Our acclimatization and preparation are nearly finished. True to the forecasts, the jet stream is back in the Everest region. We could hear it roaring against the high summits last night from our advanced basecamp. There was some worry for Chad, Casey, Rob and Scott up at Camp Three on the Lhotse Face, but they called in at 5 AM to say that the night had been tolerable, with just occasional strong gusts playing through. Michael, Leif and myself left ABC for BC just as the Camp Three team began descending toward ABC. Spindrift avalanches fell continually off of Nuptse as we made our way down the Western Cwm. The Khumbu Icefall offered its normal challenges, except that there were hardly any people to pass or wait for at the ladder crossings. Like ABC and BC, the Icefall was deserted. Most Sherpa teams are resting or down-valley, most western climbers are taking it easy elsewhere and waiting for a "weather window". It was good for us to rejoin Mark Tucker and Seth Waterfall at Basecamp and to be back to Kumar's fine cooking. Our Sherpa team finished their carries to the South Col today, all will be in Basecamp as of tomorrow. We'll rest up, wash up, fatten up and begin looking at weather forecasts.
Welcome back to another fine edition of the Denali blog! Today we awoke to somewhat stormy conditions so we hit the snooze and waited an hour for the weather to improve. Once the sky was looking happy we snarfed breakfast and took off towards the 13k cache garden. The first obstacle was the intimidating hill directly out of 11,000' Camp known as Motorcycle Hill, which was no problem as the team zoomed up it. We then turned the corner and surmounted the famous Squirrel Hill (less long and steep but with more exposure). Next we galloped across the long but flat feature known as the Polo Field! We took our last break at the edge of the infamous Windy Corner, which happened to be windless today! Finally after another hour of walking we were at the cache garden. Luck would have it that we found an empty cache hole! We tossed our excess supplies in it, covered it up and turned down hill. In the blink of an eye we were back at 11,000' Camp relaxing till dinner time. Tomorrow should the good weather continue to hold we’ll move to 14,000' camp!
Hello! Huascaran team checking from Camp 1. We left Moraine Camp this morning, and after an hour of steep climbing over the naked granite slabs that the receding ice is leaving uncovered, we ventured another 1,000ft of elevation up glacier.
Seeking camp was tricky, as there's no flat areas, and there's not much snow either to make them at will; digging into the glacial ice at 17,200ft is no fun.
We're cooking dinner now, and soon we will be horizontal, as we're planning on going up early to Camp 2.
Stay tuned for more,
RMI Guide Elías de Andres Martos and team
Hey, this is Dave Hahn calling from Mount Everest. We're still doing voice dispatches. We don't have internet connectivity yet. There is hope that we'll have it in the next couple of days if they fix the cell tower down valley.
Things are going well up here. Our Sherpa team and our guide team went through the Icefall yesterday. Some of the first to go through the Khumbu Icefall for this season. We went to Camp 1 and came back down yesterday morning. All was well. Today the climbing team, went to Pumori Camp 1. Pumori is one of the beautiful mountains around base camp. Of course we didn't go for the summit of that; it would be pretty technical. But going up to Camp 1 was good exercise and got us up to some altitude. It wasn't the best day for being out in the hills. It was kind of snowy and gray but we made a good outing out of it. And then had an easy afternoon back here at base camp, so everything's going well. The base camp is filling up. Lots of teams coming in now. So it's getting a little bit more like regular Everest season by now. All for today. We'll keep in touch.
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Dave Hahn calls in after first time this season through the Khumbu Icefall.
The American Lung Association's Climb for Clean Air led by RMI Guide Win Whittaker and the Four Day Summit Climb led by RMI Guide Mike Uchal were unable to reach the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning. The teams decided to call 12,500 ft. their high point today due to high winds and low visibility. The teams descended back to Camp Muir for some extra rest. Later this morning the teams will pack up and make their descent back to Paradise. We look forward to seeing them back in Ashford later today.
Still at 14,200', I'm afraid. There was a cloud cap sitting on Denali at 7:45 this morning when we started checking weather. The cap meant snow and wind were working over the camp at 17,200' and so we weren't anxious to head that way without some improvement. That cap dropped lower as we ate breakfast and eventually it mingled with some clouds from below to put us in the soup. By midday it was snowing and we had to write off our chances for going high on this day. On the bright side, our team members that were suffering from minor colds yesterday had kicked those ailments by today... Vitamin C and bedrest. The gang put on climbing gear and walked up the first hill over camp, despite the steadily falling snow, just to get some exercise and some time out of the tents. Our forecasts call for more snow, unfortunately, so we had to do a bit of contingency juggling of supplies today. As we mentioned a few days back, we can't afford to be separated from our cache at 16 by avalanche conditions as our food supply at 14 Camp dwindles. This afternoon three of the guides broke trail up to the fixed lines and then ascended to 16,200' to retrieve the cache. There was plenty of recent snow to plod through and there were scars and debris piles from a few avalanches, but today things were stable enough and the mission was a success. The entire team greeted the cache raiders enthusiastically upon their return at dinner-time. We'd certainly hoped to use the cached supplies for our summit bid... and we cling to that hope. But now we have that food and fuel safely within our grasp should we need to retreat instead. The team is upbeat and optimistic... and realistic. We know we need the weather to improve in the next few days, defying the forecasts.
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
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!
Today saw pretty much constant snow all day long. Fortunately, the winds have remained calm and our crew was able to back-carry today despite the precipitation and stay right on schedule. We are now sitting pretty at 14,200' with all of our provisions and fuel. The weather is supposed to remain a little bit squirrelly through tomorrow which will coincide nicely with a well-deserved rest day. We spent most of the afternoon after the back-carry chilling in the posh and sport eating. Good times. The crew is in good spirits and pumped for the climbing ahead!
RMI Guide Billy Nugent
Hope your rest day was filled with sleep, laughs, and food. Stay well, think of you all the time and each step you take gets you closer and closer. Roger Hector sends his best and is so darn proud of YOU Elizabeth.As always hugs and love. Mom & Dad
Posted by: Maureen Bartron on 5/27/2012 at 9:34 am
just FYI for those at home—you know that these aren’t specifically photos from this trip or this team. the guides only have sat phones, not an internet connection!
these are just generic pictures of the sections they are currently on…
RMI Guide Jeff Martin called from Mweka Camp (10,000') after the team's summit day.
The entire team reached the summit of Kilimanjaro today in great style. They left Barafu Camp after midnight with their headlamps lighting the way and reached the "Roof of Africa" as the day broke over Tanzania. After a quick celebration on top the team began their descent back to high camp where they were greeted with drinks and breakfast. They continued down to Mweka Camp and the thick air of 10,000' tired but in great spirits.
Congratulations to the team!
Lam Babu and our all-star Sherpa team were walking out of Basecamp by 4 this morning, bound for Advanced Basecamp (ABC). Their plan is to use the days ahead to establish Camp III on the Lhotse Face and to begin carries to the South Col. It is a good plan and works well with the climbing team intention to head up for a last "practice" rotation on the hill, sleeping as high as Camp III.
We were going for that last difficult push starting tomorrow, but have now reconsidered. A cough has taken precedence, as coughs sometimes do in the month of May on Mount Everest. We've worked with this particular cough for weeks already and have no fondness for it. The judgement call has come down to: sleep at 24,000 ft, gaining valuable experience in a tough environment while coming down in time for a last rest before the summit bid... Or get healthy and banish the cough before trying for the top.
Get Healthy won out.
We'll stay down while the Sherpa team is up this time (they'll be back to BC in a few days). We'll put a priority on getting the climbing team strong and we'll contend with a longer-than-expected rest while carefully examining weather reports... On the lookout for a suitable "window" between the Jetstream and the Monsoon.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Love this Denali blog- keep them coming - entertaining, insightful and much appreciated! Keep up your great work team - we are all pulling for you!
Posted by: Kim on 6/8/2022 at 1:06 pm
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