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The Five Day Summit Climb led by Robert Montague and the Four Day Summit Climb led by Jason Thompson reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning. Conditions on the summit were windy (40mph) and clear. The teams are currently resting at Camp Muir before beginning their descent to Paradise; they will be back in Ashford this afternoon. Congratulations to today's summit climbers!

Hello everyone! Billy here checking in for the rest of the crew after the first official day of our Denali expedition. Today's theme: attention to detail. Lots of packing- group gear, food, hardware, clothing systems, etc. etc. After a great orientation with the park service this afternoon the team tied up all the loose ends and we are officially ready to rock and roll. Tomorrow morning we are hoping to fly in to Kahiltna Base earlier rather later but that is contingent upon the winds. The weather should be clear but possibly a bit breezy. Regardless, the pilots at K2 seem optimistic about getting onto the mountain tomorrow. Wish us luck! Mike would also like to make a shout out to his grandfather. He's thinking of you. RMI Guide Billy Nugent

The Four Day Climb led by RMI Guides Mike Walter and Henry Coppolillo reached the summit of Mt. Rainier early this morning. Mike Walter reported moderate winds, clear skies and a solid climbing on their way to the top. The team is on the descent, and will be celebrating with cold beverages and at Rainier Basecamp by the early afternoon.

Congratulations Team!

Greetings from 15,200'. We were rewarded today with a short three hour hike to Barafu Camp, last stop before the summit. This is it! Tonight we go for the top. Everyone is excited, and perhaps a wee bit nervous. Climbing to 19,340' is no small feat. But with all the preparation and great acclimatization we've taken advantage of we're more than ready. Our wonderful camp staff has been spoiling us rotten, greeting us with bowls of hot water once we got settled in camp and a lunch that couldn't be better. It's amazing what they do here, considering that it takes over two hours for a porter to get a five-gallon bucket of water from the nearest stream. We've discussed the details of the climb tonight and have been preparing our gear so we're all ready for tonight's departure. We'll try to get to bed around 6:00pm and awaken at 11:30pm. Breakfast at midnight and walking shortly thereafter. Wish us luck! RMI Guide Brent Okita

On The Map

Hi this is Seth checking in from our last camp on Kilimanjaro. We are all down from the summit safe and sound. We had a great climb that started off with a pretty good snow storm for Tanzania and ended with clear skies on top. Everyone made it to Uhuru Peak as well which was great. That makes 100% success for my two trips this season. After the summit we had sunny skies back to high camp where we had a late breakfast and a brief rest. Following that we made our way down the notoriously steep Mweka descent trail to our final camp. Of course we had a few rain showers get to us on the way down. That has just been the nature of Kili this season but we are all dry in our tents and planning on an early dinner. Tomorrow we will head out in the morning and expect to be back at the Dik Dik hotel by early afternoon. Our safari starts the next morning! RMI Guide Seth Waterfall

On The Map

The southern solstice treated us to a long, restful, and relaxing day here at Camp 2. We waited until the sun reached camp before stirring and then had a relaxed morning, watching the long shadows coming off the mountain above us gradually fade as the sun rose higher. From camp, we have perfect views of a good portion of our climbing route on summit day. There was hardly a puff of wind coming off of the top of Aconcagua and we could make out our trail crossing the wide scree slope called the Acarero and up the gully known as the Canaleta to reach the summit ridge. The perfect weather, views of the route, and time to rest and recover has motivated us and we are excited about the coming days. Tomorrow we plan to move up to Camp 3 at 19,500' in hopes of making a push for the summit in the following days. We are all feeling strong, rested, and ready for the next push. We'll check in tomorrow from high camp. RMI Guide Linden Mallory

We made the big trek to Camp 3 today! It's not actually that far, about three hours of walking, but there aren't too many O's at 19,000 feet, and we had a pretty decent wind gusting at us from all directions. Needless to say, we are happy to be in our tents in camp, and pumped for the summit push tomorrow morning. We'll see how much sleep we can get in the thin air up here first, and hopefully we'll give a call from the summit tomorrow afternoon. Cheers, RMI Guides Pete Van Deventer, Leon Davis, Mike King, and gang

On The Map

Monday, May 15, 2023 - 5:00 PM PT

We've been tentbound all day today in a storm, so not much to report. We delivered delicious breakfast burritos to our climbers in their sleeping bags, and we're all safe and comfortable in our tents. That's all the news to report from the Kahiltna Glacier!

RMI Guide Mike Walter

Well the team has arrived in beautiful St. Petersburg. It was a long day of travel: three-hour bus ride followed by a three-hour flight. It's warm here and the sun doesn't set until nearly 11pm. We went on a short walk to stretch the legs and had a wonderful dinner at a great little cafe nearby. Everyone is doing well and looking forward to exploring the city tomorrow. RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew

Base Camp is a busy place these days as all of the teams have arrived and the route through the icefall is now open. In the daytime climbers and trekkers are constantly milling about camp, checking in with friends and other teams to see what everyone's plans are. It's quite a scene. Since the Icefall Doctors completed the route to Camp 1 teams have been busy staking claims to the prime sites. At least one team has sent climbers to spend the night there thus starting their first acclimatization 'rotation'. The Sherpas in our team went to Camp 1 the day the Icefall Doctors completed the final leg of the route and marked off an area for our camp there. Today our team carried loads of gear to the camp. This accomplished two things. The first and most obvious is to transport some of our gear further up the mountain. The second is to aid our acclimatization by climbing to almost 20,000 feet before returning to Base Camp to recover. This was my first trip through the icefall in it's entirety. Of course I've heard about it, read about it, and have had plenty of time to obsess about it over the last 6 days. But there's no way to really get a feel for it other than climbing through it. I have climbed on plenty of glaciers. In fact I've spent weeks on end living on glaciers. But climbing through an icefall, where the glacier drops off of a steep slope, picks up speed and breaks up into crevasses (you can fall in these) and ice towers called seracs (these can fall on you) is not a normal or common thing, even for a mountain guide. So we got up at 2:15 am this morning and started our climb at 3am. There's two reasons to start this early. One is to get ahead of other people that may slow us down in dangerous sections. The other is to climb in the nice, cool temperatures of the night and avoid the oppressive heat of the day. Well, I must admit the 'cool' night time temps here are really ridiculously cold so getting out of my sleeping bag was the first crux of the day. From our camp it's about 45 minutes to the first big crevasses. The Icefall Doctors use aluminum ladders to bridge crevasses. On Rainier we also use ladders to cross crevasses the only difference is that on Rainier we'll use two to three ladders in a season, here there is about 35 ladders crossing crevasses and climbing up and down seracs. The Doctors do a great job of making things as safe as possible in the icefall. Of course there's the ladders, but they also place tons of rope on the route so you can always be clipped in and safe from a big fall. Once in the icefall itself there are precious few places to safely stop for a break. The glacier is always shifting and moving so you really don't know when a chunk of ice may come crashing down. Your best bet for safety is to move quickly and to climb in control. Fortunately our team was able to stay fairly close together owing to our early departure. There were not many people for us to get caught behind and separated. We did manage to sneak in a couple of rest breaks, though we did make excellent time and we arrived at Camp 1 at the top of the icefall just before 7:00 am. Camp 1 is a tricky place to camp. It is sandwiched in between the steep faces of Everest's West Ridge and the north face of Nuptse. Both sides of the valley are prone to ice and snow avalanches. The trick there is to position your camp so as to mitigate the danger from both sides of the valley. Also the climbing route from Camp 1 to Camp 2 currently avoids the big crevasses in the center of the glacier but passes directly under some avalanche paths on Nuptse. We were discussing the relative merits of two different campsites and where the climbing route will be the safest when a large avalanche came ripping down off of the summit of Nuptse. To our shock there was a large group of people on the climbing route, directly under the avalanche. Fortunately most of the snow and ice from the avalanche landed in the 'moat' between the glacier and the steeper slopes of Nuptse and the folks on the route, including some Sherpas from our team were only blasted with a 'powder cloud' from the avalanche. Still, this was a scary event and a reminder to be ever respectful of the power of the mountains.