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Sunday, June 8, 2025 - 1:15 pm PT

6/7/25 - Dustin, Lacie, and Will's Team

Another day well spent in the most awe inspring, humbling terrain I've ever seen. Our team is in the groove and we are making moves in our bid to climb as high as this mountain will allow. Our goal today-- climb to 13,500' from 11 Camp to cache food and supplies for later in our expedition. After debating way too long about what snacks to keep in camp and what to cache (pro tip... do your packing the night before so you aren't the slow poke in the morning like me) we set out for the climb donning our technical gear and crampons up Motorcycle Hill towards our cache objective just past Windy Corner. While the change to crampons from snowshoes was a welcome one, it means we are entering more consequential terrain and great care must go into each and every step. Today we got our first taste of the sharp side of the mountain. While the weather started out nice we soon found out where Windy Corner gets it's name from. As we navigated the labyrinth of crevasses and "holes" we were met with strong winds, blowing snow, and the most raw conditions mother nature has thrown at us yet. Though brutal at times we achieved our objective and morale is high. I won't name names but one of us even brought our snacks up and back down again just to get a little more workout in! This place is unforgiving but we are all learning and growing together as a team. Tomorrow we will enjoy a well deserved rest day before continuing our journey. Oh, and.... HI MUM, LOVE YOU!

RMI Climber Ben

Monday, June 2, 2025 - 11:25 pm PT

We woke up to the muffled sound of snowfall on our tents. Once we made our way out of the tents, it was obvious that a challenging morning would be ahead of us. Seeing if weather or visibility would improve enough to break trail back uphill, past our cache, and to 11,000' Camp. After wandering around camp, chatting with all the other guide teams and sipping a cup of coffee. We began breakfast, a mellow morning of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and fig bars. As we ate, we waited to see if weather improved, and waited, and waited some more. Sadly weather did not improve, snowfall just became more heavy and the winds began to increase. Around 10A we officially made the call that it would be a weather day. So everyone made their way into the tents and hunkered down. Movies were watched, books were read, and world problems were solved. Finally around 7P we all came back to share dinner. World famous jambalaya chef'd up by Hannah, and made a game plan to hopefully move tomorrow.

Fingers crossed.

RMI Guide Nikki Champion

On The Map

Monday, June 2, 2025 - 11:07 pm PT

We slept soundly last night despite strong winds and snow thanks to the fortress our team built. After breakfast, we discussed the intense stormy weather we are currently experiencing and the forecast that has no adequate weather windows in site. This lead our team to the tough decision that we need to start heading down the mountain. The team took this in stride as they have taken everything throughout our program. With any luck we will start our journey down the mountain tomorrow picking up caches and shaking hands with other RMI teams along the way. Once back at Basecamp we will wait patiently for our brilliant pilots at K2 to come whisk us away and take us back to Talkeetna!

RMI Guide Jackson Breen

Wednesday, May 28, 2025 - 7:27 pm PT

We’ve officially made it to Talkeetna! After a long travel day yesterday for most of the team, we all finally met up at the Anchorage airport and started our journey north. A few hours (and some great scenery) later, we rolled into Talkeetna, dropped our gear at K2, and made a beeline for Denali BrewPub. Over burgers and beers, we got to know each other a bit better—swapping stories and sharing what brought each of us to Denali this season.

This morning kicked off our first full day together, and it was a busy one. We started with a deep dive into the packing list, making sure everyone is dialed for the climb ahead. Mid-morning, we took a short walk over to the National Park Service office for our official briefing. We were lucky to have fellow RMI guide Alan Davis—who’s also working for the Park this season—lead our session. Afterward, it was back to the hangar for final packing, sorting group gear, and manifesting everything to get ready for tomorrow’s flight.

The team is looking strong, stoked, and ready to get this expedition rolling. We’re hoping for good weather and an early flight into the Alaska Range tomorrow so we can hit the ground running. Stay tuned!

RMI Guide Nikki Champion

Sunday, June 8, 2025 - 9:55 am PT

Holy cow the team crushed it today. Woke up to lightly cloudy skies, but visibility.  We threw any remaining items to be cached into our packs, ate a quick breakfast of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and just as the sun was hitting camp we began walking up Motorcycle Hill. After a quick break on top of Motorcycle Hill (where the guides applied glitter to celebrate my birthday), we made our way up the steep Squirrel Hill, and across the Polo Fields toward the base of Windy Corner. As we made our way across the Polo Field the snow lightly began to fall and winds were picking up. As we climbed towards Windy Corner, winds were gusting and visibility was decreasing. Teams made a strong push around Windy Corner, through the broke part of the glacier, past 13,500' and all the way to 14 Camp.

At 14,000' Camp we took a nice long break, dug a cache hole, threw on more layers to weather the storm and left all our gear to return to in a few days. Layers on, we made our way back now in moderate snowfall, strong winds, and poor visibility. The team put their head down and made it back to camp in good time. After the long, and impressive day we all shared some Jambalaya and cosmic brownies with candles. It was a great day, and set our team up well to move to 14,000' Camp when weather allows.

RMI Guide Nikki Champion

Monday, June 23, 2025 - 10:21 pm PT

I have this idea for an experiment. All type- A individuals are eligible for sign up. I’ll entice  them with the allure of a once in a lifetime challenge that will test their physical and mental aptitude. Maybe a tall mountain or something. Now, we’ll observe as we keep these folks in one spot, with 2 rooms, and one hall as we wait….and wait…. and wait. While they once filled their time with stair steppers, tire pulls, and long hikes. We’ll fill their time with overfilling meals, books they wish had more words, card games, and time. Lots of it.

Climbing books, movies, stories always glaze over the reality. The waiting. What most think is filled with lung searing, adrenaline pumping climbing is often times just half the tale. The part that everyone skips is the patience of it all. Expedition climbing forces you to slow down and take it one step at a time. While the climbing has you honing in on the next step, the next breath,  the next stretch. The waiting has you broadening your appreciation for the little things. A meal with good conversation, quality time with friends loved ones, a good snuggle with a pet, or… a flushing toilet and a good shower. All of it’s important in its own way and it’s why this style of climbing is like no other. We don’t do this to just have the experience of climbing a peak, but also to show us all what we have at home and appreciate those reading this blog more and more.

Last night it snowed half a foot on us and we awoke to a winter wonderland. Our first real storm day. Boots full of snow, belly’s full of salmon and bagels, and competitive tendencies satiated with games. We will continue to wait. Just like the days before. But that’s ok. I fricken love both sides of this coin. And there’s no game like the game of strategy that expedition climbing provides. When to move, when to wait, when to launch. Best game in the whole world.

So thank you to those who let us step away, to train for hours and climb for weeks. Your patience with our masochistic hobby does not go unnoticed.  Now it’s time to have our 14 Camp trivia night courtesy of my lovely wife Emily. Thanks to all the questions!!

RMI Senior Guide,

Dominic Cifelli

Tuesday, May 27, 2025 - 12:02 am PT

Day 10 of eating our way across Denali brought to you by RMIGuides.com…as we all lay in our tents in the frigid cold morning air, waiting with bated breath for the verdict go/no go for the day, are we going for a stroll up to 17,000' Camp or will we chill at camp for another day waiting for our perfect window and eating as many snacks as humanly possible? The more important thing we were all waiting to hear is “breakfast in 5”. Because snacks are definitely not enough calories obviously for this group.  These words drive us all to struggle out of our cozy sleeping bags, and put on our puffy pants and jackets, hats and boots as quickly as possible to see what delicious 5 star Yelp meal awaits us to start our day…this morning, they had me at “bacon”.  This word is special to me as I live with the most incredible vegetarian on the planet, my spouse Dr. Lauralynn Jansen, who is an amazing cook and human being, but there is no way in hell she is ever cooking bacon in our kitchen. Gotta get it when I can! Love ya babe!  We stagger out of our tents making our way to the warm cook tent like we haven’t eaten in days and get settled shoulder to shoulder and all check in on each other and on our sleep for that night, sipping a hot drink as we wait for our gourmet bagels and BACON!!

Jason apparently got a full 7 hours and was bragging just a bit. Said he was amped to get the acclimatization hike and summit attempt all knocked out today and call it good.  He may need to lay off the moxy a bit or the rest of us need to get on board and step up our game! I think the rest of us were not necessarily on the same page….as far as my sleep, the outstanding loaner inflatable mat allowed me about a good solid 15 minutes of comfort as it proceeded to slide right out from under me like it was greased up with Crisco prior to me using it.  I relished that precious 15 minutes however.  I’ll take the short stints of comfort when I can get it. 

After breakfast we decided to take a walk around the camp to stretch out the legs and do some meet and greet with other climbers which ended up being bartering for toilet paper and kielbasas (shocker) as we certainly need to make sure we do not run out of food or TP at this stage of the game. That kielbasa could potentially save our lives for sure in the long run and you know, that TP speaks for itself.  We also had a nice visit with the Park Rangers and we made our way back to camp to some yoga, stretching, pushups, 7-min abs, and some squats to get the blood pumping. Oh how I miss going for a run, but this will do for now as the energy expenditure and effort is about to go up exponentially in the next few days much to our chagrin. Welcome to the reality of why we are here. 

Some home renovations also took place today for our three musketeers tent that needed some leveling work for sure. Team effort, supervised by Task Master Juan (much less critical than previous Project Manager Ethan for sure) provided a much needed leveling upgrade to our snow flooring which will hopefully keep me from unintentionally violating tent space as I roll off my mat. We were also super pumped to see our RMI Team come in from their summit that gave us hope for our team and the effort it will take to reach the top.

Meanwhile, the cook tent was transformed into Casino Royale with Ocean’s 15 blowing up (minus Brad Pitt and George Clooney- sorry guys) as Farkle die were flying and high stakes betting was taking place for Snickers, gorp, sausage, Oreos and other high value items that we certainly don’t have enough of already.  If memory serves me correctly, Senior Juan put the smackdown on the other players and holds bragging rights until the next game fired up.  In addition, Christmas came early as Seth showed up later in the day with an additional inflatable mat for us to use so we will be living large in Musketeer Central.  A special thanks to Grace for burning the incense as it’s getting a bit ripe in these parts let’s be honest and it was lovely to the smell…We have really enjoyed this down time to enjoy each other’s company and continue to rest, hydrate and of course eat… speaking of eating, we hear the hot water brewing as our Master Chef Seth once again prepare the evening meal of Jambalaya and Oreo Cheesecake deliciousness. Shut the front door!  Thank you again to our fearless leaders Seth, Jackson and Ray.  Especially for taking care of my feet. I continue to embrace and appreciate each and every moment of this journey and look forward to what tomorrow brings to this team. 

Thanks for all of your support! It is greatly appreciated!

-RMI Climber Shannon