Hello everyone in the lowlands! It's Team 2 up here at Camp 1 on Aconcagua. We just found some prime real estate at 16,200 feet. It's a sunny day with some scattered clouds, which made it comfortable climbing.
Everyone is doing great and we are now relaxing in the sun drinking water and eating to recover.
RMI Guide JJ Justman
Cindee,
Happy New Year! You must be getting close to summit or already summited. Hope your first two days of the new year are treating you well!
Kristina
Posted by: Kristina Markula on 1/2/2014 at 9:36 am
Merry Christmas to all you trekkers. Josh it was so nice to hear your voice. I know you all are having a wonderful time and what an experience to will be able to share with us when you get home. We went to Mass and spent Christmas Eve with Lily’s family and truly missed you not being there but knew you were there in spirit. Have a great and blessed day today and continue to be safe. I can’t wait to see you and a picture of you all the day you summit. Lots of love of this Christmas Day. love mom and dad
We got a chance to enjoy an Antarctic storm today. It wasn't one for the record books, no epic, not particularly special. Just a fair amount of cloud, snow, blowing snow and persistent wind. In other words, it was a "no fly" day. It sounded like Vinson Basecamp was reporting similarly bad weather at their end. At first we thought we might be able to spend the day reviewing climbing techniques, but then the wind picked up and it became an indoors day. So we passed time in the mess tent, getting to know some of the people who will try to visit Emperor Penguin colonies and speaking to those who will try to either bike, ski or walk to the South Pole. It was a day for reading and writing and resting. Perhaps tomorrow we'll get to fly out to Mount Vinson.
Best Regards
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Hello everyone from Team Texas in Russia! St Petersburg to be exact. Look... I'm going to be honest with you, we don't want to make you jealous. However, ending the trip in St Pete's is indescribable. So! To give you a tiny idea of how spectacular it is here, take a look at our slide show of today's events.
And don't go to far. I will have another slideshow of our canal tour later tonight. Stop dreaming and come to Russia!
RMI Guide JJ Justman
With all that snow you’re getting, I bet you’d be happy to see a little sunshine. It’s nice and warm down here in the Chicago area. Wish we could send some sunshine & warmth your way.
Hope you’re able to get some good photos of the climb between the snowfalls. Can’t wait to see them.
As far as the home front goes, Summit’s doing good although Mom’s a wreck, but what do you expect! As you know, I’m the one that has to suffer through all this, so I hope you appeciate what I’m going through.
Anyways, take care and look forward to your return. Best wishes also to your fellow climbers.
We are enjoying the beautiful and interesting indigenous market in Otovalo this morning. Our senses are overwhelmed here-- with all of the colors of the woven textiles, the smells of various types of local dishes, and the hustle and bustle of Saturday's market.
After lunch we will head up to the climbers' hut on Cayambe, and get in position for our summit attempt tomorrow morning. I will be in touch tomorrow.
Hey everybody, Billy here checking in on behalf of the crew. We just arrived in Tlachichuca and are busy shaking down personal gear and checking all the group gear to make sure it`s all in good working order.
We finished off yesterday`s summit of La Malinche with an awesome meal at the La Malintzi compound. Which is a restaurant and a series of cabins used largely by the Mexican Olympic teams for high altitude training. Our climb itself was fantastic. A bit dusty but clear skies and comfortable temps made for a great ascent of the 14,000+ ft. volcano. We were actually accompanied by a pack of feral dogs all the way to the summit! Who`d have known dogs could be such good climbers! The summit greeted us with sweeping views of the farmland that surrounds, dotted by other ancient volcanoes. Well, we head off to Piedra Grande in about ten minutes from where we plan to summit El Pico de Orizaba! Of course, after another day of training and acclimatization. Wish us luck!
We`ll check in again tomorrow before we head up for the summit!
Ciao!
This is Zeb Blais and team checking in from our first camp on Mount Baker. We're gearing up to do a little training this afternoon, and then tuck in early to get to bed. We will make our summit push on the North Ridge tomorrow. We're crossing our fingers, hoping that the weather is going to hold out for us. If not, we have some great fall back plans, but until then we're doing some training and resting up.
RMI Guide Zeb Blais
RMI Guide Zeb Blais calls in from Hogsback Camp, Mt. Baker.
Climbed up and established Annapurna Camp 4 today.
The other climbers here at Camp 4 are talking about continuing on and making a try at the summit this evening (leaving here at ~9pm), because there is a storm forecast for tomorrow afternoon. This is not for me, so I'll have to decide whether to make my summit attempt early tomorrow morning and risk being in a storm as I descend, or turn back and wait for a better weather window.
RMI Guide Alex Barber
Our Kautz Expedition Skills Seminar team arrived back to RMI Basecamp in Ashford, Washington, yesterday evening. We enjoyed excellent weather during the six day program, and we took advantage of it to spend lots of time climbing and training in the mountains.
We trained on a variety of skills, including various knots and hitches, anchors, crevasse rescue, and ice climbing.
On our climb, we moved camps up the mountain and went for our summit push. The Kautz Route was in a very challenging condition, and our climbers did a great job of managing the terrain. The Kautz Ice Chute was at least eight pitches (150’ rope lengths) long, with some additional steep climbing above it. The ice presented challenging climbing at high altitude, and pushed our limits. Due to the challenging nature of the ascent and a technical descent ahead of us, we opted to turn our climb around at ~13,000’, at the top of the Wapowety Cleaver. It had taken us ten hours to get to this point and only a couple of hours of glacier travel stood between us and the summit of Mount Rainier. But, we knew we had our work cut out for us to safely descend the Ice Chute and return back to camp. Everything went smoothly and it still took us ten hours to descend.
A huge 20-hour day in the mountains is very challenging, and I’m proud of our climbers for staying strong throughout the entire journey. I hope everyone has enjoyed a shower, cold beer, and flip flops…
RMI Guide Mike Walter
Mike/Ben/Leon/Nick, thanks again for a great week! George, Thomas and I are amazed by your ability to manage the risk on that route and show us what true mountaineering is. I look forward to continuing to build on the skills you taught us and hope to climb with you all again.
We're fortunate to be in the midst of a very stable and almost perfect weather pattern here on Aconcagua: the days are clear and calm and today was no exception. After a great night's sleep at Camp 2 we packed up our gear and left for high camp by mid-morning. The trail to high camp ascends a broad north facing gulley, occasionally intersected by small cliff bands and large boulders. We weaved our way up, crossing sporadic patches of snow and across pockets of yellow dirt and rocks that smelled of sulfur. After a few hours of climbing we reached a small cliff band and followed a natural weakness in it to scramble up and over our final obstacle and right into our high camp.
Sitting at 19,540', Camp 3 is a small flat area ringed by rock towers on nearly all sides. Between the towers we can catch views over the Vacas Valley to the east into Argentina and all the way around to the west over the Horocones Valley and into Chile. Above us stands the final 3,000'+ of Aconcagua with the first portion of our route visible from Camp.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon in camp, finalizing our gear for the summit push and trying to rest up and hydrate as much as possible. We are sharing camp with a few other teams and we traded notes on conditions and forecasts: we all agreed, tomorrow is predicted to be a great summit day!
We've retired to the tents even though the sun is still quite high in the sky in hopes of getting some rest tomorrow. We are planning on making a pre-dawn alpine start tomorrow morning and going for the top! We're all doing well, feeling strong, and excited to make an attempt! We'll check in tomorrow after the climb.
RMI Guide Linden Mallory
The weather is cooperating and we're taking off to the Alaska Range and landing on the Kahiltna glacier! Our next update will be via satellite messenger and the climb will have started!
Bon voyage!
RMI Guides Andy Bond, Jack Delaney and Joey Manship
Cindee,
Happy New Year! You must be getting close to summit or already summited. Hope your first two days of the new year are treating you well!
Kristina
Posted by: Kristina Markula on 1/2/2014 at 9:36 am
Merry Christmas to all you trekkers. Josh it was so nice to hear your voice. I know you all are having a wonderful time and what an experience to will be able to share with us when you get home. We went to Mass and spent Christmas Eve with Lily’s family and truly missed you not being there but knew you were there in spirit. Have a great and blessed day today and continue to be safe. I can’t wait to see you and a picture of you all the day you summit. Lots of love of this Christmas Day. love mom and dad
Posted by: phyllis on 12/25/2013 at 8:22 am
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