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Cotopaxi summit! 100% of our climbing team reached the top of the beautiful 19,600' active volcano. We awoke at midnight to a clear and starry night, and started climbing at 1:30. A light breeze turned into a strong, cold wind that stayed with us most of the climb, but the skies remained clear and the climbing conditions were excellent. The wind eased on the summit, and we were treated to a beautiful morning with views of the surrounding peaks: the Ilinizas, Chimborazo, Antisana, and Cayambe, our next climbing destination.
We're all safely off the mountain, and enjoying the ammeneties at the Hacienda La Cienega. I'll touch base tomorrow with more, and hopefully some pictures. But right now there's a shower with my name on it.
Posted by: Pete Van Deventer
Categories: Mountaineering Fitness & Training
There is no way around it: there are some days where fitting my planned workout into my schedule is impossible. On the days when chores and errands catch up with me and I don’t have much time to do a workout, I have a go-to workout that I know I can do in 45-50 minutes. On a day when life feels too busy and I’m tempted to blow my workout off, having a quick workout ready helps me to stay motivated and get out the door.
My workout involves a short, 10 minute running warm-up, 15 minutes of short intervals, a 5-10 minute cool-down, and a short series of core exercises. Depending on what phase of training I am in and what my goals are, I may alter the pace, number, or duration of my intervals. During my aerobic building phase, I might run at a tempo that is slightly slower than my 5k race pace for 2 minutes, recover at a light jog for 1 minute, and repeat 4 more times. This bump in pace helps to mix up my tempo and keeps my legs feeling a bit quicker, but the effort isn’t so hard that I’m building up large amounts of lactic acid. Later in the season during an intensity phase, I might push the pace of those intervals right to my threshold, or do shorter 1 minute, all out efforts, with a full minute of recovery in between. This helps to build my anaerobic threshold, and develop my ability to recover as well. The warm up and cool down are really important for preventing injuries, and I try to resist the temptation to skip or cut short either.
The light core session to close doesn’t necessarily build a lot more strength, like a dedicated strength session would be designed to do, but it gives me maintenance. I mix up the exercises, but an example workout might be:
- 3 sets of 50 crunches
- 3 sets of 20 pushups
- and 3 sets of 20 dips
- 100 crunches (feet on the ground, curling my torso towards my knees, but not a full sit-up)
- 50 sit-ups to the side (alternating sides)
- 25 leg raises (some straight on, some to either side)
- and 100 more crunches to finish
Hello from Mweka Camp on Kilimanjaro!
Horizontal in the tent is the place to be. We had a nice 15 hour stroll today and reached the summit of Kilimanjaro. We must be crazy huh? The reward in the end makes it all worth it and then some. We descended to Mweka Camp, 10,000', to our final camp and last night on the mountain. We shared another fine dinner and enjoyed each other's company until folks were starting to fall asleep in their chairs. Other than some sore muscles, the whole team is doing great. The climb went so well that I better warn all of you back home that this crew is ready for more.
In the morning we will take a short 3 hour to the Mweka gate where our ride will be waiting to transfer us back to the Dik Dik resort. It is just starting to rain on the tent right now, but we are tucked in warm and dry until morning.
RMI Guide Mark Tucker & Team
Posted by: Casey Grom, Elias de Andres Martos
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Mount Rainier
Elevation: 14,410'
The last Expedition Skills Seminar - Muir Team of our 2013 Rainier climbing season reached the Summit of Mt. Rainier at about 2:00pm yesterday. RMI Guides Casey Grom and Elias deAndres Martos reported a blue bird day with cold temperatures and fresh snow on the route. The team will spend the morning at Camp Muir finishing up their mountaineering skills training before heading back to RMI Basecamp this afternoon.
Congratulations Team!
Fatima, Casey….just awesome. I wish I was there!!
Posted by: Debbi on 9/28/2013 at 5:39 am
Congratulations Tim! That’s one checked off the Bucket List. Keep goin’!
Posted by: Le on 9/27/2013 at 10:14 am
Posted by: Dave Hahn, Geoff Schellens, Mike Walter
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Mount Rainier
Elevation: Summit
Our Four Day Summit Climb Teams led by Dave Hahn and Geoff Schellens reached the summit of Mt. Rainier early this morning. Dave and Geoff reported great conditions on the mountain with clear views all around. The teams have started their descent and are on en route to Camp Muir.
Mike Walter and team also reached the summit of Mt. Rainier via the Emmons Glacier route. The team reported beautiful weather. The have started their descent back to Camp Schurman.
Congratulations to today's teams!
Congrats, Ben!
Posted by: Chris on 8/17/2012 at 8:31 pm
It truly was an honor to summit with my team. Thanks RMI!
Posted by: Bryan Loe on 8/17/2012 at 9:06 am
Hello everyone from the 14,000' camp on Denali. We're taking a rest day today, in order to acclimate and get strong for our forays up higher on the mountain.
After a breakfast involving lots of coffee and the universal favorite--bacon, we spent some time finishing off our snow walls at camp. The rest of the day was spent preparing gear for caching up high on the mountain tomorrow, as well as lounging around, reading, and eating.
We're planning to carry supplies up high on the West Buttress tomorrow, in preparation for our move to high camp and subsequent summit bid. We'll be in touch again soon.
RMI Guide Mike Walter
On The Map
Rich, thinking of you every moment. Go get ‘em. XO
Posted by: Christina Doren on 5/21/2012 at 4:30 pm
Hi Mike M!! Still rooting for you….and all your team!! Following your trek on the blog! Kick butt and take names!! Can’t wait to see the view from the top!
Posted by: Annette on 5/21/2012 at 2:12 pm
Hey, this is Dave Hahn and Linden Mallory up in the tent at the South Col. We have been brewing up for about an hour now. It takes a long time to get some hot drinks here and get a little food down. Since I talked to you last, we got a little forecast… in the evening... Clouds had come down low. The wind was blowing a little bit more than we liked it. But now it’s close to 11 in the evening and the winds have dropped down and it’s clear sky. Looks like a go for us. We’re just trying to get ourselves as hydrated as possible. It’ll help us deal with the intense cold out there. If we’ve got plenty of hydration we’ll be feeling better. We did have a good night. Tshering and Kaji are getting ready in the next tent. Dawa, as planned, is going to be the lifeguard here at the South Col and make sure we do okay up there. But everything is going ahead. There are some climbers out ahead of us now. That’s good. We’ll probably be trying to walk in, I don’t know, 40 minutes or so. We’ll try to stay in touch as best we can.
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Dave Hahn from the South Col
Linden- EAT those snickers! Hopefully share some with Dave if they are not all frozen or gone. Richmond gals are thinking of you all day and night here! BE SAFE.
Posted by: Kathryn LeBey on 5/20/2011 at 11:22 am
This is Seth checking in from 11,200 feet on Denali. Today we completed our carry to 13,500 ft. The weather was spectacular when we awoke and our climbers were psyched to get higher up on the mountain. Everyone put in a good effort and we made great time. The forecast looks good for tomorrow with a deteriorating trend starting on Wednesday. So our plan is to move to 14k tomorrow and wait out the weather there. That's all for now.
RMI Guide Seth Waterfall
Go Jerald! Watch out for Yeti men.
Posted by: Mike Oleson on 5/10/2011 at 4:28 pm
Jeffy,
Hiked Windy Hill in perfect weather this am and thought of you. Stay strong and warm as you climb. Wish I were joining you!
Love,
Your Sister
Posted by: Alyssa Rapp on 5/10/2011 at 12:44 pm
Moscow is cool and all, but it’s nice to wake up in the mountains. Cheget is a quiet little place, and there isn’t much going on in the morning hours. We had a casual start to our day, with an 8 am breakfast being the first item on the agenda. Breakfast was pretty normal fare. Eggs, toast, oatmeal. I usually can’t stand oatmeal, but here it’s basically soaked in cream and butter, so I can’t really complain about that. The team did a great job fueling up for our late-morning chairlift ride. I believe that everyone left breakfast on the edge of being uncomfortably full, which is really the sweet spot.
From the hotel it’s about a five minute walk to the bottom of our chairlift. We hopped on, and skimmed the tops of the trees for about fifteen minutes. It really was quite a stylish ascent. We had butterflies, wildflowers, and chirping birds below us, and nothing but blue skies above us. We unloaded at the midway station, and walked to the top of the next lift. At around 10,000 feet we hung out, took some photos, discussed the climb, and soaked up some sun. I think about 1/3 of the team have earned nicknames at this point. Some not suitable for print.
After we were satisfied with our day’s exercise, we rode the chairlift back down, more or less onto the deck of our lunch cafe, ate again, and then spent the rest of the day exploring town or relaxing. Tomorrow we’ll head up onto the mountain and stay there through the weekend. I think we’re all looking forward to it.
RMI Guide JM Gorum
Tyler- Hope the weather provides safe travel & great climbing conditions to the summit & back for your team. Looking forward to next batch of pics ! Dadio
Posted by: Kim Shearburn on 7/12/2019 at 8:41 am
Everyone looks great! We can’t wait to hear what your nickname is! We love you and are hoping for a safe climb for all of you.
Posted by: Carolyn Rossi on 7/10/2019 at 3:08 pm
Hey Everyone –
This is JJ and Steve with Team #1. Guess where we are? No, we are not sitting by the pool in Mendoza. We are on the summit of Aconcagua. The entire team is up here right now. They did a really great job. This is my 19th summit of Aconcagua and I have to tell you this, is the most beautiful day I have ever seen up here. But hey, you have heard enough from me. I am going to pass the phone around, so hopefully this will work. Some folks want to hi and etc to some people back at home. So here we go.
[Listen to audio]
Alright, so hopefully that work and we didn’t get cut out. This is Team #1 on the summit of Aconcagua. A beautiful day up here. We have a little more work to do. But I can’t tell you how great of team this was. What do you say team [Cheers]. We are tired. But we are going down hill, so that is the good news.
Chao from the summit,
RMI Guide JJ Justman
RMI Guide JJ Justman and the team call in from the summit of Aconcagua.
On The Map
Congrats Matt! Sounded a bit winded though, need to train harder. Jimmy, Ross and I really appreciated the shout out ;).
Posted by: Michael Beck on 12/29/2014 at 9:17 am
There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you are interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results.
Happy Summit day!!! Congrats!!!
Posted by: Chris on 12/28/2014 at 10:12 pm
Hope you took some sweet selfies at the top, Connor!!!
Posted by: Laura (from work) on 8/14/2014 at 4:02 am
John, we hope you were able to enjoy all aspects of your journey and it sounds like the weather held out long enough to get a spectacular view. Enjoy the Safari and hopefully you aren’t getting too wet coming down from the mountain. Love, Katie, Liam and Aidan
Posted by: Katie Brown-Steinke on 8/13/2014 at 6:56 am
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