Entries By tyler reid

The Mt. Rainier Summit Climb teams, led by Eric Frank and Ty Reid, reached the summit at 8:00 this morning.  It is a beautiful but chilly morning.  After spending some time on top, the teams began their descent at 9:00 a.m.

Congratulations to today’s summit climbers!

As promised, the storm hit Araucania last night. After a nice evening sunset on Villarrica, the rain came. We retreated from our camp this morning with heavy wet snowflakes falling from the sky, very happy to not be high up on Lanin. Now we are on our way to Peumayen, a beautiful lodge and termas (hot springs) outside of Pucon. This is our last night in Chile, and one to celebrate - this trip has been top notch. Great crew, great skiing conditions, a lot of great weather… Every year I’m always amazed how fast this trip goes.

Tomorrow we head for the airport and home to the US. Thanks for following along!

RMI Guide Tyler Reid and the Chile Ski Crew

With a gnarly low pressure system poised to strike our intended high camp on Lanin, in my experience the windiest mountain in the world, we decided a more prudent plan would be to focus our efforts on skiing some new terrain on Villarrica. This meant foregoing our two day attempt on Lanin (with the forecast, our odds of summiting were minuscule) so with a team consensus we decided to spend an evening camped on Villarrica instead.

Today we traversed around the mountain to the east and found a very long run down snaky lava tubes full of corn snow. We skied three runs today totaling 5800 vertical feet, and now we’re about to have dinner at our Villarrica camp. Another fun day in Chile - hoping the weather is merciful tomorrow.

RMI Guide Tyler Reid & the Chile Ski Team

Today was slated as a rest day in our itinerary, but one member of our group was psyched to forego rest in favor of another uphill skiing adventure on Villarrica - and this one resulted in standing on the summit. The weather was absolutely perfect today and the snow conditions were efficient for uphill travel, as well as great skiing.

With the nice weather and being a weekend, there were a significant number of local guided climbing groups plodding their way up the main route, but we found our own variation that made it feel like we had the mountain to ourselves. It took us 4.5 hours to the summit, and about 30 minutes to ski down. Love ski mountaineering.

RMI Guide Tyler Reid & the Chile Ski Team

This morning we headed for Villarrica to go for a ski, knowing that the forecast was probably not conducive to going to the top. We managed to hide from the wind for 3,000’ of mostly skinning, edging into frozen snow with our ski crampons. Above us, a lenticular cloud was growing over the summit. Below us, we had clear views of Lago Villarrica’s azure waters, the bustling town of Pucon on its eastern shore, and Llaima and Sollipulli in the distance.

We had a nice long run back to the van, where our driver Juan was waiting with his usual warm greeting. The weather looks better tomorrow, and we’re going to take another crack at Villarrica… stay tuned!

RMI Guide Tyler Reid and the Chile Ski Team

Llaima is a big mountain, deceivingly big - from beneath it looks like a reasonable couple hours of climbing…not so. I learned this my first time on Llaima four years ago.
Yesterday we had an adventurous day on Llaima. Sun, clouds, heat, cold, calm, wind, visibility, low vis…sticky snow, icy snow, sastrugi, soft snow, corn… some horrible skiing, and a lot of amazing skiing. We walked, we skinned, we climbed. There is an old pocket glacier that’s usually well covered in snow, but this year there were exposed crevasses, which added to the route finding challenge. At 15:30, standing on a rough, icy slope in strong wind, we decided to call it - about an hour from the summit. This was not safe snow for skiing so we down-climbed about 1,000’ before putting on our skis. The rest of the descent was super fun, and went quickly. We didn’t get to stand on top, but the group consensus was that this was an even more awesome day than summiting Lonquimay.
Today we had a nice drive to the town of Pucon, with perfectly clear skies. We were able to see all four of our volcanoes - Lonquimay, Llaima, Villarica, and Lanin. We stopped in the town of Villarica for a nice lunch and to take some photos of the mountain (Villarica) towering above the lake.

Another great couple of days in Araucania.

RMI Guide Tyler Reid & the Chile Ski Team

Yesterday we awoke to a crisp morning, with a blanket of fresh snow up high. Enough snow to stop our van in its tracks on the approach road to Lonquimay, but we didn’t mind the extra skinning. The weather was a bit stormy the top 2,000’ of the mountain, so we decided to save the summit for the next day. We still got to ski a couple long, very fun laps above massive lava fields, and later our crew went for a pre-dinner soak at the local thermas.

Today we had perfect Southern Hemisphere spring weather and were able to ski from the summit. We skinned up to about 8,500’, where we transitioned to boot crampons and threw our skis on our backs. Another 900’ of methodical climbing and we were on top.
The big news however is that Sergio, our host here in Malalcahuello, is cooking his famous Chilean asado for us tonight - something I look forward to every year.
All is great with us.

RMI Guide Tyler Reid & the Chile Ski Team

The whole group is here and today we put skis on our feet for the first time. We found some nice corn on the lower flanks of Lonquimay that made for smooth turns. Now we’re settled into our casa at the Suizandina Lodge here in Malalcahuello, next to a warm fire. The crackling of logs is interrupted by sizzling water droplets, vaporizing as they fall from our damp skins onto the hot stove. Life is good!

RMI Guide Tyler Reid & Chile Ski Team

The Four Day Summit Climb led by RMI Guide Tyler Reid reached the summit of Mt. Rainier early this morning. Tyler and team climbed above the clouds today and had clear and sunny skies.

Congratulations to today’s team!

RMI Guide Tyler Reid and the Four Day Summit Climb July 30 - 2 August reached the summit of Mt. Rainier early this morning.  The team reported cold and windy temperatures but clear skies about 8,500’.  The team will return to Camp Muir for a short break before continuing down to Paradise this afternoon.  We will look them at Rainier BaseCamp this afternoon as they celebrate their accomplishment.

Congratulations to today’s Summit Climb team!