Our Four Day Summit Climb teams led by Billy Nugent and Gabriel Barral reached the top of Mt. Rainier today. They climbed into a cloud cap that greeted them with strong winds and cold temperatures. The teams started their descent back to Camp Muir at about 8:01am PST.
Our Emmons Expedition Skills Seminar team led by Dan Windham check it at 12:52pm PST today from Camp Schurman. The team headed out for their summit attempt at about 7:00am PST in hopes that the rain and wind they experienced at camp would die down. The team was able to reach an elevation of 12,000' but decided to turn back due to poor visibility, strong winds and heavy snow. The team will continue training and plan on being back at Rainier Basecamp tomorrow afternoon.
Congratulations to today's teams.
Despite weather forecasts calling for high winds, we woke to clear skies, cool temps, and dissipating winds. By mid-morning, the weather looked good enough to do our carry. Our loads where light today as we only had to move three days worth of food, as well as a small amount of personal gear up hill to camp 3. The group climbed in style, arriving at our 19,600 ft camp in about 3.5 hours. The descent went quickly, and the group is back in camp resting, re-hydrating, and preparing for our last rest day before the summit push.
The stoke meter boosted to 8 today with our beautiful weather and successful carry.
We'll check in tomorrow with tales of rest day shenanigans.
RMI Guide Gabriel Barral and the Aconcagua Team
HELLO LISA (and her climbing team). From the blogs it sounds like the climb is going good. We are so proud of you Lisa and can’t wait until you get home. Looking forward to your stories of the climb and also can’t wait to see all your pictures. Be safe :) Bill and Jeri
Posted by: Jeri Hall on 1/19/2011 at 10:37 pm
Another beautiful photo! Glad your climb today went well. Will look forward to the next blog post. :)
We had a really great week! Lots of super successful training!
I wish we could have gone to the summit on the first day because it was such a spectacular day to be in the mountains, beautiful, sunny and not a breath of wind! We couldn’t, though, because we hadn’t completed our basic mountaineering training yet, and then the weather just closed the window.
The winds seemed to have hammered the slopes pretty hard prior to our arrival as everything was sporting a windslab. Nothing had released naturally, but we saw several releases propagated by icefall.
We really focused on our training and spent a lot of time outside. Avalanche hazard awareness, beacon searches, and the decision-making process of travel in avy terrain dominated much of the week. We also spent quite a bit of time on camp craft – building bomber snowcaves and setting up expedition-style camps. Of course, rope and anchor work, fixed line travel, crevasse rescue systems and other Denali-prep skills kept us busy as well.
A great week!
Today the team managed to summit El Pico de Orizaba!
We needed a perfect weather setup and that's just what we got. Sunshine yesterday combined with wind from just the right direction diminished the avalanche hazard from the previous storm. We awoke before midnight to crystal clear skis and no wind. After suffering through the storm on Ixta, and never even roping up, the team was psyched to go for the summit on Orizaba. The unusually large snowpack this year was a delight as the normally rocky and challenging lower mountain was a snow-climb right out of the hut. However as we ascended onto the Jamapa glacier our tough luck returned in the form of a cold wind that averaged at least 25 miles an hour. This made the final hours of the climb a total battle. It was cold enough that we spent less than 10 minutes on the summit before retreating, but the success after all of our adversity felt great.
Tonight we overnight in Tlachichuca and tomorrow we head to the airport in Mexico City for our flights home.
Well done team!
We are back down in the lap of luxury...aka Everest Basecamp. Our final round of preparation is finished; next time up will be for all the summit marbles.
The last couple of days at ABC were somewhat surreal. Yesterday morning, I came out of the tent at 6 AM fully expecting to still be in the middle of the storm we'd been enjoying for days. The forecasts had called for the same bit of jet stream to be snaking back and forth over the range, with continued potential for big snowfall. But as I looked up at the Lhotse Face, trying to decide whether we'd go for our planned sleepover at Camp III, the storm was nowhere to be seen. Certainly, the absence of this big snow and wind event was a good thing...but I was confused nonetheless. Was it a trap? Was it the well-known "sucker hole" phenomenon, wherein a break in the clouds lures climbers (also known as suckers) up to some place where they will be more vulnerable when the real storm rolls back in? I wanted my climbers-Seth, Erica and Kent-to get the exercise and confidence that would come with another attack on the Lhotse Face, and ideally, I wanted them to have a night up there near 24,000 ft. But if we were merely in a lull in the storm, and we cranked on up to Camp III well, then I could all too easily envision a little too much experience being gained, holding on all night as a hurricane tried to separate us from the wall and perhaps some good frostbite experience the following morning as we tried rapping down frozen ropes in a gale. So to get back to the point I stood there at ABC yesterday morning, looking at exactly the calm conditions I'd been hoping for all night, and I chickened out.
Seth was poking his head out of his tent and watching me chew on all of this in the shadows. He seemed to understand and agree with my concerns...we hadn't actually planned to do this CIII sleeping rotation without support and because no Sherpas had been able to get up from BC through the storm of the past day, we would essentially be undertaking the push with just Ang Kaji's help. Kaji is very capable, but the workload included an unknown (but most likely significant) amount of digging to get a storm-ravaged Camp III back in condition for our stay. "Sleeping" at Camp III is already an experience in misery...it is debatable as to whether humans actually acclimate to 24,000 ft. (as opposed to just dying cell by cell and becoming accustomed to that)...but I've always felt that it was useful to get the first shock of such an uncomfortable night out of the way before any summit bid. But add a few other shocks to that practice night and people can get so badly worked ok that they are not in any way, shape or form ready for the summit push the following week. SO by the time that Kent stuck his head out of his tent, I'd firmly decided that we would NOT attempt Camp III on this calm and pretty morning. Over breakfast, I explained that we'd just go for another hike to the base of the Lhotse Face. Since I was prone to frustration over how nice the weather seemed and how little we were taking "advantage" of the day I tried rationalizing for my partners so that they might avoid such glum and unproductive thoughts themselves. Perhaps it wasn't a "lull" in a storm at all perhaps it was the beginning of the big shift toward better weather that everybody had been waiting for. And without a run up the Lhotse Face, we had still managed to cobble together a pretty decent acclimatization round at ABC while nearly all other teams were sitting down valley, fretting over forecasts. Ang Kaji, Seth, Erica and I were all still healthy, we had all of ABC to ourselves (each team had basically left just one caretaker/cook per camp), and yesterday turned out to be nothing short of a stunningly nice, calm, warm day with an awesome sunset not really the kind of stuff to get frustrated over.
This morning we came on down toward BC. Carefully, since there hadn't been much traffic and the route through the Western Cwm was disguised by a few inches of new snow. Crevasses were lurking and just begging to be revealed by a misstep of my size 14.5 boots in the new powder. Then we came to the first Sherpas working up from BC and they got the benefit of our tracks while we enjoyed theirs. Ed Viesturs and Peter Whittaker weren't far behind with our first summit team. They'd come up through the Icefall and reported that a big chunk of the route had fallen out with a collapse near the glacier's center. I wasn't too concerned for our proposed descent since Peter's team had alerted the Icefall Doctors to the problem. We took a rest at old Camp I with summit-bound Melissa and Gerry, along with most of our Sherpa team. Looking around at the remaining tents belonging to other teams, I was amazed at how destructive the storm had been. Poles were broken, whole tents were uprooted and displaced, tents were half buried and squashed Camp I was a widespread mess. So I was pleased to find our First Ascent tent, intact and well anchored apparently ready for the next storm.
We bid our teammates good luck, donned our climbing helmets and dove down into the Khumbu Icefall. Sure enough, when we reached the collapse in the middle, Icefall Doc Ang Nima from Dingboche was already swinging his trusty hammer and fixing new rope with a partner. They'd cobbled together a fine detour that we took full advantage of. As usual, it was sobering to see the expanse of glacier (two acres?) that had simply caved in, but I was satisfied with the timing of the event. The glacier is welcome to do whatever it wants in the dead of night...just settle down for morning, please. My gang settled into Basecamp by about 11 a.m., about the same time that our teammates were getting to their new home at ABC...we'd pulled a neat switch. I'm sure that Peter, Ed, Melissa, Gerry, Jake, and John Griber were anxious as anything to get up there and get on with their climb, while we were pleased as punch to head for the showers and thick camp mattresses of BC again.
As expected, the weather was still a little "off" today, with lots of cloud and some wind up high, but it was definitely improving. We took it easy this morning but got in a training session in the afternoon, reviewing techniques we hope to employ tomorrow when we go for a carry, attempting to put supplies at 16,200 ft. This evening, some of the high cloud finally cleared out and the team got to see mountains Hunter and Foraker along with a magnificent view straight up at Denali.
We woke to snow and it hasn't stopped since. Needless to say no planes came to pick us up. Morale is holding but we are getting a bit antsy as a team. There has been lots of laying down. Backs are sore, legs restless, minds are going stir crazy. It's only been a couple days but our exit is so close. Tomorrow may be better for weather, so fingers crossed its clear in Talkeetna and clear here so we can hop on that plane and get some much needed showers.
Till than we lay once again in our sleeping bags listening to the pitter patter of the snow.
It was another relatively slow day at 14,000’ Camp. As promised, there were some strong gusts that shook the tents last night into this morning, but the wind settled, and it continued to snow through most of the day. We did laps of camp, socialized, laughed about the army barracks of RMI tents that are now up here as we have four RMI Expedition Teams at 14,000’ camp. One climber asked for street signs, since he got confused, took a wrong turn, and tried to enter the wrong tent.
The team got a solid Start on an igloo, and a couple of folks in camp got rad new haircuts designed for speed. The forecast is giving us some hope that this weekend will give us a chance. We will be up early tomorrow to look uphill and see if things look good enough to launch. If so, our summit push will start.
RMI Guides Pete VanDeventer, Henry Coppolillo, Tatum Whatford and Team
Good morning everyone.
Guess what? We're at high camp! We traveled at night today to take advantage of the colder temps and to avoid the thawing ice that, when hit by the sun, might naturally shed some pieces.
Climbing the "Canaleta" (gully) at night, with a heavy pack is no joke. We're talking steeper and harder terrain than the standard route on Denali, with no fixed lines and at Aconcagua height!!! Our team is kicking butt.
We're now camped and settled in for the day, in hopes of good weather tonight to go for the 900 meters that separate us from the top of the Highest Glaciated Peak in the western Hemisphere.
Follow along!
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos
The team had a relaxing and slow morning at Vinson Basecamp. Many commented on how good it had been to sleep well and warm once again. Life at Basecamp seemed a million times easier than it had before we climbed the mountain. However, yesterday's predictions and proclamations that we'd shuttle from airplane to airplane and from continent to continent... were overly optimistic. We did succeed -in late afternoon- in catching a twin otter out of VBC. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and so the high mountains of the Sentinel Range were spectacular whereas they'd been cloaked in murk when we flew in. Union Glacier camp was even cushier than VBC, naturally, and so nobody expressed great frustration when it was announced that the Ilyushin 76 would not be coming today due to deteriorating weather. We're plenty happy for the moment, sitting in chairs and eating food that guides didn't cook. The gang wouldn't mind flying tomorrow though... We'll see.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
The stoke meter boosted to 8 today with our beautiful weather and successful carry.
We'll check in tomorrow with tales of rest day shenanigans.
RMI Guide Gabriel Barral and the Aconcagua Team
HELLO LISA (and her climbing team). From the blogs it sounds like the climb is going good. We are so proud of you Lisa and can’t wait until you get home. Looking forward to your stories of the climb and also can’t wait to see all your pictures. Be safe :) Bill and Jeri
Posted by: Jeri Hall on 1/19/2011 at 10:37 pm
Another beautiful photo! Glad your climb today went well. Will look forward to the next blog post. :)
Posted by: Judy H. on 1/19/2011 at 7:30 pm
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