the top of Kilimanjaro. First stop is Lake Manyara!
Best regards,
RMI Guide Jeff Martin
Hey everybody! It's Billy here checking in for Garrett, Jaime and the rest of the crew. We are on the summit of Cayambe right now with clear skies and calm winds. Enjoying a perfect day. That's all to report really. We will be headed down shortly here and wish us luck for us a safe descent. All is well, bye bye.
RMI Guide Billy Nugent
RMI Guide Billy Nugent calls from the Cayambe summit!
Decisions, decisions! After some careful thought the team had decided to spend one more day at high camp before attempting the summit. We all had a tough day battling new snow and breaking trail to make it here. There's no need to exhaust ourselves and ruin our chances at the summit. Tomorrow is supposed to be an even nicer day. And after a full day of eating, drinking and relaxing we all should be more recovered to give the summit our all.
RMI Guide JJ Justman
So close, Rich! Hang in there! I hope the weather holds out and you all summit tomorrow! Love you very much and miss you! Will see you very soon!
Good luck to you and the team!
Love, Susie
Posted by: Susie on 2/18/2014 at 10:43 am
Good morning Brenda ( Sweetie Pie) :-) today is the big day to the summit team 7 goes!! Have fun drink water . The Jay an I are in LV with Travis he says hello all A’s eight classes! Have fun today love you, Richie & Sea Jay. Xxxxxooooxx
La Malinche summit!
Today was a busy day. After a fantastic breakfast at our hotel in Mexico City we met our driver and loaded the van to the brim with all our gear. By 9:00 we were bumping along the streets working our way out of the city and towards the hills. After a few hours we found ourselves winding through the forests on the flanks of La Malinche. We arrived at La Malintzi, an old Olympic training facility at 10,000 feet around noon and stowed our bags in our cabins. With day packs packed and the noonday sun warming us, we started our acclimatization hike. After two hours hiking through the forest, we broke out of the trees and began climbing up the scree trail to gain the ridge. At 4:30 we found ourselves on the summit of La Malinche, 14,640'. Higher than any point in the continental United States. With perfect weather we began our descent scree skiing through the sandy section and back into the forest. Happy and tired we all enjoyed our delicious dinner back at La Malintzi and headed to bed for some well-deserved rest.
Thanks for following us.
RMI Guide Geoff Schellens
It was a day. We awoke to a foot of snow and 30mph winds at Aconcagua's Camp 2, brr! After a slow morning breaking down camp we headed uphill through wind and snow toward Camp 3. It was hard going and the team had to dig deep to get to high camp, but everyone walked in together, heads high and looking forward to the next challenge. Tomorrow, we go for the summit!
RMI Guide Katrina Bloemsma
Hi sweetie hope U had a nice day of relaxing! Looks like better weather will make the summit experience all the sweeter, Love you, miss you, Richie &. Sea Jay. Xxxxxxoooo
Posted by: Rich larscheid on 2/17/2014 at 7:46 pm
Hoping this email finds you full of thrills and cheers and at the summit! Keeping you and yours in my thought!
Stay safe and full-up with incredible memories…Diane
Woke up this morning to beautiful blue skies up here at the Cayambe hut with views of the mountain, Antisana in the distance, and a sea of clouds blanketing the lowlands. It was a bit of a rough night being our first evening sleeping at over 15,000' but everyone took it in steed and felt much better once we were moving around and enjoying a not so rustic breakfast. After downing breakfast burritos and coffee we packed up for a day of training and set out from the hut for the glacier. After about an hour and change of scrambling up a buttress, we hit the glacier and geared up with helmets, harnesses, ice axes, and crampons refreshing up on some of our basic climbing skills. Clouds came in and out, we chilled and boiled... Then headed back to the Refugio to eat dinner and get to bed early for tomorrow's alpine start. If the weather continues doing what it has been we should be poised for a good crack at the summit.
Wish us luck!
RMI Guide Billy Nugent and the gang
There are almost unlimited possibilities for interval workouts that you can come up with; varying times, distances, intensities, terrain, and repetitions creates a huge breadth of workouts that can all accomplish different goals. As you build your fitness base, threshold intervals are a great place to be putting some focus. They help to build your anaerobic threshold, increasing the intensity, time, and distance that you can go before your muscles start to fill with lactic acid. A great example of a useful threshold interval workout is the 4x4: four intervals that are each four minutes long.
To complete the 4x4 Interval Workout:
• Look for some gently rolling terrain, either on a trail or on a road, (although any terrain can work, including even a treadmill). Pick a starting point for your first interval, and run a threshold pace for 4 minutes from there. For pace, choose a speed that you think you’ll be able to hold - but just barely - for all four intervals. The idea is that each of the four intervals should be relatively similar in terms of pace, rather than the first being much faster than the last as you tire.
• After the first four-minute interval, make note of where the finish line was, and recover for 2 minutes. Recovery isn’t lying down on the ground or standing still, but instead a very slow jog or walk.
• At the end of 2 minutes, return to the previous finish line, and use that as your start line, completing another four-minute interval in the opposite direction, back towards where you came from. If you balance your pace well, then you should finish at the start line of your first interval!
• Take another 2-minute slow recovery period.
• Complete another 4-minute interval in the original direction. See if you can make it to where you ended the first time, if not further.
• Recover for 2 minutes.
• Complete your last interval, heading back again and seeing if you can best your previous mark. Nice work! 22 minutes, and you’ve completed your interval workout!
It may take a couple of sessions for you to figure out the pacing for these, so that the last two are at least as strong as the first two. Don’t purposefully hold back at the beginning, just set a moderately quick pace, and then see if you can maintain it throughout. If you can, great job, and try bumping the pace up a notch next time. If you do this workout in the same place, you’ll start to get a feel for your improvement as you watch your finish lines get further and further down the trail.
With all interval training, a proper warm-up and cool-down is very important. Make sure that you warm up with at least 15 to 20 minutes of jogging before you start the session, and finish with a good 15 to 20 minute cool-down period afterwards. This will help your body process the lactic acid that was created during the workout so that you aren’t as sore afterwards helps to prevent injury. All told, this workout takes about an hour.
Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!
Hello from Mweka Camp,
We did it! The entire team made it to Uhuru Peak, the Roof of Africa, this morning at 7:30 am. But there were no gimmes today, we fought hard for every step. What started out as fairly decent weather when we woke up, quickly changed as we were about two hours into our climb. At first, it began snowing lightly, but the higher we climbed, the harder the snow fell. The trail was completely covered by the time we reached 18,000'. By Stella Point, the crater rim, it was blowing about 30 mph and 4-6 inches of snow had fallen. Definitely not your typical summit day. Despite the challenges of the weather, the team did great today.
We left camp at 12:50 am and were on top at 7:30 am. We only spent about 10 minutes at the summit sign, and then it was time to get back down. The fresh snow made for an interesting descent, and new snow had fallen all the way back to high camp.
After changing out of our summit gear, we re-packed our duffels and headed down to Mweka Camp, 5000' below us. We arrived in camp just before 5:00 PM, and our 17-hour day is now over. We are all tried, but in great spirits and looking forward to a good night's rest.
Best regards,
RMI Guide Jeff Martin
When the road gets tough, the tough get going! We bow to your efforts and successes! Enjoy the first of your celebrations and the rest of your journey!
Love,
R&C
We woke not so early today (this mountaineering gig is rough) had a nice breakfast from the kind folks at Casa Sol and jumped in the bus for the famous Otavalo open air market. We spent a few hours cruising the stalls with food, jewelry, meats, produce, grains, spices, and of course handicrafts for sale. There's even a livestock market which is quite a sight (and smell). Clark and Garrett wanted to go looking for a live monkey to bring home but there was no such luck. I wonder what kind of papers a monkey needs to come back to the states. Anyway, we skipped Otavalo and finally headed for Cayambe where we are settling in up at the hut over 15,000'. The air is thin but everyone's doing great so far. I'll let y'all know how that notorious first night at really high altitude goes...
RMI Guide Billy Nugent
Well after some long travel days getting to Mexico City the whole team met tonight, thus our adventure is underway! We are all excited to be here and get going. After introductions and a trip briefing we all went to La Opera, a beautiful restaurant in historic Mexico City. Enchiladas con salsa verde were fantastic.
Now for some packing and prep for tomorrow and a good night sleep. I can already tell this is a great climbing team.
That's all for now.
RMI Guide Geoff Schellens
Wooo Hooo
Congrats you guys. Way to go.
xo Beck
Posted by: becky on 2/22/2014 at 12:06 pm
Holly and Chris, CONGRATS on the summit!! Enjoy the Safari
-Adam
Posted by: Adam on 2/18/2014 at 6:37 am
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