Entries By tyler reid

Last night we slept to the sound of heavy rain, and this morning we awoke to the sight of heavy rain. We decided to let it subside before heading out on our acclimatization foray. Luckily it did, and we were able to get the blood flowing above 10,000’ with a little help from a chairlift. The clouds partially broke for a moment in time, and we were treated to our first glimpse of Mt. Elbrus. We are ready to go set up shop on its lower flanks starting tomorrow, and most excitingly put skis on our feet. Stay tuned…

RMI Guide Tyler Reid

On The Map

A van ride, an airplane ride, another van ride, and we’re in Cheget. Super smooth sailing through our travels today, ski bags and all. Yuri is the local Russian guide who will be joining us on Mt. Elbrus, and he greeted us with a warm reception at the airport in Mineralyne Vody. We’re excited to finally be in the mountains.

RMI Guide Tyler Reid

We had a great first day with our crew, stretching our legs on a city tour of Moscow. Our guide Victoria took us on a circuit of the Kremlin, Red Square and St. Basil’s Cathedral, after which we enjoyed a nice lunch at “the restaurant of many menus”. All is great with us.

RMI Guide Tyler Reid

The Four Day Summit Climb led by RMI Guide Tyler Reid tagged the Crater Rim of Mt. Rainier early this morning. Tyler reported blowing snow and strong winds from the west as they climbed into a cap.  The team spent a short time on top before starting their descent to Camp Muir.

Congratulations to today’s team!

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