Hey everyone, this is JJ Justman, I have an incredible news story coming to you live on the summit of Aconcagua. Hey everyone. Everyone on Team 3 made the summit of Aconcagua at 1:30 (ART) this afternoon. 100%! The team did just absolutely fantastic. Team give a shout out to everyone back at home. [Cheers from the team!] I'll tell you its always a tough day getting up here, but the rewards are great. Beautiful day climbing. We are the only ones on the summit of Aconcagua right now. There is a little bit of wind so hopefully I'm not yelling too loud, but definitely want to let you guys know that everyone did great, everyone's safe and sound. We're gonna take a few hero shots and then we're gonna start heading down hill. Thanks for following a long. We will touch base with you when we get back to high camp. Everyone's doing great. Everyone says hello to family and friends. Take care from the summit of Aconcagua.
Congratulations to Tom Shilson! Your guess of 1:23 is the winning summit time. An RMI t-shirt and hat is on its way to you!
RMI Guide JJ Justman
We all finally got off the glacier yesterday afternoon as our flight service, K2, did a wonderful job getting everyone out when conditions seemed like they might close in and shut down flights.
After a remarkable twelve days at 17,200', we are all skinny and inhaled large portions of meat, fish, and beer last night. I write this last dispatch as we are riding to the airport to return home to loved ones, and put this remarkable trip behind us.
Huge kudos go out to a very strong and committed team of climbers, and to two incredible guides, Leon Davis and Lindsay Mann, who worked so hard to make this trip safe and enjoyable, and who were there at the end when the climbing got really tough and the mountain could not have been harsher.
That's all for this year. I need to see my wife and play with the dog. And I'm sure the lawn needs mowing. Thanks for following us on this unprecedented trip. I'll be back next year for a shorter, and less exciting expedition.
RMI Guide Brent Okita
Congratulations to all of you. Amazing accomplishment!
Posted by: The Parella Family on 6/18/2012 at 5:41 am
12 Days At 17.2k has to be some kind of record! What tenacity & an epic climb.
I leave Tues for my turn—have to be honest, hope we’re not stuck up at high camp that long—but you all have paved the way.
TM
Posted by: Tim McLaughlin on 6/17/2012 at 10:26 pm
RMI's Four Day Climb teams for July 1 - 4 led by RMI Guides Pete Van Deventer & Mike King reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning at 5:40 am. Pete reported a nice day with light winds, really nice climbing conditions and a great route. The climbs spent some time in the crater enjoying the views and getting all the photo ops. They began their descent from the crater rim around 7 am. Once back at Camp Muir they will repack and continue down to Paradise to conclude their climb.
We want to give a shout out to RMI Guides Henry Coppollilo and Leif Bergstrom who spent a long day on route work earlier this week and really worked hard to improve the route. Thank you!
The May 8th Mt. McKinley Expedition led by RMI Guides Mike Walter, Pete Van Deventer and Maile Wade is now en route to Base Camp. The weather in Talkeetna was clear this morning and the team headed for the K2 Aviation hanger.
Good luck on your expedition!
The wind died down for us last night, but in its place the snow ramped up. Our hope was to try to climb one of the peaks surrounding camp, but lack of visibility and new snow avalanche concerns kept us away from big steep slopes. Instead, we opted for plan B, which was to head east out of camp and do some ice climbing on an exposed part of the main Kahiltna Glacier. It turned out to be a great venue.
Twenty minutes of walking out our front doors put us on top of a few different 60-80 foot climbs. We lowered in from the top and climbed back out. Everyone got a handful of laps in. We even put up one notable first ascent which earned the name, I Just Need a Minute to Rest(MFA), AI4, 60 feet. Due to the long approach and shifting nature of the glacier, we do not expect this route to become a classic. That’s a real shame, because it got five stars in our book. We wrapped up the day with a bunch of macaroni and cheese with bacon, and some surprisingly deep and affirming kitchen tent talks. The only way this day could have possibly been better is if we could have seen a single thing all day, but living in a whiteout is part of being in the Alaska Range.
Tonight looks to be another snowy one, so we’ll see what we can get done tomorrow. At some point we’ll need to start working our way back towards base camp. As always, everyone sends their best and we’ll check in tomorrow.
RMI Guide Lindsay Mann recently sat down with the crew at MTNmeister, a five day-a-week podcast that that explores the training, stamina, strength, and psychology of outdoor mountain athletes. Below is an excerpt from Lindsay’s interview where she discusses some perspectives on training for Mt. Rainier:
MTNmeister: Talk a little bit about the types of preparation you should be doing with types of mountains like Mt. Rainier…obviously it can just get scaled up from there, there are a lot of people who do larger Himalayan peaks actually train on Mt. Rainier so that would be a good place to start. Where would that training start?
Lindsay Mann: I definitely recognize as [a] guide that my lifestyle revolves around being in the mountains and that’s not the reality for all of the people that we climb with. Though, I think it’s important for people that do have a more typical lifestyle is getting in some endurance training. Obviously running is great, [really] any type of endurance [training]. Also, training with a pack. I climbed with my dad and he had to be in New York City a couple of weeks before coming out to Rainier so he climbed as many stairs as he could carrying a 40 pound pack. He just filled a bunch of water jugs and put them in his pack.
I think that is an important part of that too, if that’s how you do end up training (doing some sort of stairs) is [remembering] to train for the way downhill. So, mentally think about getting to the top, but people forget that they also have to get off of the mountain. I think that for us as guides, the number one thing is getting back home safely. Remembering that training downhill, both mentally and physically, is an important part of the training.
I think that switching it up too, endurance stuff, having a strong core, being creative about your training is very important.
MM: The downhill part that you mentioned, how are you normally descending the mountains?
LM: We go down the same route typically that we go and I think it’s just [remembering to use] a lot of the efficiency techniques that we teach on the way up, like the rest step which I’m sure many people have heard of…
MM: Would you explain the rest step?
LM: The rest step is a stance where you have your lower leg straight and your upper leg is bent so all of your body weight is resting on your skeletal system instead of on your muscles. And then just a quick step to that next rest stance so that once again all of your weight is on that lower leg resting more on your skeletal system. It’s a nice small step so that you are saving as much energy as you can on the way up and getting a little bit of a rest with each step.
MM: So you are putting more pressure on your skeletal system and saving your muscles for the endurance basically?
LM: Yeah, essentially saving your muscles for the way down. On the way down you don’t want to lock out your leg - you just can’t do it. It’s a lot harder just to walk down.
MM: You mentioned that your father was training by climbing up and down stairs and he had his backpack full of water, how do climbers know that the training is going to be appropriate for the type of trip they are going to do because they probably have never been to that location, unless it’s you as a guide who has gone there fifty times so you know exactly what it’s like. Do you recommend a person that is going to go up a mountain like Rainier to work with a guiding company like you on the training aspect too? Or is it just looking on the internet, following some other sorts of guidelines?
LM: We actually have a specific training and fitness page and there, there are a lot of good training tips. There are a variety of training tips, for people that have a more “regular” lifestyle, like a nine-to-five job. Also, interspersed in there is some of the training that we guides do. That’s one of the best tools that our climbers can use. My dad actually, after he was training, wrote a blog piece on there about the training that he did. He spent a lot of time training in New Hampshire, so he [describes] some hikes that he did that he felt prepared him adequately for Mt. Rainier in his progression.
Listen to the entire podcast and see more of MTNMeister’s episodes at mtnmeister.com.
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Lindsay Mann is a lead guide with RMI Expeditions and has guided and climbed around the world, including a recent all women's ski mountaineering trip to Alaska's Wrangell St. Elias. Learn more about the trip by listening to the full interview.
Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!
The last guided climb of the Denali 2012 season is done and down. Safe. But, without a summit, which happens sometimes. We got together in Talkeetna way back at the end of June—eight climbers and four guides—and we talked strategy and packed gear and we were issued permits. And, since the weather was a little sloppy, we didn’t fly immediately. Instead, we ate some more and drank some more and talked a bit more strategy. But on the 29th of June, we did get to fly into the Alaska Range and of course it was worth the wait.
As is always the case in late season, we’d been concerned as to how well put-together the lower glacier might be, but a few minutes flight over the Kahiltna in a de Havilland Otter convinced us it had been a good year for snow. Once on the ground (7,200 feet on the Southest Fork of the Kahiltna) we reviewed glacier travel techniques and waited for the middle of the night so as to allow the glacier surface to freeze solid. It did just that and we moved out early the next morning. We made pretty decent progress those first days… camp at 7,800 feet, move to 9,500 feet, migrate on up to 11,000 feet. As always, we started doing “carries” at 11,000 feet… climbing high and sleeping low so as to let our bodies catch up to the altitude. The gang was healthy and doing great and the weather was workable… if not stable. It was snowy and cloudy somewhere each and every day… just not exactly on top of us, and so we were able to make good use of the days.
The mountain got a lot more interesting as we left the valleys and ventured up onto the ridges on our move to Genet Basin at 14,200 feet. We “caught up” to about a dozen guide parties from other companies there and everybody was still optimistic about climbing high and making the top. We’d been on the mountain for a week at that point. But it started snowing. And then it seriously started snowing. Teams began to run out of food and fuel and quit the mountain. Then it snowed about two feet in 24 hours and we had an avalanche problem. The problem was that we believed there was instability on the steep slopes we needed to climb up in order to make any progress and there was no solution but to wait for stability. Which didn’t come.
We needed hot, sunny days to settle the problem and instead we got day after day of a little more cloud, snow and wind. Teams quit and descended… one after another. Finally, we teamed up with the last two guided parties on the hill to bust trail and evaluate hazard and perhaps find a way to the “fixed ropes” leading to the crest of the West Buttress. The mission took all day and required some dicey belays across “whumping” snow, but it resulted in a workable and safe track to the ropes… we were back in business. Until it snowed that night and the next morning.
Back at square one with a new hazard and no track. The other guided teams quit the mountain that day and we stayed another two days in a last attempt at getting some sort of good luck. But that didn’t come, just more snow and more clouds and more predictions for snow and clouds. We spent about 12 days at 14,200 feet and then we turned our backs on the summit and started busting trail down through the powder. Things got easier as we got lower on the mountain and we were at the SE Fork again by morning of our 19th day on the hill. And the weather cleared magnificently then… allowing a view of the summit we hadn’t reached, but also making the flight off possible.
Showers and dinners and drinks and beds in Talkeetna were pretty good, even without a summit. We’ll get it next time.
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Hello from Arusha,
We are safely off the mountain and back at the Dik Dik hotel. The team did great yesterday and everybody in the group made it to 19,340', Uhuru Peak. The day started at 11:45 pm and we were walking out of camp by 1:00 am. It was a solid six hours of climbing to reach Stella Point, and at 8:15 am we were standing on the Roof of Africa. Our timing was perfect and we pretty much had the summit to ourselves, a rarity on Kilimanjaro. The Park Service recently replaced the old summit sign with a new larger green and yellow sign. Consensus amongst most climbers is that they like the old sign better, but either way, it marks the spot of the highest free-standing mountain in the world. We took a bunch of summit photos, and then we started our descent back to high camp.
This summit day was a little tougher than the usual. What started out as some light winds, soon turned into a solid 30 mph wind by the time we reached 17,000'. As the eastern horizon turned orange as the sun began to rise, the winds picked up to 40 mph. We slowly climbed onward, but it was soon becoming apparent that we might not even make the summit today. We added our shells, covered up our faces, and decided to keep going for another stretch. An hour passed and without any relief from the wind. Without stopping, we climbed for another hour and fortunately, the winds lessened as we approached the crater rim. By now it was looking a little more optimistic that we would reach the top despite the winds. We were cold and tired, but with the summit in view, we added our down parkas, and made it the last hour to Uhuru peak.
We quickly descended back to HighCamp and were greeted by congratulations and a table loaded with fresh fruit and french toast. Re-fueled and re-packed, we headed down to Mweka Camp for the night. This morning we completed the trek down to the Mweka gate and then back to the Dik Dik Hotel.
Now we get to put our climbing gear away and focus on the next part of our adventure - 4 days on safari. First up, Lake Manyara National Park.
RMI Guide Jeff Martin & Team Simba Sita
The Four Day Summit Climb Teams Led by RMI Guides Brent Okita and Walter Hailes called as they reached the Summit of Mt. Rainier at 6:59am this morning. The teams have clear weather with light winds, but cold temperatures. They spent some time on the summit before starting their descent back to Camp Muir.
Congratulations to today's teams!
RMI Guide JJ Justman's team was awarded with a beautiful day of climbing up to Camp Muir. The team is keeping their fingers crossed for good weather tomorrow morning!
What an awesome journey you have just completed. Walking by the full moon in the wee hours of the day to stand on top of the world must have been exhilarating and inspiring. Your hard work was admirable as you put your energy into reaching your goals. I bow gently in respect for all of you. Now…What’s next?
Today we started our day at 6:30 am refreshed after a much needed nights sleep. We had breakfast, then hit the trail one last time. It took just under three hours to reach the park gate where the team had lunch and said our final goodbyes to our amazing crew that took such great care of us on the mountain. We finished the little celebration by handing out their well deserved tips and then hopped aboard our awaiting bus for the ride back to the lodge. Finally we are all safe and sound, cleaner, and smelling fresh after an exciting seven day journey up and down Kilimanjaro.
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Congratulations Todd & Big Jim. Can’t wait to hear about the trip and see the pictures! Be safe.
Posted by: Aaron on 1/18/2013 at 8:29 am
YEAH for Jim and Todd. You guys are awesome. Good job. Jana/mOm and Scott/Dad
Posted by: Jana on 1/17/2013 at 5:25 pm
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