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The Four Day Climb teams led by Seth Burns and Jackson Breen reached a high point of 12,300 feet on Disappointment Cleaver before making the decision to turn around. Despite the clear skies above, recent storm snow, challenging route conditions, and difficult travel all contributed to the call to stop their ascent short of the summit.

Well done to the team for their hard work!

Our thoughts are with our friends at Alpine Ascents and with the family and relatives of the guides and climbers involved in the climbing accident on Mt. Rainier. The climbing community is tightly knit and we feel the loss deeply. Our sincerest thoughts and prayers go out to all of those involved. Please join the climbing community for a memorial service for Eitan Green and Mathew Hegeman: Saturday, June 21, 2014 | 3 - 5 pm The Mountaineers | 7700 Sandy Point Way NE | Seattle, WA 98115 - The RMI Team

Fit to Climb: Week 9 Schedule

DAY	WORKOUT	TOTAL TIME	DIFFICULTY
1	Rainier Dozen / Easy Hiking ( 30 min)	42 min.	Medium
2	Rainier Dozen / High Intensity Stair Interval Training (60 min)	72 min.	Very Hard
3	Rainier Dozen / Rest	12 min.	Recovery
4	Strength Circuit Training x 4	54 min.	Hard
5	Rainier Dozen / Rest	12 min.	Recovery
6	Rainier Dozen / Cross Training	60 min.	Medium
7	Hike (5 hrs, 15lbs of pack weight)	300 min.	Medium
	Total	9 hrs 12 mins

BRIEFING This is a big week! This week’s hike will be the longest yet and will mark the end of the foundation phase of your training. After last week's fitness test, Day 6 reverts back to cross training this week. DESCRIPTIONS OF WORKOUTS Day 1: Rainier Dozen + Easy Hiking (30 Minutes) Today’s hike is a recovery workout and you can always substitute it with a different activity, such as running, biking or swimming. The important thing is to move at a moderate pace for 30 to 45 minutes. The pace can be conversational, and you do not need to be dripping with sweat at the end of the workout. Day 2: Rainier Dozen + Stair Interval Training (60 Minutes) After the Rainier Dozen, warm up for about 10 minutes, and then climb up and down a set of stairs, at a consistent pace, for about 40 to 50 minutes. Cool down with some stretching. You don’t need to carry a pack on your stair interval training, the focus in this workout is on speed and intensity. Day 3: Rainier Dozen / Rest Begin your day with the Rainier Dozen. Feel free to take another 30 to 60 minutes of light exercise if you feel like it (a brisk walk is a great option). If you feel tired, today is a good opportunity be good to take a complete rest day instead. Listen to your body. Day 4: Strength Circuit Training x 4 Repeat the strength circuit training workout introduced in Week 3. After warming up, perform four sets of the following exercises: • Steam Engine • Push Up • Three Quarter Squat • Russian Twists • Lunge • Steam Engine Laying down • Mountain Climber • 8 Point Bodybuilder Spend 40 seconds performing the exercises, and take 20 seconds between exercises to rest and rotate. Take a full minute of rest between each set. Take a full minute of rest between each set. Take ten minutes to cool down by stretching after you’re done. Day 5: Rainier Dozen / Rest Begin your day with the Rainier Dozen. Feel free to take another 30 to 60 minutes of light exercise if you feel like it (a brisk walk is a great option). If you feel tired, today is a good opportunity be good to take a complete rest day instead. Listen to your body. Day 6: Rainier Dozen / Cross Training (1 Hour) Warm up with the Rainier Dozen and then spend an hour in some moderately vigorous activity as cross training (find out more about cross training here). Listen to your body, and have fun with it. Day 7: 5 Hour Hike Find a location to hike that is about 9 to 10 miles in distance and takes about 5 hours. Maintain the same weight for your pack as last week. If the weight of your pack has to increase a little bit to account for the additional time you’ll be on the trail, that’s ok too. SUMMARY How do you feel at this point of the program? Compare where you are now to week one; in what ways do you feel different as a result of the endurance, strength and skills that you’ve earned? You are on-track to being a strong member of your rope team. Individual focus, skill, coordination and a multitude of factors make up the basis of split-second judgements in the mountains but physical fitness is the foundation for your climb, and you’ve got it. With the foundation you’ve built over the past nine weeks, and with the seven weeks remaining, you’ll have what it takes to be a strong member of your climbing team. - John Colver Have a question? See the Fit To Climb FAQ for explanations of specific exercises and general pointers to help you through the Fit To Climb Program. John Colver is a longtime climber, former mountain guide, and certified personal trainer with the American Council of Exercise. Colver introduced outdoor fitness classes to athletic clubs throughout the greater Puget Sound region before creating his adventX brand. Currently, adventX leads training programs in Seattle and Colver presents clinics on outdoor fitness at companies such as Microsoft, Boeing, the American Lung Association, and REI. Colver lives in Seattle, and is working on his second book, Fit to Climb - a 16 week Mount Rainier Fitness Program.

Rain, thunder and lightning continued late into the Lukla night, but we all felt pretty confident that the dawn would bring perfect flying weather... Which it did. We were up at 5 AM and over to the craziness of Lukla International Airport by 6 AM. At around 7 or so, a twin engine prop plane came in with the right letters and numbers on its tail and we pushed our way through the crowd to catch our flight. That flight was blissfully uneventful and by 7:30 we were just another batch of tourists in Kathmandu... Rubbernecking from our van to catch whatever signs of quake damage we could see on the way to our comfortable hotel. A casual observer could easily go unaware of the tragedy unfolding in the country around us... things are quickly returning to "normal" for those with means in the capital. The hotel was jam-packed with correspondents, camera crews, diplomats and a few grubby climbers. We met a number of our guide friends -some of whom had ambitious and worthy plans to go out to remote villages to do what they could to save lives, and some of whom, just like ourselves, intended to get out of the country as soon as possible so as not to require care and feeding from an already over-stressed society. Our team passed the afternoon resting, cleaning up, exploring and reconnecting. I was lucky enough to connect with the legendary Miss Elizabeth Hawley for the team's all important post-climb interview. As expected, there wasn't much to relate in terms of climbing goals achieved... none-the-less, we chatted for a delightful -and perhaps a bit melancholy- hour over the continuing challenges of these contemporary Everest seasons. Back at the hotel, our team assembled for one final evening together, with a couple of toasts and a fine rooftop dinner. We were not even remotely cold or uncomfortable, we weren't in danger and we had a rising and beautiful full moon to entertain us. Tomorrow we'll scatter to ride a number of bigger and faster aircraft toward our own homes. Thank you for following along in this challenging season. We each feel extremely fortunate to have come unscathed through extraordinary circumstances. To this point, we've had the convenience and satisfaction of placing cash directly into the hands of those who've suffered... from this point onward, we'll try to match the generosity of those at home... Making considered contributions to responsible aid organizations benefiting all Nepalis. Best Regards, RMI Guide Dave Hahn

On Saturday, May 26th at 9:31 a.m. Nepali time the RMI 2012 Mt. Everest Expedition reached the summit! RMI Guides Dave Hahn and Melissa Arnot led the team of climbers to the summit of Mt. Everest at 29,035'. This marks the 14th summit for Dave Hahn and the 4th for Melissa Arnot. Congratulations to the team!!!

On The Map

The Five Day Climb May 4 - 8, 2023 reached the summit of Mt. Rainier yesterday afternoon led by RMI Guides Ben Ammon and Dominic Cifelli. The team had a nice day with the clouds below until they reached about 13,500', then they were enveloped by a cloud cap but were able to push through to the summit.  They did quick high fives, hugs and quickly started their descent. They returned to Camp Muir for a well deserved rest.  The team began their descent from Camp Muir at 9am.  We look forward to their return to BaseCamp this afternoon.

Congratutions to the team!

May 26th, 4:30 a.m. Nepali time: Our Sirdar Sherpa, Lam Babu, is at the South Col and relaying messages during the climb. Dave Hahn, Melissa Arnot and the team are at the Balcony! The climbing team is changing oxygen bottles, having a snack and a drink. Next stop the South Summit! Here at Everest Basecamp, the top of Pumori is just starting to catch some light. No wind. It's a beautiful morning! RMI Guide and Everest Basecamp Manager Mark Tucker

Climbing is a long and demanding endeavor, with a typical summit day on Rainier or Denali stretching for twelve to fifteen hours. Every time you take a step, your muscles require energy in the form of ATP to be able to fire. ATP is created within the muscle cells by mitochondria from two main nutrients: carbohydrates and fat.

For many years, athletes have focused on their carbohydrate intake as the key to performance. Carbohydrates provide a readily accessible and easily digestible energy source for your body, which is the reason that they are the main content in most sports foods; just look at the labels of shot blocks, Gu’s, bars, energy drinks, and the like, and you will see a heavy focus on sugar. There is a good reason for this: your body has a limited ability to digest food while exercising (digestion requires energy of its own), and carbohydrates and sugars are the easiest to digest, requiring little to be done to the glucose components before they enter the bloodstream and are carried to the cells.

The main issue with a reliance on carbohydrates is that your body has the ability to store a finite supply of glucose in the muscle cells and the liver in the form of glycogen. For trained athletes that are efficient with their energy usage, that store still only lasts for about 2 hours of sustained hard effort. If you aren’t familiar with the term “bonking,” it’s that feeling when your performance drops off a cliff; you don’t feel like you are working that hard aerobically, but you can’t possibly go any faster or harder. You’ve run through those glycogen stores and your muscles are out of fuel. Eating while you exercise can help to delay bonking, but your body can only process about 250 Kcal of sugar per hour, far less than you expend over the same period. Even though we are replenishing our sugar fuel, we dip further and further into those reserves as summit day goes on. At the same time, even the leanest among us carries over 24 hours of energy in the form of fat stores. Wouldn’t it be nice to recruit those stores while you are climbing?

Fatty acids are the most energy dense nutrients in our diet and our body stores them readily. They create more ATP per unit than sugars, and our body’s ability to store them can leave us with a huge reserve energy supply. The problem is that when fatty acids and sugars are both present, our metabolisms preference burning the sugars for energy. Julia Goedecke is a sports scientist who has been examining the influence of fat oxidation (metabolism) in endurance athletes. In examining rates of fat oxidation in athletes at different intensity levels, she found a vast difference in overall rates of fat oxidation. Some burned nearly no fat at rest, while others metabolized nearly 100% fat at rest, but while there were differences in overall rates of fat metabolism, those who metabolized more fat at rest derived more of their energy from fat at all intensity levels too. This would suggest that if we can train our metabolism to derive a greater percentage of our energy from fat, it will continue to do that as we up our intensity climbing, and we will use our sugar reserves more slowly, and hopefully avoid the dreaded “bonk!”

Now that we’ve introduced the idea of developing your fat metabolism, stay tuned next week as we get into the details about how to accomplish it.

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For more reading Alan Couzens has a number of interesting blogs on the subject. A good one to start with is Improving Fat Oxidation.

Questions? Comments? Do you have experience applying LCHF nutrition to endurance sports? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!

High Intensity Interval Training, often referred to popularly as HIIT training, have been featured in a few recent studies that concluded that a short HIIT workout was as or more effective at promoting cardiovascular health than steady state activity. The first paragraph of a recent New York Times article reads:

Think you’re too busy to work out? We have the workout for you. In minutes, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) will have you sweating, breathing hard and maximizing the health benefits of exercise without the time commitment. Best of all, it’s scientifically proven to work.

Despite the recent attention, interval training is not anything new to seasoned athletes and coaches who have understood the benefits of repetitive high intensity workouts for a long time. Many of the recent studies have focused on previously sedentary people trying to improve basic cardiovascular health, rather than on elite athletes striving towards a performance goal. With that said, we have and continue to encourage climbers to utilize interval training (by it’s nature high intensity) as part of a well-designed training program.

Interval training can accomplish a wide array of tasks and works best when the focus of a workout is clear:

Longer intervals, from 5 to 8 minutes, at 70 – 85% of max heart rate work to improve the lactate threshold, the body’s ability to metabolize and clear lactate build up from muscle cells, increasing the amount of work that the body can perform sustainably. A good example is an elite level marathon runner, who is able to sub six-minute miles for over two hours during a race. The intensity that they are working at is very high, yet the body is able to sustain it over a very prolonged period of time.

Shorter intervals, from 20 seconds to a few minutes, performed at 85 – 95% of max heart rate (very intense!) increase the body’s anaerobic threshold, it’s ability to perform work while in oxygen deficit. Think Olympic swimmer in the 50-meter butterfly: the intensity that they race at surpasses the body’s ability to clear lactic acid and to provide enough oxygen to the muscle cells for them to continue that pace for a long period of time. The race is very short, however, and for that 20-something seconds, their muscles are able to put out an immense amount of power in oxygen deficit.

It may seem as though interval training isn’t as applicable to our sport of mountaineering. We tend not to sustain the very high levels of output, but instead operate for far longer periods at moderate intensity. It is the very definition of an endurance sport. Interval training provides other physiological adaptations however that go beyond the abilities of the skeletal muscles. Interval training is shown to increase cardiac output, by increasing the size of the left ventricle, the stroke volume and the overall contractility of the heart. Increased cardiac output supplies more blood to muscle cells, delivering more oxygen and removing more waste. Additionally, interval training has been shown to increase the size and density of mitochondria in the muscle cells. Mitochondria use oxygen to convert glucose to ATP (the cells’ energy source). Both of these adaptations help endurance athletes go longer, faster and with less effort, and ultimately help us in the mountains.

Interval training is harder on your body than traditional steady state workouts and requires longer to recover from as well. Therefore, too heavy of a focus on interval training can lead to overtraining and injury. More of a good thing isn’t necessarily better. It’s important to realize that a good training plan maintains a balance of high intensity workouts and lower intensity steady state workouts.

As part of the recent HIIT hype, people have championed the fact that HIIT gets more done in less time, even as little as 10 minutes. This may be true for an average person whose goal is to improve overall cardiac health, but for athletes working towards goals in the mountains, remember that there are no short cuts. Time invested in your training will lead to a more enjoyable and successful climb.

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Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here!

Hello this is the Alpamayo climbing team and the word is we are climbing tonight. It is Wednesday. 3:00 PM local time and we decide to take a rest day today as we arrived yesterday up here. And all is well, we're pretty excited. Tony, Parker, Kenzie, and Pete are really strong, healthy, and ready to go. So we will hopefully keep you updated from the summit tomorrow sometime in the early morning and... yeah. You can probably hear our voice from the top of Alpamayo. We'll initiate soon afterwards our descent and the goal we be to actually make it to base camp but that is yet to be seen. [Broken] Hopefully we'll have good news for you. That's all for now, we're going to go to bed pretty soon here and we'll check in tomorrow. Bye. RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos