Most Popular Entries

The Expedition Skills Seminar Team stood on the summit of Mount Rainier yesterday morning. Over the past week, the team has been honing their expedition mountaineering skills through glacier travel, route finding, and crevasse rescue training on the slopes of the Emmons Glacier. Their dedication and hard work helped them develop into a strong, capable, and successful team. This morning, they packed up camp and began their descent. They are expected to return to Ashford Basecamp this afternoon.

Congratulations Team! 

Tuesday, May 26th 11am PST

An early dinner with early bedtime made for an early morning start out of Camp 1. Our team woke up at 5 am and were headed back up ski hill by 7. We got our first glimpse of the top of Denali on our way out of camp.

In our current game of cache or carry - today was a carry day. We set out with sights set on 11 camp. We hauled sleds, did maths in our heads, and considered would you rather have constantly rotating or eternally damp socks. Our bluebird day turned cloudy, eventually giving way to snow and wind at 9500 feet.

We were happy to arrive at camp at 11,200 ft and after a quick group effort our camp was up and functioning again. We tucked ourselves in our cook tent with hot tea out of the wind and snow, and entertained alternative uses for tea bags. Now waiting for our impending delicious dinner from our amazing guides, we look forward to tomorrow and what the weather will have in store for us. I leave you with a quote I often utter as I hoist my body up this cold mountain. As a wise Mexican chihuahua once said “With my bean and my sombrero, the candy is never far away”

-RMI Climber Julia (aka Juls/Jube)
 PS - Shout out to my mom and dad, who are currently watching my dog so I can run around Alaska for 4 weeks, my family/my best friends/my girls at Pennsy following along/my child dog Coco.
 

The five-day climb led by RMI guide Ray Holt used their second night at Camp Muir to attempt to summit Mt Rainier. Due to high winds, they turned around at the top of the Disappointment Cleaver. 

Great effort everyone!

5/24 - Today's haiku brought to you by Candice.

Signs of clearing skies

Brings us hope as days count down

May the weather hold.

While we are geared up to move to 14 camp, we sadly woke to another day of poor visibility and light snowfall. We used the down day to prepare camp to move tomorrow, but most of the day was filled with time in the chaos cantina. The favorite Mexican joint around 11 Camp. Where we enjoyed breakfast burritos in the morning, and beef and bean burritos for dinner. We wrapped the evening up to the sweet melody of Gasolina (let's go Daddy Yankee), and some friendly tortilla wars with our neighboring camps. Let's hope for tomorrow.

RMI Guide Nikki Champion & Team

Monday, May 18, 2026 - 6:13 pm PT

Yesterday took the team to several unique sights around the south end of La Paz, all while breathing the thin air and preparing our bodies for the high peaks that lie ahead. First up was Valle de la Luna, a bizarre collection of rain-eroded rock towers in the middle of the suburbs not far from our hotel. From there we drove uphill a few minutes before hiking to Muela del Diablo, a striking rock tower overlooking the city. After taking some time to enjoy the views it was on to a longer hike to a stunning viewpoint a little above 13000', where we enjoyed a picnic lunch and made a traditional Bolivian offering to honor the mountains we came here to climb. Yesterday in the Witch's Market we acquired an offering pallet of sorts, made up of various chalk and sugar pieces each inscribed with imagery asking for blessings of various parts of our travels, topped with a generous helping of coca leaves. Javier, our local liaison and logistics coordinator, explained the significance of each part of the offering before setting fire to it all on the mountain top where we found ourselves enjoying lunch, complete with great views of Huayna Potosi to the north and Illimani to the south. This important ritual complete, it was on to another short hike past more stunning columns of eroded conglomerate, these ones several hundreds of feet high!

Today we ventured a little higher with an acclimatization hike near Cerro Saturno on the northeastern edge of the city. It was a lunar-like landscape of near-black sand, loose shale and the occasional picturesque lagoon. We topped out at just over 16000', a new altitude record for some in the group! We returned to the hotel by mid-afternoon to organize and pack our gear for the coming week of climbing. After a leisurely few days of acclimatization, it is finally time to head to the big mountains! We're making an early start for Rinconada tomorrow, and will spend the next several days climbing in the Condoriri group. The team is feeling strong, psyched and ready to get up high! 

RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo

The Four-Day climb led by RMI guides Jackson Breen and George Hedreen reached the summit of Mt Rainier this morning around 5:45am. They reported beautiful weather and a lovely morning to stand on top. They are currently on their descent back to Camp Muir and will return to Ashford this afternoon. 

Great work up there!

A thunder and lightning storm rolled through the area yesterday evening which kept the Four Day Climb July 20 - 23 from making their summit attempt.  The teams led by RMI Guides Mike Bennett and Sam Hoffman were able to ascend to Ingraham Flats around 8 am to see a bit of the route and use their glacier travel skills.  They will descend from Camp Muir later this morning.

Sun 6/7/2026 11:40 AM

Dear reader, pardon the lateness of now-yesterday’s dispatch, but after our ascent to 14k camp, we awoke covered in frost yesterday, only to have our rest day cruelly ripped away from us. Please, sir, but a small helping of hot water for Lizzie’s single-origin Kenyan pour-over coffee? No. Instead, an unspecified group update.

Much to our dismay, our guide’s (*sigh*) relentlessly unimpeachable decision-making meant that in the face of oncoming weather, we would expedite a run to 16k feet to acclimatize and cache food for a later summit bid.

We therefore enjoyed a hasty but quite respectable breakfast of rehydrated eggs and hash browns. (What would it take for *you* to ingest a liter of uncooked egg slurry? Comment below!) As the sun rose from behind the mountain and conditions transitioned in the span of two minutes from bitter cold to oppressive heat, we roped up and set to work.

Everyone climbed admirably. With good communication and low-moderate lingering resentment, we ascended the fixed lines smoothly, cached our food, and enjoyed sweeping views of Mount Hunter (somehow now below us!) and Mount Foraker (watch out, you’re next).

In light of this progress, we now face one of the most strenuous and imposing segments of the climb: three to four rest days while the weather passes with no internet and long since exhausted even-passably-from-a-distance-clean-ish clothes.

But like ice to so many mountains, we cling to optimism. As long as we don’t lose essential gear to our guides in games of chess, and as long as Pattie has enough puzzles and Matt continues to summon answers like two six-letter countries that start with “r” and end with “a,” prospects for the next segment—like the subarctic sunlight at 2 AM—are bright.

To all 13,000 readers of this blog, we send our love and best wishes and eagerly await seeing you on the other side of the mountain.

��������������️������
- Climber Ricky

The Expedition Skills Seminar - Emmons led by RMI Guide Leif Bergstrom reached the summit of Mt. Rainier today via the Emmons Glacier.  The team bumped up to Camp Schurman yesterday putting their glacier travel, ice ace arrest and cramponing skills they learned over the last few days to the test. Once back to Camp Schurman, they will enjoy the afternoon and evening.  Tomorrow they will break camp and descend to the trailhead, returning to Ashford tomorrow afternoon.

Congratulations to our first Emmons Seminar team!

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Today started early with breakfast sandwiches and coffee from Conscious Coffee under rainy skies. With an increase in precipitation throughout the day, we focused our attention on a thorough gear check, a refresher on knots and hitches and a weigh in with all our kit at the K2 Aviation hanger. To cap off our skills day, we enjoyed a great meal at Latitude 62. Tomorrow, we hope to fly and are going to bed dreaming of sunny skies and low wind!

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Today we met the team in Anchorage and drove to Talkeetna, excited for the next ten days of climbing together. After laying out our gear in the K2 Aviation hangar, we had a wonderful dinner at Mountain High Pizza. Glasses were clinked and food was eaten. Tomorrow, we plan to organize, sort and pack our gear in the morning before a "hopefully" quick takeoff out of Talkeetna and onto the Ruth Glacier.