Entries By ross morgan

The Four Day Climb July 13 - 16 reached the summit of Mt. Rainier on a beautiful day. RMI Guide Steve Gately and team were approaching the crater rim shortly after 7 AM. Clear skies and warm sunny temperatures were the report. Nice work team!

The Kautz Seminar June 23 - 28 made their summit attempt today, they climbed the crux of the route and reached 14,000' between Point Success and the true summit before weather turned them around. RMI Guide Tyler Jones reported a thick cloud cap with snow and cold temperatures. The team will descend to camp and continue their training on the mountain for the next few days.

The Four Day Summit Climb August 9 - 12 led by RMI Guide Pete Van Deventer reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning with clear skies, light winds and cool temps. The team enjoyed some time on the crater before beginning their descent just before 9 AM. There is a marine layer around 6,500' with clear skies above. We will see if that dissipates before the team descends to Paradise. Congratulations to today's climbers!

Today's mixed bag of weather didn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm to train in and around the crevasses near Camp Muir. If anything, we were all smug in the knowledge that we took advantage of fantastic weather when we could to summit and would deal with less than ideal weather for our training. Even the blisters and sore feet of the climb seemed to go away with our great night of sleep. I was impressed with how the group really learned the skills to effect a rescue of a partner from a crevasse, then jumped at the chance to get back in the hole to ice climb out. Most even got in seconds on the ice climbs. Our evening talk in the bunkhouse covered everything from altitude illness, mountain medicine, expedition life, Denali and Everest to things better left unmentioned here. I apologize in advance to all of you if your partners on this seminar come home with ambitions to climb more and bigger mountains in the future. Tomorrow, sadly, is our last day. However, a morning of training will be followed by excitement to get down off the mountain, have a beer and burger and get back to our loved ones and the comforts of home. It's been a great week and we hope to be able to climb together again sometime soon. Au revoir from Camp Muir. RMI Guide Brent Okita

This morning we awoke just before 2:00am hoping to take advantage of some favorable weather on the mountain. We were rewarded with an incredible morning. Calm winds and clear skies! A full moon and stars everywhere confirmed that we had made the right call to climb. Leaving just a little later than we would on a regular summit climb allowed us minimal exposure to the coldest part of the night, yet still get down before it got too darned hot out. We reached the summit just before 8:00 with no wind and the sun's rays beginning to warm us up. After an hour on top we started our descent, which our team rocked. We're all back at Muir now, relaxing in the sun or catching up on some sleep in the sleeping bags, taking a well deserved rest. But the day's not over yet. This crew is still psyched to hone their mountain skills, so later on we'll be learning about anchors, belaying and anything else they are interested in. This will get us ready for our day of crevasse rescue and ice climbing tomorrow. All for now, RMI Guides Brent Okita, Jordan Cargill, JT Schmitt, Gloria Roe, and Ross Morgan

The Expedition Skills Seminar - Muir reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning around 7:30 AM. RMI Guides Brent Okita and Jordan Cargill chose to make their summit attempt today due to the nice weather. Brent reported no wind and a perfect day on the mountain. The team will return to Camp Muir and continue to their training until Friday when they will descend to Paradise. The top photos are from today's summit climb, the bottom two photos are from Tuesday's training above Camp Muir. Congratulations to the climbers!