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Hello everybody back home, this is Casey Grom checking in from the Cotopaxi Express Ascent. Today we left the busy city of Quito and traded in for a little rustic countryside visit. We did a short acclimatization hike on the Illinizas where we reached just over 15,500’. Everybody did fantastic and we even got to use our gore-tex jackets with fresh snow falling on us today. We have since descended and have retreated to the Hacienda Chilcabamba where we have just finished a delicious meal and great conversation. Everyone seems to be doing really well and everyone's relaxing right now inside. We are looking forward to some clear skies tomorrow and a nice view of Cotopaxi. That's all for now and we will check in again tomorrow. RMI Guide Casey Grom

The final RMI EXPEDITIONS climb of our North Cascade’s season took place under excellent weather & high spirits. The three of us (RMI Guides Jake Beren and Alex Van Steen, with climber Jim Lumberg) enjoyed late season conditions. The chimneys, gullies and summit pyramid didn’t have an ounce of snow in them, making for absolutely fantastic & fun rock scrambling & climbing. On summit morning, we postponed our bid by an hour or two as rain threatened, but by the time we took off the skies were clearing and we enjoyed an improving day and stellar climbing. RMI Guide Alex Van Steen

RMI invested with a local solar outfitter a few years back, and as you can see by the picture we are charged up! At the start of this season we used a generator to jump start the batteries, but since then its been all sun. On cloudy days we have to be a bit careful on how much power we use from the bank of six good-sized car-type batteries but usually plenty of juice. Without it, tough to send out this dispatch and even the best generators are too loud. The other photo is of one of our star players here at Base Camp, Raju, who is at the watering hole of choice for now. The staff makes lots of trips to this spot daily with five-gallon plastic jugs to keep us full of that most important beverage. As the glacier moves throughout the season, so will we and the watering hole. With all of the human impact over the years we will boil all of the drinking water. Not yet there with the solar so we do use kerosene for cooking here at Base Camp. We have a most wonderful on-demand gas-powered shower tent that we try and not overuse, which you can imagine on a warm day is so fantastic it is hard to convey. A bit different nowadays since my first trip to Everest in 1990. It was 72 days between showers. Hey, we did what we could, but that first shower was a good one! Dave Hahn is at Camp 1 and a link to his audio dispatch is below. That's all for today from RMI's Everest Expedition. RMI Guide Mark Tucker

We hit the dusty ol' trail today! A gentle breeze at our backs encouraged us towards Aconcagua. The hike to Camp Confluencia was filled with good conversation and lots of laughter. With every step, life is getting simpler and simpler. We are all in such awe of this place. 

Till next time,

RMI Guide Luke Wilhelm

The use of trekking poles during climbs (in appropriate terrain) can dramatically reduce your expended effort, allow you to move more efficiently, and ultimately let you climb longer and further.  Trekking poles help us to balance, taking some of the work away from the small muscles in our feet and ankles responsible for balancing, and involving the core and skeleton instead.  They also help enormously when it comes to managing a large and unwieldy backpack.  There are ways to use and hold trekking poles that improve their efficiency.   A common question is how long should the poles be?  For climbers’ purposes, trekking poles should be significantly shorter than most would think: right around hip height.  By setting our poles at hip height, and holding the pole by placing the palm on the top of the grip and draping fingers over the pole, the skeleton can take much of the load from the pole, reducing fatigue and effort.  The shorter height allows the bones of the arm to stack over each other, taking the load rather than the muscles.  Remember, this is not cross country skiing and having the pole tall and out in front of you only means more, yet less effective, work for your arms.   Another element to think about is how overly active arms can actually create more exertion for your body.   Imagine that you were hiking up a set of stairs.  Now put a tall pair of poles in your hand, and hike the same stairs while you try to push yourself up with the poles at the same time.  Rather than two of your limbs working hard to move your mass uphill (lots of work already!) all four are doing the job; only your arms, working out in front of you, act as levers instead of pistons (like your legs) so they are mechanically much less suited to the task.  But, by moving your arms and trying to push on those levers, your heart rate will rise with the extra exertion; the result is a higher heart rate, earlier fatigue, and less efficient use of your system if your poles are out in front of you (like a cross country skier).  Even with the poles set to hip height, we see this happen often on steep rolls, when climbers don’t lower their grip on the pole to keep their hands at a comfortable height.  Once the hands are above the heart, they have little effect on balance or upward motion, and the heart has to work harder to pump blood uphill to them. Through small steep terrain features it's key to choke up on your poles to avoid this.   These are not absolute principles but suggestions. Play with them during your training to teach yourself to move more comfortably and efficiently with poles.  It will pay big dividends on your next climb, and can help to take some of the training stress of hiking up and downhill with heavy packs, off of your joints, helping to prevent injury! Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!

RMI Guide Hannah Smith checked from the Summit of Mt. Baker at 12:04 pm PDT today. The team successfully reached the summit via the Easton Glacier Route. Hannah let us know, that the team is stoked and had a beautiful day of climbing. The team will descend to the trailhead tomorrow. 

Congratulations Team!

Strong winds overnight kept the teams at Camp Muir.  Telemetry shows wind gusts in the 50-60 mph range.  RMI Guide Henry Coppolillo reported a nice morning at Camp Muir as the wind continued to decrease. Around 7 am, the teams were going to ascend to Ingraham Flats to explore the terrain above Camp Muir and enjoy the sunshine.  The teams will return to Camp Muir, pack their gear and descend to Paradise later this morning.

“You can't win if you don't play” is dubious encouragement often doled out by Las Vegas casinos and the like—but it is solid counsel in the world of alpine climbing. I can't tell you how many times I've plodded through a milk puddle of clouds on the Muir Snowfield only to rise above it all upon reaching Camp Muir. Indeed, even in the face of slim weather odds, you've got to at least put yourself into position for success and be ready to maximize it should those slim odds work in your favor. Time and time again that alpine advice held true during my recent American Mountain Guide Association (AMGA) Alpine Guide Exam (AGE). Arriving in Seattle in mid-September for my 10-day AGE, I stared at the bright screen of my smart phone and steeled myself for the grim weather forecast it proposed...my First Ascent BC-200 had seen me through many a maelstrom on Rainier, but ten days of that? Like any climber of peaks like Rainier, Denali, Cotopaxi, or Orizaba, the wheels on this particular bus had been set in motion many, many months before and there was far too much invested to pull it over to the side of the road due simply to predictions of a deluge. The AMGA is the premier training path for America's professional climbing guides and the 10-day AGE is the culminating exam that guides take in order to become Certified Alpine Guides. Along the way toward that test, hopefuls must first take a 10-day Rock Instructor Course, a 9-day Alpine Guides Course, a 5-day Ice Instructor Course, an 8-day Advanced Alpine Guides Course, a 3-day Alpine Aspirant Exam, a 6-day American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education Level 3 Course and Exam, and a then—finally—the 10-day Alpine Guide Exam. In case you weren't counting, that's 41 days of training in all—and that doesn't even begin to include the climbing resume you have to develop in between courses. All in all, that's a triple wallop of a lot of tuition, a lot of travel costs, and a lot of opportunity costs in the form of lost wages. Fortunately—and very, very thankfully—RMI, Whittaker Mountaineering, and Eddie Bauer/First Ascent helped to take some of the sting out of the tuition costs, but that aside, there was still no way I was going to let a grim weather forecast rain on my parade! Now the only problem was: “Would the grim weather forecast rain on the whole AGE parade?” You see, in order for an AGE to be valid, the examiners need to see you in a variety of terrain and situations—and if the weather doesn't allow those windows to open... Fortunately, time and time again, in the face of doom, gloom, cats, and dogs we put ourselves into position for success and just barely, and just somehow, squeaked it out. For the first few days we enjoyed the relative “rain shadow” that the Washington Pass area of the North Cascades provides. Washington Pass doesn't allow for glacial travel though—an integral part of the AGE—so after two days we had to leave that safe harbor for the shores of Mt. Shuksan. We arrived in the Lake Ann/Fisher Chimneys trailhead in a steady drizzle. By the time we packed up, things had improved, but the rest of the day was something of an ongoing “fashion show” as we put on a rain shell, took it off, added a warmth layer, and tried to predict what the weather would look like in five minutes. And in the backs of our minds all imagined how things might unfold. Happily, we were most certainly rewarded for our efforts: By the time we topped out on Fisher Chimneys and rolled into our bivvy site, we were high above the roiling sea of grey valley clouds. So often it's the case on Mount Rainier that we'll radio down to Ashford and hear that they're thick in the rain while up at Camp Muir we're above it all. Such was the case on Shuksan, and the next day we managed to circumnavigate the Upper Curtis, Sulphide, and Crystal Glaciers and climb the summit massif's Northeast Ridge—my first time doing that particular route and highly recommended! As the forecast shifted from grim to grimmer, we again decided to head over to Washington Pass. Driving over Highway 20 toward our meeting point at the Cutthroat Peak trailhead, my windshield wipers clicked a steady rhythm in time with the electronic music I was listening to to try to psych myself up. I arrived early at the trailhead and the rain continued. I cranked more psych music as I attempted some gear-sorting-inside-the-car-yoga poses. Then, miraculously, it began to clear. Not the swift and sure kind of clear that let's you know a new weather attitude is on the way—more like the resistant backing away of an angry dog that's just been called by it's owner, but enough to make a climb seem viable. We racked up, packed up, and headed for Cutthroat Peak's South Buttress. While it is true that “you can't win if you don't play”, it's also true that it's a bad idea to climb yourself so far up an objective that retreat becomes untenable. Fortunately, the South Buttress offers plenty of bail options, so with one eye on the clouds and the other on my rope coils, we moved upward, steadily gaining another plum Cascade peak. By then, we'd heard reports from a group of Advanced Alpine Guide Course participants that the Boston Basin area (home to West Ridge of Forbidden, Torment-Forbidden Traverse, Sharkfin Tower, and Sahale Peak, among others) had already received six inches of the new winter's snow. Fresh snow poses it's own set of problems in the alpine world, but deciding that fresh snow was more palatable than dealing with the reported dousing on the way, so up we went! These days, I'm climbing on snow for at least a part of almost every month of the year, but it's not often I'm dealing with fresh snow in September. Skis or snowshoes weren’t a part of our packing list, so lift-kick-step-sink-lift was the interminable process as we moved up through the now 10 inches of fresh snow covering the Quien Sabe Glacier. A circumnavigation/summit of Sahale Peak was our goal, and we eyed the valley clouds warily as we proceeded in dogged pursuit. Soon the clouds enveloped us and in between breaks we attempted to plot the best path ahead. After some steep, snow-laden slopes, a bergschrund crossing, and the final rocky summit scramble we were on top of our last AGE objective, Sahale Peak! By day's end I was back in a Bellingham motel room, enjoying the comforts of a shower, eat-in Thai Food, and 581 channels. On every weather channel, stoic looking forecasters delivered the report with the delicacy of a cancer ward counselor: the patient's condition was not improving. I spooned the last bit of tofu out of my box of green curry and grinned: For the last ten days we'd prevailed in the face of such gloom and doom forecasts, and now, with the AGE wrapped up I was much more than just a survivor, I was finally an AMGA Certified Alpine Guide! Achieving AMGA Alpine Guide Certification only occurred through a lot of support. Thanks to RMI/Whittaker Mountaineering/Eddie Bauer-First Ascent for their solid support of guide professional development. Thanks to all of the RMI guides who, through their sharing of skills, techniques, and approaches, have honed my own alpine guide skills; and particular gratitude to Andres Marin, Geoff Schellens, Jake Beren, Levi Kepsel, Eric Frank, Leon Davis, Elias De Andres Martos, and Rob Montague who shared with me their time and talents in the field as I worked toward this goal. - RMI Guide Kel Rossiter

Hi this is Seth, checking in from 15,000' on Kilimanjaro. We have enjoyed another great day on the mountain. As we left our Shira Plateau Camp we ascended to 15,000' and everyone on the team reached a new high altitude record today. This is a great mountain to push your personal altitude records as our packs are light and we are ascending without crampons, ice axes and other alpine climbing gear. We're about to drop back down about 2,500' to our camp for tonight. Tonight's camp is set at the base of the great Barranco Wall, a steep canyon emerging from Kilimanjaro's southern side. We will check in again tomorrow. RMI Guide Seth Waterfall

On The Map

The whole team is standing on the summit of Ixta at 8:10 am central time! It was a chilly climb but the sun is shining now and it is warming up a bit. The team did an awesome job getting up here. Now we will shift our focus to a smooth descent. That's all for now. We will check in again from thicker air!

RMI Guide Grayson Swingle