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In a busy world of managing work schedules, family, and training, sleep is often the first thing to suffer. As we pack more and more into our day, we try to get away with less and less sleep. While it’s difficult to manage schedules and sometimes a last minute crunch demands heading to bed late for a few nights, athletic gains from your training are a sum of your training load and your recovery from that load. This means that simply putting in the training hours and effort are not enough; you need to give your body the time and ability to recover from those efforts as well. Additionally, studies of sleep and performance have shown a significant cognitive effect from continual sleep “debt” or sleep restriction. This all leads to the conclusion that you need to hold your sleep time just as sacrosanct in your schedule as you do your training time. If you can stick to this, you will find yourself much more productive with your waking hours as well! To make sure that you are giving your body the recovery it needs from your training load, studies suggest you follow several principles:

Set a consistent sleep schedule: To get quality sleep and maximize your recovery, it’s important to stick to a consistent schedule. Try to head to bed at each night and wake up at the same time. Your body develops a rhythm to sleep, and when your schedule is altered it can make it more difficult to fall asleep, or the sleep you get to be more fitful. Similarly, try to match your sleep schedule to your circadian rhythm. If you are a night owl, embrace it. Heading to bed at 1 am, and trying to wake at 5 am for a pre-work workout is a recipe for sleep deprivation. Recognize your circadian tendencies and try to design your schedule around them to accommodate.

Create a constructive sleep environment: Light pollution and excess noise can prevent you from entering the deepest stages of sleep, in which the majority of recovery from your training load occurs. Consider using fans or white noise machines to drown out excess noise, and consider blackout curtains to create an environment for truly restorative sleep.

Disengage from your screens half an hour before bed: Try to put your screens down at least a half hour before you head to bed. That includes your phone, Ipads, kindles, and televisions. All of the electronics in our lives create stimulation that can make it difficult to fall asleep, keeping us up longer and upsetting our rhythm.

Get 8 hours of sleep: Studies show that while many of us may think that we can operate on less, 8 hours of sleep is the magic number to maximize recovery in athletes. This number creeps up a few hours for teenagers and younger children. While a single night of less sleep will probably not affect your training appreciably, consistently shorting yourself on sleep will reduce your recovery, and reduce the efficacy of your training.

Try a nap! In studies of elite athletes’ recovery, a half hour nap between 2 and 4 pm was shown to dramatically improve recovery. Furthermore, a cup of coffee consumed before that nap helped athletes to wake from it alert and ready to go. While it may not be practical for everyone’s schedule, see if you can sneak in a quick catnap; it may be the performance boost you’ve been looking for!

The Canadian Sport for Life organization has published a detailed explanation of sleep studies as they pertain to long-term athlete development. Find it here: http://canadiansportforlife.ca/sites/default/files/resources/Sleep_Recovery_Jan2013_EN_web.pdf

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Our Aconcagua team moved to High Camp. The winds stopped as if a switch had been flipped around 9:30 last night. The eerily calm night led to another calm and hot day. The summit winds were still high with snow blowing 1,000 feet into the sky but have begun to calm down, or all the snow has vacated the summit. We will get some rest, eat and hydrate before turning in for the evening. Sleep is hard to come by at 19,600'. Hoping for a successful summit day tomorrow. We'll keep you posted!

--RMI Guide Mike King and team

Hello again everyone. Just one more day to go before we reach our goal of Basecamp! Today we arrived in Gorak Shep, the original Base camp that early expeditions used. Being that this is the last stop before the normal BC it is rather small, only about 4 tea houses here. Originally we were planning on climbing Kala Patar this evening, but due to reoccurring stomach issues and clouds rolling in we have opted for a morning ascent. The standard weather is clear in the morning and clouds in the afternoons, so hopefully it will continue to be the same. Just so everyone back home knows, I have spoken to a few doctors about the issues (just mainly upset stomachs) and they have informed us that there have been many trekkers with similar symptoms this season. Everyone is still smiling, just not all day long. We are looking forward to Base Camp! RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew

On The Map

Lucky us! We had a near windless evening to celebrate the coming New Year. New Year's Day found us resolving to make it to Camp 3 in good style and we certainly did. We are slowly finishing up camp building in this rarified air and plan to rest for the remainder of the afternoon. If this weather holds for another day, we will have a great chance of making the summit mañana. Wish us some buenas suerte amigos. RMI Guide Jake Beren

On The Map

Hey RMI, this is Linden Mallory calling from high camp on Mt. McKinley, 17,200'. We just got back a little bit ago from our successful summit of Denali. We had a relatively easy descent, the winds picked up after we left the summit so it definitely got quite cold. We were bundled up in goggles and down jackets and neck gaiters and all that fun stuff, but the team did well. We motored back to camp and right now we are changing into dry socks and brewing up some hot drinks and dinner and crash out and get some rest. It's been a long day. Everybody's doing well. We had a great climb today. I'll try to get a written dispatch off tomorrow. Our plan is to head downhill. Try to make it down to at least down to 14 Camp or possibly further depending on the conditions that present themselves. Hope everyone is doing well at home. The team is very excited. Tired but excited. And we'll check in tomorrow. Take care, RMI Guide Linden Mallory

Hello all. We moved our camp up to about 9,600 ft. Temperatures were perfect for us during the walk. It just started to get hot as we pulled into camp. Everyone did great today. We built a fortress of a camp constructed with cohesive blocks of snow. We used them for walls around our camp to shield us from the wind. Light snow began falling this afternoon but we are hoping to wake up to blue skies and stable weather for our climb on Kahiltna Dome tomorrow. That's all for now. RMI Guide Jason Thompson

We've strung together a number of important milestones over these past few days. The Puja ceremony was a symbolic starting point to the climbing portion of the expedition. It seemed to go off without a hitch as we sat in warm sunshine and calm air for the morning... staring up into the Khumbu Icefall as we listened to the chanting and drums of the monks. We were lucky enough to have the docs from "Everest ER", the HRA clinic, as guests at the Puja and even a few of our good friends from the "Icefall Doctors" team. The Icefall Docs were taking a well-deserved day off from fixing the route up to Camp I. Ang Nima, who has been building climbing routes on Mount Everest since the 1970's, told me they were waiting for a new shipment of rope from down-valley anyway, so relaxing at our puja was the perfect way to pass a morning, getting a little more blessing from the gods for the dangerous and essential job they perform. We were blessed at the end of the Puja to see Mark Tucker marching into camp. Tuck is our Base Camp Manager and is well-known as the de-facto mayor of the little community that springs to life about this time each year. Tuck and I started guiding together on Mount Rainier in 1986 and have been together on many expeditions to weird parts of the world, so on a personal level I was quite happy to see my friend arrive on the scene. Tuck got to work quickly, hunkering down with Jeff Martin to coordinate logistics and inventory lists in advance of Jeff's departure. He also began immediately to scope out venues on the rough glacial moraine for golf, baseball and horseshoes... all the normal mountain-climbing related diversions. Bill was plenty happy to have another worthy games and contests opponent around... so he could get busy walloping Tuck at everything. The day after the Puja, we took the opportunity to go for a little practice session on ladders and fixed rope climbing not so far from Base Camp. Lam Babu and his crew quickly established a little jungle gym of obstacles for us to practice on and Bill, Sara and I took full advantage. Despite the fact that the weather was swinging every ten minutes between blazing sun and freezing snow-showers, we did a number of laps across canyons and up sidewalls to get the hang of steel crampons scratching on aluminum ladder rungs. Yesterday was quite a significant day for our overall team as Camp I and Camp II were established. The Icefall Docs had managed to complete the route to CI while we were practicing on our jungle gym and Lam Babu, Tshering, Dawa and Kami meant to be there in force for yesterday's "opening" of the Icefall route. If at all possible, I wanted to join our climbing Sherpas so as to survey the condition of the Icefall route and in order to have some positive input on the siting of Camp I. We woke at 4:15 AM, choked down some rice porridge and coffee (I went for the coffee, the Sherpas preferred tea) and we got walking out of camp by headlight at 5 AM. There were only a handful of Sherpas from other teams out on this morning, walking in a few inches of new overnight snow. Most of these other climbers were on a sort of homesteading land-grab... shooting up with light packs to claim favored spots at Camp I and II. This was only partly a concern of ours, since our team is relatively small and finding suitable campsites won't really be that big a deal, but none-the-less having our pick of sites is still a good thing. In contrast to the others on the route, each of our team had a decent sized load of climbing and rescue gear bound for caching at CI. Tshering, Dawa and Kami set a more aggressive pace for the day while Lam Babu stayed back with the lightly acclimated and elderly team leader (me). There were the usual number of places where I had to hold my breath and swallow my fear in order to balance along some ridiculous bridge under some preposterously leaning tower or wall of heavy and hard ice... but sure enough, the Ice Docs had found a way to the top. I came to realize why they'd needed more rope since I could see that a good section of their ladders and rope already had avalanche debris burying it in the mid-section of the route to CI. Lam Babu and I made it up into the Western Cwm and to Camp I in a little under four hours. By this point, Tshering and Dawa had determined that it was worth their effort to rope to one-another and proceed on up to Camp II (ABC). Kami, Lam Babu and I contented ourselves with marking out the perfect site at CI... off the main herd-path, out of major avalanche debris fields, and free of crevasse hazard. We secured our cached gear and got busy descending. I always find the Khumbu Icefall to be tricky and difficult, but this time I think it was a little more-so since the route was so new that it hadn't been tracked in and trouble-shot just yet. The numerous little walls that needed negotiating just had scratch marks, whereas in a week of heavy traffic, they'll develop nice bucket steps and handholds. The troubleshooting that I expect will occur results from a few hundred sets of errant feet finding all of the hollow spots along the edges (and occasionally in the middle) of the track. Yesterday, I was the troubleshooter and naturally I stuck my big size 14.5 boots a few places that I instantly regretted. Kami and Lam Babu looked back at my shrieks and groans a few times to see if I was still upright and viable. Even so, we bounced down and out of the Ice by about noon and I met Bill, Sara and Tuck on a training hike, enjoying the fine morning sunshine. By the time we were back at camp for lunch it was cloudy and snowing again. Tshering and Dawa raised our flag at ABC... 21,300 ft and I'm quite proud of that effort and of their safe descent afterward. I'm also excited that we got our Camp I gear in place at 19,900 ft. We enjoyed one last lunch with Jeff Martin before he headed down valley to get back to work managing things on far-off Mount Rainier. Things are humming along at Mount Everest. Today we are listening to the sounds of about a dozen Pujas taking place around the area as most of the big climbing teams are now on scene. We've been visited by a number of friends coming by to check up on us and between social calls we are taking the morning off from climbing... time for some washing up and basking in the temporary sunshine before the daily snows. Best, Dave Hahn

The thick air of Elbrus Base Camp, the same air that felt so thin a mere 8 days ago, put us into a deep slumber. With a casual breakfast in the morning we gradually packed all of our gear in preparation for the van rides out of the mountains. By midmorning we were snuggly sitting in the back of our vehicle - a Russian interpretation of a '60s VW van with 4 wheel drive. Although lacking in certain onboard amenities (cup holders, anyone?), the vehicle performed its task of getting us out of the Caucasus admirably. We returned to Kislovodsk around 4 in the afternoon and immediately jumped into the hot showers. Emerging clean and sporting a new change of clothes, we headed to dinner at a nearby cafe, mystifying the waitress with multiple orders of appetizers and entrees per person. But she rose to the challenge and brought a fantastic meal to the table, all the more enjoyable due to the 8 days on the mountain. Tomorrow we will remain in Kislovodsk, exploring the city and relaxing a bit. We are hoping to visit some of its renowned mineral baths in the afternoon before repacking all of our gear for Thursday's flight to St. Petersburg.

After starting the morning with breakfast burritos, coffee, and tea, we hiked out to the glacier to review climbing skills--such as cramponing and ice axe arrest. The rest of the day is spent resting, eating and drinking, and preparing for our summit attempt tonight/tomorrow morning. The weather is looking good right now: partly cloudy skies and light wind. Cross your fingers for us that it stays that way! Everyone is feeling strong and climbing well. I will be in touch tomorrow.

This is Dave Hahn, calling from Mt. Everest. A great day for us today, our Sherpa team set up what we call a Jungle Gym, out in the glacier not far from Base Camp, a network of ladders and fixed ropes for us to practice on. We made good use of that, we went out this morning for a session for a couple hours and then this afternoon as well. It was a pretty nice day here at Base Camp. We are excited because Mark Tucker made his return, our Base Camp Manager is home. Everybody is doing really well we still basically have Base Camp to ourselves. Most of the teams will be rolling in in the next few days, next week but today it was still pretty quiet and we were enjoying it. All is good here and we will let you know what goes on tomorrow. RMI Guide Dave Hahn

On The Map