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The Five Day Climb led by RMI Guides Robby Young and Avery Parrinello climbed the Ingraham Direct route and were able to reach 11,800' before high winds forced them to turn. The team spent two days at Camp Muir on this climb and will be descending later this morining. We expect them back at Rainier Basecamp to clelebrate this afternoon.  

Congratiulations to Today's Team!

On The Map

Hello to our friends and family!

We talked about this as a team yesterday before we went to bed “the possibility exists that we could make it to the top!” But if we knew for sure then my job (as a guide) would be so boring and mountains wouldn’t be that fun for anyone to climb.

You don’t come here because you know you are going to succeed. You come to the mountains because you are open to both - success and failure.

Today some of the team stood on the summit of this beautiful and brutal mountain and some of us turned around. But each one of us was pushed in a different way and most definitely beyond limits we had previously set for ourselves. We endured strong, cold winds from start to finish, learned something about ourselves along the way and are all safely back in our tents at campo 3. I’ll call that a successful day - summit or not.

After such a tough climb, most everyone is snoozing in their tents. Going to 22,841 feet really takes it out of you.

Jack and I will wake everyone up soon for their favorite meal ever, FREEZE DRY (hopefully the last one of this trip) and then we’ll all head straight back to bed to sleep better than we’ve ever slept at 19,600 feet.

Big, big winds are moving in so we’ll get an early start tomorrow on our descent to base camp.

I’m so proud of each person on this team and the courage they had to try something so hard.

RMI Guide Jess Wedel

On The Map

On The Map

Ahh the end of a trip like this is always so bittersweet. Tired, sore, hungry we leave the trail happy and satiated with the journey, and yet we have to leave this breathtaking landscape and national park. Us, and everyone around us, will be very happy with a shower when we get back into Puerto Natales tonight. 

Our last day is one of the hardest. A long, steep ascent up the valley to see the namesake of the park, Las Torres (The Towers of Paine). It’s about 11km each way with almost 3000 ft of ascent and our ached bodies felt every bit of it. Up up up until we were treated with yet another beautiful fricken day. Just our luck. 

Waking up at 430 to pack, eat breakfast, and head up to avoid the crowds. And boy are we glad we did. I call the descent the Disney world descent due to the crowds that come into the park in order to complete the relatively accesible hike. And so we weaved in an out of folks fresh from town and worked our way toward the promised land ( the van) 

We’re showered, sore, and now heading toward dinner for our last night together. This trip has been incredible not only because of the views, but because of the strangers turned friends we met 10 days ago in Punta Arenas. We all can’t wait to fill you in with the stories we have and the pictures we took. See you soon. 

RMI Guide Dominic Cifelli

May 27, 2023 7:28PM PT

Things were exactly as we hoped this morning, calm, and blue above.

We woke earlier than most, and had our chores taken care of quickly to get out of camp.

We were roughly the second team out, which turned out to be the right move as it seemed like nearly everyone at 14 headed to the fixed lines today. From the top, we could see a near to continuous line that stretched back to 14.

We made good time and rolled into camp at 17 around 4pm. Then started the laborious work of building camp. It's hard to do anything up here quickly - walk, shovel, stand up too fast, so it took some time, but we are now settled in - working on melting snow for water and hoping that tomorrow gives us our summit shot.

Pete, Henry, Tatum and Team