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Categories: Expedition Dispatches Kilimanjaro
Back safe and sound!
Today we hiked the last few miles off of the mountain and are all freshly showered (thankfully) and are awaiting the feast that the Dik Dik Hotel is preparing for us. Everyone is happy to be back off the mountain and are looking forward to sleeping in beds, hot showers in the morning, cotton clothes and fresh coffee!
We have had a great last few days with the whole team getting to stand on the summit of Kilimanjaro. It was a wonderful, if maybe just a little exhausting, week full of beautiful views and amazing weather.
We'll spend the night resting here then we will be off again in the morning to enjoy the rest of this beautiful country on safari.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and a happy crew.
A patchwork of clouds hung over the Caucasus this morning, diffusing the sunlight and hiding the morning sun. The almost sullen atmosphere didn't hold us back and we eagerly broke camp and hit the trail. The clouds kept the temperatures cool and we made great time, reaching our previous day's highpoint where we cached our gear by midday.
The final 800' of climbing above the cache took us off of the well worn climber's trail below and into the continually shifting slopes of scree - small, loose rock - that makes up the glacial morraine. It is full attention walking as each step must be chosen with care to avoid slipping back down in the loose rock and we carefully picked our way upwards, soon gaining the plateau where Camp 1 resides.
Perched amongst the rocky morraine alongside the Ullmalgender Glacier, Camp 1 sits at the base of the broad sweeping slopes of ice and snow that rise up to form Elbrus' twin summits and offers stunning views of the entire north side of the mountain. Off in the other direction we can gaze out across the rolling green plateaus, occasionally cut by the small dirt road that we drove along to reach the mountain. The sun had been gradually fighting its way back throughout the morning and by the time we reached camp it was another clear afternoon, interrupted every so often by gusts of wind sweeping down off of the mountain. After a solid day of climbing we set up camp and then crawled into the tents to relax for a bit before dinner.
The team climbed strongly today, making it to camp in just over six and a half hours. We are tired but happy to be here at the glacier's edge. Tomorrow we will descend back to our cache to retrieve our gear in the morning and then spend some time in the afternoon brushing up on our glacier travel skills.
Posted by: Hannah Smith, Avery Parrinello
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Aconcagua
Elevation: 18,000'
On the road again! We said goodbye to Aconcagua Camp 1 today and hello to Camp 2. It was a beautiful morning for breaking down camp, with virtually no wind and the sun shining down on us. As we waited for the porters to come help carry some gear, we saw a furry critter scamper across the slopes above. Our guess is it was a fox. Its always exciting see wildlife. After jamming out to tunes in our respective earbuds, we arrived at camp. Camp was a lot quieter from when we left it on our carry day. Other teams moved to high camp, creating space for us. Once again we set up camp and began nesting in our new home. Summit day is just around the corner, but first we will do a carry to high camp tomorrow and rest the following day. The air is a little colder at our new camp. The zipper on our sleeping bags will go a tad higher tonight to keep in the warmth.
Happy friday everyone,
RMI Guide Hannah Smith and team
On The Map
Posted by: JJ Justman, Mike King, Steve Gately
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Aconcagua
Elevation: 9,000'
The gang is all here! It certainly has been an adventure already for half of our team. However, we are all ready to go. For the other part of the team we had a great day in Penitentes, which is a small ski area.
We had our first glance of Aconcagua as we took a 4-hour hike up to 10,000 feet. It's a beautiful view of the south face of Aconcagua. The team finished packing our duffels for the mules and we are ready to walk!
RMI Guide JJ Justman
On The Map
Hi Lew-
Look forward to hearing all about your trip. We are praying for you. Hope it is all you imagined it would be. Take care and God Bless!
John
Posted by: john walker on 1/16/2014 at 12:06 pm
Lew: Praying for a great climb for you brother! I’ll think and pray for you often. Can’t wait to see the pictures!
Mike H
Posted by: Mike Harvey on 1/16/2014 at 7:35 am
Posted by: Seth Waterfall
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Mexico
Eat until you get sleepy, sleep until you get hungry... That's been our program, pretty much, today. Zach took the record for late sleeping (10am) and Dave took the record for most cafe americanos (4 by my count). But Gerry, Brian and I were no slouches in the rest day department either.
We've just finished with dinner and while the rest day was great everyone is getting psyched for el Pico de Orizaba. Tomorrow we'll be headed up to high camp and with a bit if luck it'll be a summit for us early Saturday.
RMI Guide Seth Waterfall
Woke up to clear blue skies (over the city anyway) psyched to get up into the hills and stretch the legs a bit. I met the gang down in the hotel restaurant and wasn't shocked to find they were also revved up for getting the trip started in earnest. After a quick bite to eat, we linked up with Jaime and jumped in some taxis headed for the Teleferico. This gondola took us up high above the city onto the slopes of Rucu Pichincha, one of two sister peaks on an active volcano. Quito's sprawl actually starts to climb up the flanks of the mountain and this proximity was bad news for the city in the 90's when the volcano belched a huge quantity of ash onto the metropolis. Well, with no signs of imminent eruption the team was able to climb from the top of the gondola at just above 13,000' to the summit at right around 15,400' in about 2.5 hours! Good stuff! Being able to move well on our first foray is a great indicator of the group's overall fitness. The climb was largely hiking on decent trail, but the last several hundred feet involved some really fun 4th class rock climbing. Everyone was feeling the elevation but moving and climbing incredibly well. The whole time we climbed we were followed by an awesome dog who even made the rock moves to the summit, my guess is that he was hoping to snag a few more of Jaime's chicharrones... The team managed a quick and efficient descent, downloaded the gondola, and hopped a van back to the hotel. After hustling around town to shag a few miscellaneous gear items, I took a nice siesta and met up with everyone for another team dinner. Good times.
Tomorrow we head out of Quito and up for another training hike before starting our approach on Cotopaxi, more as it develops...
RMI Guide Billy Nugent
On The Map
Glad to hear of the good first day of climbing. We will be following updates daily. Go get em Kevin.
Posted by: walt thome on 7/3/2012 at 7:08 pm
Posted by: Brent Okita, Leon Davis, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Mt. McKinley
Elevation: 14,200'
Today the team succeeded in getting our cache all the way up to 17,200'. What an achievement! Another early start had us beating the madding crowds up the fixed ropes and allowing us to enjoy our climb on the Buttress with a peaceful solitude.
At Washburn's Thumb everyone was climbing well, but we decided to send one team on up to high camp while the rest of us conserved our strength and descended back to camp from 16,600'. After all, we had reached the highest point many of us had ever climbed to and were doing well. Our team of go-getters who went on higher even carried some of our personal caches with them so that all our cache would be together at our next and final camp. I'm still so impressed by how this team pulls together and helps each other out in times like these. It should be noted that seldom do any teams make the effort or have the strength to carry all the way up to 17,200' camp.
What we experience while climbing the terrain between the fixed ropes and 17,200' is nothing short of awesome. And for most of us this is the most exciting climbing we have ever done. Steep, exposed and beautiful. What more could we want.
Back at camp now everyone is resting well and looking forward to a real rest day. We'll sleep in and dine on smoked salmon, bagels and cream cheese. And maybe after that we'll get into something else. It will be a well deserved day of rest!
Until next time...
RMI Guides Brent, Leon and Lindsay
On The Map
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
hi dave and all…as i read your words i can just imagine the sights, the sounds, and the size of your boots..hahaha…thanks for bringing everest to me…i dream of seeing the full moon from there…hope you enjoy it…i’ll be looking at it tonite from my home in taos…best…nancy…
Posted by: nancy janosko on 4/16/2011 at 4:03 pm
Fantastic updates and pictures! Thinking of you and sending as much positive energy as i can from 1,200 ft above sea level….
Posted by: Martin on 4/13/2011 at 5:22 am
Vacation in Namche was great, today it was back to business. We were out of the comfortable Camp de Base by a little after 8 AM and walking up the steep hills out of town under perfectly clear skies. A couple of turns of the trail brought the dependably spectacular view of Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam. We seemed to be out ahead of most other trekking/climbing groups and so we enjoyed a relatively quiet walk on the trail. Much of the day was spent walking in the shade of pine forests. By midday we'd reached our lunch stop at Phunkytanga (funkytown, as we all call it) and so we sat for an hour or so before beginning the big hill up to Thyangboche Monastery. We took just an hour to switchback our way up 1,600 ft of vertical. The work was made a little easier by the cloud cover that had moved in and some gentle breezes which kept us cool. We enjoyed the view of the great castle-like Monastery on top of the hill, but we didn't stay up there long with weather obviously moving in. We hopped five hundred feet down the other side of the hill through thick Rhododendron forests to Deboche and our teahouse for the night.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
On The Map
Way to Go “Dan-Chuk” !! We’ll be following your progress !
Posted by: Tom Bordignon on 4/3/2013 at 2:23 pm
Danno! Hi from Toronto. Keeping an eye on your progress. Remember: heels down + ass out. Stay safe. E
Posted by: Erick on 4/3/2013 at 12:29 pm
Hello this is the RMI Mexico's Volcanoes Team checking in from La Malintzi, which is at the base of La Malinche (14,636 feet) this is the mountain we went hiking on today. For the first time that I’ve ever seen there was a fair bit of snow to hike through up top to get to the ridge. The team did very well getting through some pretty good conditions; a little bit of snow, a little bit of wind, and a little bit of rain. A real mixed bag. It was a great day and everyone did very well. We are going to grab some dinner and get ready to head toward the Altzimoni hut tomorrow which is at the base of Ixta.
That’s all from here, everyone is doing great and we will keep you posted.
RMI Guide Jake Beren
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RMI Guide Jake Beren checks in from Mexico after the team's acclimatization hike.
Doing great Pops! Wonderful to see your progress and a picture of you! Keep up the good work! We love you!
Love, Noel, Xander, and Nora
Posted by: Noel Imfeld on 1/18/2020 at 1:42 pm
Keep on Trucking Sue! You are going to nail this one!
Posted by: Russ Frederickson on 1/18/2020 at 7:25 am
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