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Mt. Baker: King & Team Summit, Return to Camp

July 25, 2021

Posted by: Mike King, Camille Leininger, Leif Bergstrom

Categories: Expedition Dispatches North Cascades

Elevation: 10,781'

The Mt. Baker Coleman Deming team July 23 - 25 reached the summit today around 6:45 am. RMI Guide Mike King reported a warm night and great views north to Vancouver of the North Cascade peaks. The team returnted to Camp before noon. They will continue their descent to the trail head and conclude their program this afternoon.

Nice job team!

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What a great climb with a great group of people. Truly appreciated our amazing guides that were flexible with the route.

Posted by: Heather on 7/26/2021 at 7:48 am

How Awesome of a challenge Jake! Great job Team! Looking forward to seeing pics and hearing about your climb

Posted by: Jodi Walny on 7/25/2021 at 6:15 pm

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Mt. Rainier: Four Day Team Reach the Summit

July 16, 2022

Posted by: JT Schmitt, Joe Hoch, Ellison Boord, Lily Emerson, Evan Sather, Charlie Harrison

Categories: Expedition Dispatches Mount Rainier

Elevation: 14,410'

The Four Day Climb July 13 - 16 reached the summit of Mt. Rainier today led by RMI Guides JT Schmitt and Joe Hoch. The teams reported winds around 45 mph towards the summit. That means they didn't spend much time on top today. As of 7 am they were on their descent and headed back to Camp Muir. The teams will continue down from Camp Muir later this morning and return to Rainier BaseCamp this afternoon for their celebration ceremony.

Congratulations to the Footprints of Fight climbers!

Mt. Everest Expedition: Team Almost to Basecamp

May 27, 2012

Posted by: Dave Hahn, Melissa Arnot, Mark Tucker

Categories: Expedition Dispatches Everest

Elevation: 17,575'

Update 2:45 pm Nepali time: Dave Hahn, Melissa Arnot and team are 20 minutes from camp, so they are safely through the Khumbu Icefall! I will still keep track of the Sherpa team that is still higher up on the mountain. They need to go back up to Camp 1 either tomorrow or the next day for final loads off the mountain. Until everyone is clear of the upper mountain, I will be here in communication with the Sherpa team. What a Climb! RMI Guide and Everest Basecamp Manager Mark Tucker

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Mark,

Thanks so much for all the updates and a hearty congrats to you, Dave, Melissa, and your team! You may not remember, Mark, but my wife and I met you on Everest 2010 and most recently coming down the Mweka Route on all of our last day on Kili last August. We enjoyed chatting with you.

Best,
Brandon & Kristine Chalk

Posted by: Brandon Chalk on 5/29/2012 at 2:36 pm

Great news! Thanks for the update.

Posted by: jeff d on 5/28/2012 at 4:18 am

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Mt. Baker: Beren & Team Summit the North Ridge

August 28, 2019

Posted by: Jake Beren, Avery Parrinello

Categories: Expedition Dispatches North Cascades

Elevation: 10,781'

100% Summit!! RMI Guide Jake Beren and Team reached the summit of Mt. Baker today via the North Ridge. The team had perfect weather to take on the challenging route, and climbed strong. Congratulations Team!

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Training for the Khumbu Icefall

April 11, 2009

Posted by:

Categories: Expedition Dispatches Everest

Elevation: 5,343 meters

The clouds were blowing the wrong way today. From East to West is somewhat uncommon during the normal pre-monsoon climbing season. But oh well, it was an enjoyable day in any case. The morning chill didn't last long at all, it was nearly t-shirt weather by the time we'd finished breakfast and the several inches of snow which had fallen in recent days began to melt fast. Tents are going up all around us now as more and more teams show up on the scene. Our nearest neighbors are Korean and Danish. The Koreans have a neat tradition of conducting group calisthenics each morning just before the sun hits the camp. Today I felt quite lazy and antisocial, sipping my morning coffee and listening to the BBC in a big down coat while watching the Koreans bond and stretch. Our First Ascent team did a little bonding and stretching today as well, but at a much more civilized hour. At ten in the morning we all marched for 10 minutes over to a little obstacle course of ladders and ice towers for some practice at rigging up and staying safe. We've got our sights set on the Khumbu Icefall now as the next big goal - the Icefall Doctors are close to having the route complete as far as Camp I and it won't be long before we are moving along and up through their maze of ladders and ropes. But we'll ease into that. The route through the Khumbu is unlike any other climbing route in the world. Great technical climbers and glacier travel experts from elsewhere will not have seen anything like this before. And such is the case within our team. Practice in walking ladders with crampons and protecting ourselves by properly clipping into fixed ropes is a good thing. When one gets to a real passage through the Icefall, one must be fast and efficient at all of this, so today we repeatedly crossed a ladder just a few feet off the ground. And then we tilted it up and crossed at forty-five degrees. Finally we tried a little vertical stretch with the ladder, all the time enabling to protect ourselves against a fall (or a collapse of the ladder) by smartly attaching ourselves to safety lines. As expected, it was a blast to finally be walking on snow with an axe in hand. Everybody seemed a little excited to kick crampon points into ice or to pull on a rope or two. It felt like climbing. After lunch, Erica and I suited up again for an afternoon glacier tour. Just for an hour, since we didn't want to overdo the exercise at this still new altitude, we tramped around on the glacier away from tents and people (and well below the icefall). We stomped up and down little walls and explored corridors within the folds of the glacier. I took Erica to a few of the places I'd marked in my GPS over the years where I'd found oddball souvenirs like busted wooden ice-axes and oxygen bottles marking the basecamps used for the original attempts on this side of Mount Everest. I was startled by the changes in the glacial surface over the course of just one year. My first trip to this side of the mountain was in the year 2000 and over the past nine years I'd gotten familiar with a number of landmarks... boulders, ice ridges and towers that stayed more or less the same, streams of water on and within the ice that tended to form up each season and follow roughly the same course, that sort of thing. But this time, Erica saw me shaking my head a lot and turning my GPS this way and that (which doesn't actually help much with a GPS, by the way) because everything seemed radically different. Large, flat, frozen ponds sit where ice ridges had thrust up sixty and seventy feet previously. New stream courses seem to be everywhere and the formerly orderly flank of the medial moraine we all camped on for years is unrecognizable. I can only assume that a massive volume of ice has disappeared from the glacier due to melt in the past year. Erica and I came back into camp. She headed for the afternoon round of "Dirty Clubs" a mysterious card game that Gerry Moffatt inflicted on the team during the trek. No money changes hands, but the daily losers have to perform all manner of humiliating public stunts. I made the rounds, admiring the organizational work that basecamp managers Jeff Martin and Linden Mallory have been accomplishing while we played on the glacier. The Eddie Bauer, First Ascent/Rainier Mountaineering Inc. Basecamp is shaping up. The word is that the hot shower may be operational by tomorrow. Now there is still enough time for a quick nap before dinner... except the light is just getting good and small avalanches keep crashing down off of the West Shoulder, Lho La and Nuptse, forcing me to keep scrambling out of my tent to watch. So much to do...

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Mt. Rainier: Walter & Emmons Seminar Team Reach Summit

June 22, 2022

Posted by: Mike Walter, Henry Coppolillo, Jenna Burkey, Lacie Smith

Categories: Expedition Dispatches Mount Rainier

Elevation: 14,410'

After several days of training and ascending to Camp Schurman, the Expedition Skills Seminar June 17 - 22 led by RMI Guide Mike Walter reached the summit of Mt. Rainier on Tuesday. The team enjoyed good weather and route conditions. After reaching the summit they returned to Camp Schurman for their final night on the mountain. The team will descend to the trail head and return to Rainier BaseCamp on Wednesday afternoon.

Congratulations to the Emmons Seminar team!

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Hey all, glad to hear you had a successful trip! I’m looking at climbing via the emmons the week of July 4th and would be interested in hearing how things are looking up there given all the late precipitation this year. Please shoot me an email if you’re able to share any beta! Thanks

Andrew
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Posted by: Andrew on 6/23/2022 at 7:34 pm

Great work! You guys flew right past us, I’m glad all teams were successful that day! What a slog on the way down, though!

Posted by: David on 6/22/2022 at 9:00 pm

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SheJumps Team Reaches the Mt. Rainier Summit!

July 12, 2021

Posted by: Hannah Smith, Devin Guffey, Keeley Rideout, Jess Wedel

Categories: Expedition Dispatches Mount Rainier

Elevation: 14,410'

The Mt. Rainier RMI and SheJumps Climb, led by Hannah Smith, reached the summit today at 5:40am with 100% success! They have started their descent from the crater rim and will return to Basecamp later today.

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This team humbly crushed the route and completed in style!

Posted by: Number one fan on 7/13/2021 at 11:38 pm

Congrats!!! What an amazing accomplishment!!

Posted by: Kimberly Austin-Ellis on 7/12/2021 at 3:45 pm

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Mountaineering Training | Is Your Training Working? Using Benchmarks

October 21, 2013

Posted by: Pete Van Deventer

Categories: Mountaineering Fitness & Training

The ability to measure your gains throughout a training program is a great way to stay motivated and identify areas that you want to work on more. In college I raced on the cross-country ski team. On the team, we had several different benchmark sessions throughout our summer and fall training seasons. These sessions helped measure strength, anaerobic threshold, race speed, and endurance. While the demands of nordic ski racing are somewhat different than mountaineering, these categories still apply directly to mountaineering. If you incorporate tests into your training plan early, you’ll have a benchmark to compare each subsequent test to. With a tool to identify your progress, you’ll be amazed at the progress you will make in getting faster, stronger, and fitter!

As food for thought, a couple of the events that we used were:

A Strength Test: The test encompasses three different core exercises that isolate different muscle groups: sit-ups, push-ups, and dips. Starting with sit-ups, do as many complete sit-ups as possible within a 1-minute span, rest for 30 seconds, and then repeat. We did the same with both push-ups and dips, keeping track of the numbers. When repeating the test later in the season, you are able to track your gains in core strength.

3000-meter running test and time trials: Both allowed us to compare times over a consistent course and test aerobic thresholds. The 3000m is long enough (7.5 laps of a standard track) to attain a good idea of how you can push and maintain over an extended distance. Time trials are the same, though distance and mechanism can vary (20 kilometers on a bike or a 45 minute uphill run). Longer courses focus on aerobic capacity (endurance), while shorter events move more towards the aerobic threshold (the ability to process lactic acid and maintain aerobic respiration).

Uphill sprint test: Running uphill as hard as I could pushed me into the anaerobic zone and measured maximum performance. Alpine ski areas, a local uphill grind, or even a long set of stairs are a great place to do this test. Find a section 2-3 minutes long, duck your head, and give it all you have.

Be creative with creating your own benchmark tests! Enter a 5k race periodically, use your local stadium stairs as an anaerobic test, and create a strength test that works for you. The options are pretty limitless, and when you see how much time you’ve dropped on that uphill run, or how many more sit-ups you can do over the period, you’ll be that much more psyched to keep getting after it. As always, be careful, especially at the beginning. Training only works if it’s making you stronger so train smart and stay injury free!

_____

Pete Van Deventer is a senior guide at RMI Expeditions. A former collegiate nordic skier, Pete climbs and guides around the world, from the Andes to Alaska. Pete is leading an expedition on Denali 's West Buttress in May. Also an avid skier, Pete has sailed and skied on several occasions through Norway's Lofoten Islands, read about the adventure on the RMI Blog.

Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!

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Mt. Baker: Summit Easton Glacier!

August 2, 2022

Posted by: Kiira Antenucci, Joey Manship, Augi Fleer

Categories: Expedition Dispatches North Cascades

Elevation: 10,781'

RMI Guide Kiira Antenucci and Team reached the summit of Mt. Baker via the Easton Glacier. The team had a great three days of climbing. The Easton Glacier Route of Mt. Baker is perfect for the beginner looking to learn about climbing on glaciers, or the experienced climber seeking to stand atop a northwest classic.

Congratulations Team for taking on the challenge!

Cotopaxi Express: Wittmier & Team Visit the Equator and Tour Quito

November 1, 2021

Posted by: Dustin Wittmier

Categories: Expedition Dispatches Ecuador

Elevation: 9,350'

The members of the team arrived safely in Quito and ventured out yesterday for a city tour of Quito. The first (and generally favorite) stop on the tour was at the Mitad del Mundo museum, which means "middle of the world". This museum is located on the equatorial line and the tour guides give us a review of some 8th grade science (which it seems we have all forgotten). At an elevation greater than 9,000' we are already getting our breathing in check and today are looking forward to a warm-up hike on Rucu Pichincha!

RMI Guide Dustin Wittmier

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