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The Four Day Climb July 14 - 17 led by RMI Guides Bryan Mazaika and Steve Gately reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning.  As of 7 am they were in the summit crater.  The cloud deck is below Camp Muir, so the teams were enjoying clear skies and light winds. After returning to Camp Muir later this morning, the teams will continue another 4.5 miles to Paradise.  Once back at Rainier BaseCamp they can relax and celebrate.

Congratulations to today's teams!

Tuesday, January 25, 2022 - 9:15 am PT

This is the Hailes Aconcagua team. We have made it to the summit! The whole team is happy and healthy. It's been a long day but we are happy to be here. We'll turn around and head down here in about 20 minutes after we take some pictures. We will check back in after we are back to camp.  Wish us luck. We will talk to you soon.

RMI Guide Walter Hailes

Hey there! 

Our Mt. Baker - Easton Glacier team is on the summit. It has been a chilly day but all is good. Clouds are rolling in and it was quite smokey. We are heading down now and will return to Camp for a final night on the mountain.  Tomorrow morning after packing up camp, we will head down to the trail head.

RMI Guide Hannah Smith

As climbers we need to travel safely through complex and hazardous terrain to reach the day’s objective and ultimately return to the car so that we can share our mountain experiences. As Guides we have 3 specific expectations of the people we rope up with:

1. Keep the pace of the guide
2. Climb in balance
3. Take care of yourself at breaks

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Climbing in balance will help you manage the other two expectations. By climbing in balance you will move through the mountains more efficiently and be less fatigued so that you can re-fuel and manage your layering at the breaks. Balance can be developed and improved through a variety of training regimens, and incorporating agility training is a great way to improve your balance while climbing.

Wikipedia defines agility as

• the ability to change the body's position efficiently and requires the integration of isolated movement skills using a combination of balance, coordination, speed, reflexes, strength, and endurance. Agility is the ability to change the direction of the body in an efficient and effective manner and to achieve this requires a combination of:
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• • balance – the ability to maintain equilibrium when stationary or moving (i.e. not to fall over) through the coordinated actions of our sensory functions
• • static balance – the ability to retain the center of mass above the base of support in a stationary position;
• • dynamic balance – the ability to maintain balance with body movement; speed - the ability to move all or part of the body quickly; strength - the ability of a muscle or muscle group to overcome a resistance; and lastly,
• • co-ordination – the ability to control the movement of the body in co-operation with the body's sensory functions.

 

Mt. Rainier’s Disappointment Cleaver route tests a climber’s agility while climbing the rock ridge that divides the Ingraham and Emmons glaciers, aptly called the Disappointment Cleaver. In the spring months the route up the Cleaver is comprised of steep snow and by mid-summer is entirely rock. Regardless of the conditions, this section of the climb is more physically taxing for climbers who haven’t developed solid agility skills, as the Cleaver involves large steps, difficult footwork on loose snow or scree and 1,200 feet of elevation gain, so the ability to climb it in balance and as efficiently as possible is a must.

How to train agility:

Get off the pavement! Much of your balance and agility is achieved by small stabilizer muscles in your feet, ankles, knees, hips, and core. Running over roots, rocks, and uneven terrain will help you develop your agility by causing these muscles to fire more often and in different combinations as they adapt to the terrain changes of each step. Cross-country and alpine skiing, hiking, and yoga can all help to build these same stabilizer muscles and can be a tool if running isn’t possible for you. Off-road activities also help train you to look ahead to anticipate the irregularities of the trail. This will aid you when you climb so that you focus on what is ahead of you and don't get stuck on what is directly at your feet.

An agility ladder is a great tool for home workouts and will help your dynamic balance and coordination.  If you do not want to purchase a ladder, draw one with sidewalk chalk on your driveway. There are a multitude of potential exercises you can use with a ladder, to build quick footwork, reflexes, and agility. Start with these and build your repertoire as you see fit! 

Remember, if you're not having some fun while training then you will likely find an excuse to just go through the motions or not train. Get after it and I look forward to seeing you out in the hills!

Useful agility ladder drills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxjC-0yuSHM

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Mike King is a senior guide with RMI Expeditions and a Wilderness Medicine Instructor for WMI of NOLS. Mike guides around the world for RMI. Some of his favorites are upcoming trips to Machu Picchu, Aconcagua, and Mexico's Volcanoes. 



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I believed I'd imagined Kent Harvey's call to me at ten minutes to four in the morning. I didn't have any alarm set; it was a rest day coming on and I was sound asleep in my tent. So fully unconscious that Kent called me several times and when I finally responded, I had no idea where I was or what was going on. It was dark, and as he suggested that something had happened that I might want to be concerned with, I finished rubbing my eyes and zipped open my door. The beauty of the scene seemed unreal and impossible. The moon had set, and the sun wasn't close to being up, but there was starlight on the Khumbu Icefall, Nuptse and the great bulk of Everest's West Shoulder. Kent was saying that he'd just seen a fairly large avalanche come down the Shoulder-sending a cloud of debris across the Icefall-and he was concerned that climbers may have been caught. I listened to him, but I was having trouble taking my eyes from the bright planet perfectly framed above the Icefall and bracketed by the mountains. I did manage to look down and left enough finally to see several small strings of headlamps, just where I knew the avalanche had to have come down. I turned on my radio, taking a guess that my friends at IMG had people in the area. I listened to Mark Tucker calmly and carefully check in with his Sherpa team to find out that they were ok...another near miss; and his Sherpa team was able to tell him that the only other team in the area was also ok and that everybody was going on with their climb. I related this to Kent...stared at the planet again for some time and then went back to sleep in my warm down bag. In the morning, we all looked up at the troublesome serac on the West Shoulder to gauge its stability. The same huge fin of ice had been threatening all week. It had sent down the major avalanche we'd earlier reported which caught some of our team on their way to basecamp while I was pushing up to Camp II. In the morning light, it appeared hideously undercut and I don't believe any of us expected it to last through another day. I went so far as to take "before" photos of it. But to my knowledge, no Everest climbers did anything different yesterday morning because of the serac. It wasn't like the Icefall route would be closed by any proclamation; there wasn't some safer way to go instead. This isn't the only mountain we frequent that has chunks of glacier ready to fall, and I for one have mistakenly pronounced dozens of crazily tilted hotel-sized ice-blocks in danger of imminent collapse only to watch them hang on for months. But this serac sent down a handful of lesser slides as the morning progressed...enough to keep our attention focused...and our cameras ready. I wanted the thing to come down. I certainly didn't want to walk under it again in its decaying state. At 10:35 AM it did come down. I was sitting in my tent doorway, and I didn't need to fully look at Everest's West Shoulder to know that this was the big one. In this valley of avalanches, the quality of noise was easily different and distinct for this particular slide. I fumbled with my camera and began shooting. I didn't see the tiny dots representing climbers in the avalanche path. Partly because they may not have been visible down in the rough terrain of the Khumbu Icefall, and partly because I was totally mesmerized by the power and majesty of the white explosion I was witnessing. I kept taking pictures as the cloud engulfed basecamp. I knew it was only a cloud...we were nowhere near close enough to be hit with actual debris, but it was ominous and disturbing even so. It rolled over us like a volcanic ash-cloud, blotting out the sun and rocking the tents back and forth in its wind while pelting us with a "snow" of overly large ice crystals. And then, quite quickly, it was gone and what remained of any mist in the air was quickly burning off in the bright sun. I assumed that it had been a lucky day...that what needed to happen had happened and that nobody had been affected. It is possible that I went on in this belief for a full twenty minutes before word began to filter around that people had been caught in the avalanche. I began putting on my climbing boots and quickly loading my pack...by then, word had it that it was an acquaintance of mine of several years and many mountains. My friend had been caught along with his client and the Sherpa working with them. I saw Willie and Damian Benegas going past our camp, both speaking into their radios. There were a number of Sherpas moving toward the start of the Icefall route, including Tendi and LamaBabu from our own team. Seth Waterfall was ready before me and stood patiently as I finished up my climbing harness, then we started walking fast and I joined the ongoing radio scramble to get men and equipment to the accident scene. Since IMG's Sherpas and clients were descending the route at the time and were very lucky to come through unscathed, they were among the first to report the situation via radio, and so all other teams migrated to the IMG frequency. This seemed right since Mark Tucker and Ang Jangbu Sherpa at the IMG basecamp had shifted into their familiar role in bilingual crisis management. Seth and I checked in and learned that HimEx was offering up a full rescue pack cached near the start of the route. Russell Brice came on the radio, directing us to the gear. We loaded up heavy packs full of oxygen, sleeping bags, medical equipment, and rescue hardware and began climbing. We listened as various expedition leaders, guides and Sherpas reported in and offered up a mountain of resources. This from supposedly competing companies-none of whom had any reason to think that their own staff or customers were involved or injured. We began to feel the sense of community that is so often overlooked or ignored in modern media coverage of the Everest "scene." And we began to feel the intense sun that we normally avoid working under at midday. The glacier surface was brilliant in its new coat of "snow" from the avalanche and seemed to be reflecting 100% of the sun's radiation onto the skin I hadn't had time to protect in my dash out of BC. Within minutes under the big packs, we were covered in sweat. It turned out that a descending Indian team was instrumental, along with IMG's Sherpas, in getting my friend and his client out of a crevasse that the avalanche had pushed them into, but now the radio chatter was focusing on the Sherpa that had been with them. He was missing. Willie and Damian Benegas (Argentinian-American brothers leading two different Everest teams) were among the first Western professionals on the scene, and we relied on their reports of the situation as we continued to climb. My friend, badly hypothermic and shaken, was being placed on a stretcher as Seth and I arrived in the blast zone. We dove into the medical supplies we carried in an effort to help stabilize him. Seth concentrated his efforts then on escorting the remarkably unscathed client down. Willie Benegas and a strong team of Sherpas worked to get the stretcher down, as I then went up to join Damian and perhaps 20 Sherpas who were searching for the missing man. After 15 minutes or so, I was encouraged to hear Willie describing my friend as "combative" enough that they could no longer carry him on the litter. He preferred to walk, as it turned out, and of course that was a fine outcome. At the "point-last-seen" I was amazed at the bravery and high energy of the searching climbers. Damian and a British guide were roped up and jumping crevasses in an effort to reach islands of glacier that might offer better views. The Sherpas had fixed ropes down a series of steep, debris-strewn ice gullies and were exploring every crevasse and alcove along their path. I kept looking up at the origin of the avalanche, where it appeared that a tooth had been broken from some massive jaw. Unfortunately, there were still other teeth, and the searchers were clearly in a terrible position should a second slide follow the path of the first. I checked my watch and my radio to confirm that two-and-a-half hours had passed since the avalanche. I began asking the team to suspend the search. The missing man's boot, with crampon still attached, had been found close enough to his last known whereabouts that we were each haunted to imagine the power of the wind that had hit him. His pack was eventually retrieved some 100 meters distant. The clues only made it more difficult to quit. The Sherpas all agreed that there was now no chance of finding a buried man alive. They agreed that it was time to quit and move to safety. But they wouldn't. Nobody wanted to be the first to leave. Tendi and LamaBabu continued to twist in ice screws and rappel into crevasses..."Just this last one." But they couldn't find the 31-year-old father of two. Knowing how many of them were also fathers, I insisted that they quit-eventually they listened to me, to their own leaders and their own valid concerns. We walked down through the ice rolls and ridges of the lower glacier without much talking. Dozens of good folk had come out from basecamp and stood on the ice ridges with water and tea for the search teams. Upon reaching basecamp, the teams melted back into a tent village composed of twenty different expeditions, but not without a number of quiet handshakes and a hundred expressions of thanks. To each other...to a missing man's sacrifice...to the good luck of survivors.

The Four Day Climbs August 7 - 10 led by RMI Guides Casey Grom and Ben Ammon reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning.  As of 7:30 am the teams were at 13,100' on their descent. They will return to Camp Muir for a short break before continuing down to Paradise.

The program will conclude this afternoon at Rainier BaseCamp.

Congratulations to today's climbers.

The Four Day Climb July 25 - 28 reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning led by RMI Guides Casey Grom and Ben Liken. Clear skies and warm temperatures continue in the area.  Once the teams return to Camp Muir they will take a quick break to re-hydrate and re-pack their gear before continuing the remaining 4.5 miles to Paradise. The teams will celebrate their achievements later this afternoon at Rainier Basecamp.

Congratulations to today's climbers!

Dave Hahn, Seth Waterfall and Billy Nugent leave the US for Punta Arenas, Chile, in a few days! Once in Punta Arenas, the team will meet for their orientation and final preparation before flying to the Union Glacier in Antarctica! If you would like to follow along as the RMI team pushes their way to the highest point in Antarctica, please sign up for alerts below.

We are feeling quite lucky today. It was extremely good weather for going to the top of Mount Vinson. And there was no mystery about it. From the time we got out of the tents at high camp this morning, it was obvious that conditions were stable and that we'd be able to simply concentrate on climbing well. The team did exactly that. We left camp at 9:35 and were on the top at 3:45 PM. In fact, we passed most of the teams that had left before us, although that certainly wasn't our goal. We just wanted to move efficiently in this cold environment. On a day when about 30 climbers were going for the top, it was also quite nice for us to have the summit to ourselves for a time. Gary and Bob had the added significance to the occasion in that Vinson was the seventh continental summit for each. We could see up and down nearly the full length of the 200-mile Ellsworth chain, but our eyes were drawn continually to the sharp and lofty summits just north of Vinson, to Shinn, Tyree, Gardner and Epperly. We left the top at 4:20 and arrived back at high camp by 7 PM. Dinner was a comfortable session in our POSH tent and then we headed to bed early. Tomorrow will be another big day as we descend to Basecamp. Best Regards, RMI Guide Dave Hahn

Thursday June 20th (day 10 on the mountain)

We woke up to a chilly morning in camp 3 at 14,200 feet elevation. My tent mate Dave and I were lingering in our warm sleeping bags, listening to the crunchy steps of our teammates who had gathered enough courage to step outside.  Everything in the tent that could freeze had done so unless it was tucked inside our sleeping bags, including water bottles, sunscreen and even pee bottles…. The inside of the tent was crusted with a thin layer of frost that would rub off or drop down on us whenever we touched it.

I have to admit that the early mornings in the tent are my least favorite part of mountaineering. Just the thought of unzipping the comfortable sleeping bag and pulling on stiff, frozen pants, forcing my feet into rock hard, ice-cold mountaineering boots and crawling out of the tent into the outside winter land makes me shiver. Still, I know that only a few minutes later life is much better after taking care of the morning routine and sitting in the kitchen tent with a hot cup of coffee, courtesy of our guides. Today was an “active rest day” which mostly meant hanging around camp and doing some ascender training, but also entailed a back carry trip down the slope from our camp to retrieve the cache we left a few days ago at 13,500 feet elevation. By the time we left camp just before 10am the below zero morning had turned into a blisteringly sunny day, and coming up the hill back to camp with heavy backpacks we were sweating through our single base-layers. Otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful round trip if it wasn’t for the fact that I did a complete face plant going down the hill while fiddling with my phone and tripping over my crampons. What a rookie mistake…

Coming back to camp we were treated to an amazing brunch consisting of burritos hot from the camp stove served by our bad ass guides Seth and Nicole. They had been granted a day off from carrying loads thanks to their super human efforts the last couple of days, accompanying our team mates Tait and Sophia who decided to abort this climb, all the way from camp 2 to base camp and then back again (a 20 miles round trip with 5,000 feet elevation gain!), only to rejoin the rest of our team on the 3,000+ feet ascent with heavy packs & sleds to camp 3 the next day. Truly impressive!

Given that today was mostly a rest day I had an opportunity to reflect on the experience thus far. I’ve been on a number of guided climbs in different corners of the world over the years, including some that have been expedition style like this one. They’ve all been great experiences and my guides have generally been top notch. However, I do think there is an RMI Difference based on what I’ve seen so far.  Not only has the guiding been outstanding thanks to our world class guides Dom, Seth and Nicole, but the overall logistics, route planning and camp facilities have been flawless. Climbing mountains is hard as it is, so having delicious cooked meals (not freeze dried), 3-person tents between 2 of us, and a few extra rest days in the itinerary has made this experience as enjoyable as possible and will hopefully allow us all the best odds possible to summit the mountain. A special shoutout to our lead guide Dom who is expertly masterminding the giant chess game that it is to climb Denali while at the same time fostering a genuinely positive and supportive team environment.

Just a quick note on the team before I wrap. We’re all from very different backgrounds as highlighted in Rossi’s blog a couple of days ago, and with a variety of mountaineering experience. However, 10 days into the trip I’m really impressed by how we have bonded into a cohesive team that helps and supports each other. We’re now all seasoned Denali mess tent small talk, being an introverted Swede, I do enjoy listening to it! �� fantastic experience so far! And a gentle request to the Gunnarsson family to leave some comments - we can’t have Dave get all the attention!

RMI Climber Mattias Gunnarsson