Hello again everyone.
Today the team took an "active rest day", instead of just sitting around and relaxing we hit the trail for another adventure. First up was a visit to a seldom visited all women's monastery in the village of Thamo. It's about an hour and half from Namche and is a little of the beaten path. This monastery is home to 28 women mostly who have escaped prosecution from Tibet. Their ages range from 16 to 88 and they exist solely off of donations. A few of them came out to greet us and gave us a brief tour of the new monastery they are currently building. We stayed for about an hour, had some tea and either bought a few items or made donations to help with their cause.
Next we made our way uphill to visit the first school established here by Sir Edmund Hillary in Khumjung. It sits between several small villages and has the most amazing views thus far. We could see Everest, Lhoste, Ama Dablam and countless others. We then headed back to our tea house in Namche where the team is resting and enjoying the hot showers.
Everyone is doing great and looking forward to tomorrow.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Hello from Elbrus Northside Basecamp! Our good luck with the weather has continued. Our hike down from Camp 1 was rather pleasant, other than our huge packs. We took our time and now we're relaxing and waiting for our ride back to Kislovodsk.
RMI Guides JJ Justman and Seth Waterfall
Congratulations team! Happy anniversary Rayn! I am so proud of you…now hurry up and come back home to me!
Posted by: Jessica Eddy on 9/5/2012 at 6:07 am
Good luck on your ascent, and remember that once on the top, you are only half done! listen to your guides, keep a positive attitude, and enjoy the eexperience. Prayers will be with you.
6/26/2012 4:00 pm Hey Everybody it’s Billy calling to check in from the Jose Ribas Refugio here on Cotopaxi (16,000’ ft). We elected to head up the hut early so we could give ourselves a full night and a little bit better of a chance of getting to the top because the weather has been so poor. So we are going to get up in the middle of the night tonight and hopefully these winds will die down a bit and the lenticular clouds will clear. If the weather is not very good we will attempt a day climb. So we will check in again tomorrow and let you know how things played out.
6/27/2012 7:00 am Hey Gang, it's Billy again. I'm calling to let you know that we got up in the middle of the night last night and it was blowing pretty hard so we decided to wait until the morning to see if we could attempt a day climb. We got up around 6 and we had a big lenticular cloud and pretty steady wind of 40 mph here at the hut. It is blowing a pretty consistent 50 mph just above where we are at right now. We are back into a holding pattern. So tonight will be our last chance to go climbing. We will head out into it unless it is just absolutely insanely awful. So wish us luck. Hopefully the winds will have died down and we will have chance to get out and do some climbing. We will check in again to let you know how things went.
RMI Guide Billy Nugent checking in from Jose Ribas Refugio on Cotopaxi.
Another day of near perfect weather! So, we took advantage by bringing another load of supplies further up the mountain to our Camp 2 or Chopper Camp. There used to pieces of a wrecked helicopter strewn about camp but today's visit confirmed the fact that most of the wreckage has been removed. All of the guys on the team performed extremely well on our first mission above 18,000'. Upon returning to camp it seems that several teams moved up today so there's lots of room in Camp 1. Right now we're laying around after the day's work contemplating our next move...
All for now,
RMI Guide Billy Nugent
Happy birthday to Michael! We hope you feel so loved and celebrated today! We are so proud of you and cannot wait to hear about your adventure and see your photos. Our thoughts are with you, Dr Bruce and the team!
Posted by: UDON, TURTLES & The Shortman on 2/11/2012 at 11:57 am
Happy Birthday Michael. I cant believe that 24 years have gone by. Stay safe and warm up there. Get in one of the photos so we can all see you. Love you. Mom
We have two rest days in our legs and a good weather window predicted for the next few days so we are going for it! Our plan, with safety at the forefront of our minds, is to move to high camp (17,000') tomorrow and make our summit attempt the following day. This is why we have worked so hard to get to this point. We are physically and mentally ready!
Our northerly latitude was evidenced by the long evenings last night, even at this time of year. Dawn broke early but we were in no rush to greet it, enjoying the opportunity to sleep in a bit. After breakfast we walked down the canal outside of the hotel to St. Isaac's Cathedral, the 4th largest cathedral in the world, where we climbed its winding staircase to the colonnade that offers expansive views of the St. Petersburg skyline. Afterwards we made our way across the historic center to the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood, a stunning classical Russian Church built upon the cobblestones where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. Finally, we ended at the Hermitage Museum, an expansive collection of artwork spreading out over five buildings of St. Peter's palaces. With only 5% of it's collection displayed, it would still take days to fully explore the museum, much less appreciate the thousands upon thousands of pieces of art.
After several hours of sightseeing we had some time in the afternoon to relax and explore the city on our own. After dinner, with the evening sun spreading across the sky, we boarded a boat and took a tour of St. Petersburg's canals, watching the city go from evening to night from the water.
Tomorrow we all head home, ending our journeys in Russia. It is difficult to imagine a better group of people to share the challenge, excitement, and adventure of Elbrus' North Side with. It has been a fantastic trip and we are sad to see it end.
Orizaba summit! After yesterday I didn't know what to think. We had driven through a forest fire on the way to the mountain and the forecast was for a snow storm to move in during our planned summit bid. Things were getting interesting to say the least. But as it turned out our luck was impeccable. The forecasted storm actually did roll in, as a low level drizzle that put down the small fire whilst we climbed to the summit in perfectly clear conditions. We had a long and tough day for sure but everyone gave it their all. It was a great final climb on what's been a fantastic trip.
RMI Guides Seth Waterfall & Solveig Waterfall
Day one of our safari brought us to Lake Manyara, known for its famous pink flamingos and tree climbing lions. It took us about two hours to get there from our hotel. The drive took us through the vast open plains of Africa inhabited mostly by the Maasai people. Once in the park we rolled the tops of our land-cruisers back and drove through while standing up. It's currently the dry season and the lake was mostly gone for now, but we saw many animals- elephants, water bucks, Thompson giselles, impalas, dik diks, zebras, giraffes, wildebeest, and too many birds to name. No big cats today but hopefully tomorrow we'll see plenty.
Everyone enjoyed the day and we are currently resting at the fabulous Plantation Lodge. See for yourself. We will be headed out early tomorrow to try and beat the heat and catch the animals at breakfast, so to speak.
It's off to bed for now,
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Hi there,
This is Gabi and the RMI Aconcagua team checking in from Pampa de Leñas (9,200').
We had a great hike today. We started at Punta de Vacas (7,900') and walked for almost five hours. It was an 8.7 mile hike and the group did a great job keeping a nice and steady pace. During the hike we experienced moments of sunny and cloudy skies, and some showers. Right after we arrived in camp, it started to rain steady for one hour, something that's pretty unusual around here. This weather was predicted by the forecast and the good news is that it is predicting a sunny day for tomorrow. Perfect for our hike up to Casa de Piedra (Rock house).
The team woke up to snow and wind distorting the shapes of the tents we call home for the last 21 days. We hit snooze and hoped for the best. While I wouldn’t say the best ever came the allure of Roestis, showers, and beds pulled us out of our sleeping bags and into the fray. From 11,000 ft to the base of Ski Hill was a near total whiteout. We persevered through the wind, moisture, and visibility to reach basecamp at about 6pm, but conditions didn’t allow planes to come and land. We’re hopeful that tomorrow we’ll be back in civilization.
Extremely cool pic from the monastery. Go team and Elsie…fingers crossed the weather will stay perfect for you.
Posted by: Fletch on 3/27/2013 at 4:51 am
Great views with good weather! Namche looks like it might slide off the cliff, though. Have a great time!
Posted by: Yuki Loritz on 3/26/2013 at 10:19 pm
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