All is well in Tanzania. We’ve had great weather and the team is humming along really well.
We hit the trail just after 8 am and hiked for an hour before taking our usual 15 minute break, then back on the trail for another hour and so on. All total today we hiked for just over 6 hours before reaching Barranco camp. Our gracious Kilimanjaro porters have been working very hard and we arrive once again to a camp set up and ready for us.
Along the way we passed around the famous Lava Tower reaching just over 15,000' setting new altitude records for many. We also passed by many of the giant groundsels and towering Senecio trees that made us feel as if we were in some crazy Dr. Suess story.
By late afternoon, our Kilimanjaro climbing team had formed up in Usa River, Tanzania. Not without some missed flights and reroutes of course… and the airlines are still hanging on to one duffel bag of gear, but the team is together and ready to launch this adventure. We began with a pleasant dinner outside in the garden of the Rivertrees Inn. There were certainly some yawns and bleary eyes from jet lag, but we also shared some good laughs and a few somber and serious moments as the nine of us introduced ourselves and tried to explain why Kilimanjaro has come to mean so much in our lives. We’ll get into the nuts and bolts of packing and prepping for the mountain tomorrow…
Allison!! Seeing your smiling beautiful face is the best sight!!! You are amazing, we love you so much and Chris is truly with you every step of the way. Cannot wait to continue to keep up with your adventures - love ya mama!!
Posted by: Melena on 8/10/2023 at 4:25 pm
Allison, what an adventure! We are looking forward to following your progress through the blog. Stay safe…our thoughts and prayers are with you every step of the way.
Love, Mom and Bill
The early morning greeted us with views of all the surrounding peaks: Hunter, Foraker, and Francis. After filling our bellies with instant coffee and bacon bagel sandwiches we broke down camp, loaded the sleds, clipped into the ropes and hit the glacier. The day started with a gradual downhill to give us a nice warmup to the heavy sleds. Four miles later with achy hips, back and feet we arrived to our new home for the day. It was a hard, heavy day but the team handled it with flying colors. The rest of the day was filled with naps, munching on snacks, and a game of cards. Tomorrow's agenda is to move to 9,500 Camp. Ski hill will be our morning warmup, so an early night to rest up is a must.
Early to bed, early to rise,
RMI Guide Hannah Smith and team
Hello again.
We woke to another beautiful sunny day here in the Khumbu. We started early to beat the traffic and the team made good time, yet taking time to enjoy this peaceful and majestic place.
There were still dozens of loads headed for basecamp as always, because much of the needed supplies arrive via plane or from a few days away by mules.
We also ran into several more friends on the trail headed for Everest and it was nice to say hello and wish them the best.
With a little luck we hope to be back in Kathmandu tomorrow morning!
Keep your fingers crossed for us.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
RMI Guide Mike Haugen radioed from Columbia Crest at 7:10AM to report that the Four Day Summit Climb July 9 - 12 was on the summit of Mt. Rainier. Mike reported a beautiful day with lights winds which increased at the crater. The teams enjoyed the clear skies and beautiful views before starting their descent from the crater rim.
Congratulations to today's Summit Climb teams!
Alpine climbing requires a lot of different skills. Alpinists are constantly route finding, assessing hazards, protecting exposed areas, and moving efficiently in the terrain. If you’re climbing with a qualified guide, they’ll take care of the big picture and you’ll just need to focus on the movement skills. Moving efficiently in technical terrain is what makes climbing challenging and fun - there’s always something to learn and ways to improve. The better you move, the less energy a climb will take and the more you’ll be able to focus on what’s going on around you and enjoy the climb.
On classic alpine climbs, like Forbidden Peak’s West Ridge, Sahale’s Quien Sabe or Shuksan’s Fisher Chimneys, basic rock climbing skills are the key to moving efficiently on summit day. These skills only get better with practice, and adding some balance and rock movement skills to your training regime can give you a big leg up. With a few pointers and some practice, you can develop your rock movement skills so that you stay on your feet, use less energy and are more confident on rock before you arrive in the mountains.
Basic rock movement is similar to how you walk already, with a little more attention paid to the physics at your feet. Here are some techniques that you can use to effectively move on rock:
Climbing with your eyes
I constantly remind my clients to “climb with their eyes.” Look around the terrain, find the easiest path, and plan it out a few steps ahead of time. Finding the easiest way up takes a good deal of focus while you climb, but it’s a great way to stay engaged and it saves a great deal of energy over the course of a long day.
As you climb, look for features that resemble stairs – level platforms that you can get your entire boot on. This allows you to use a minimal amount of energy for balance and makes it easy to use a technique called the rest step. If you can find a natural staircase up the mountain it’s just walking!
Edging
When you can’t find large stair-like features in the rock, you have to lower your standards. Instead of using a perfect stair, you may be reduced to placing the edge of your boot onto a tiny feature. This is called edging. The smaller the features you are edging on, the more effort and balance it takes to keep from slipping off. Keep climbing with your eyes and look for the biggest features possible!
Edging allows you to climb very steep, relatively blank rock faces. It’s tougher physically and much less secure than stepping onto boot-sized platforms. With some practice you’ll be able to get up steep, technical rock and begin to feel comfortable on it. The more time you spend practicing on different sized edges and on different types of rock (granite, limestone, sandstone, basalt, etc) the more you’ll recognize how secure you are on those features.
Check out this video from Eastern Mountain Sports on edging skills!
Smearing
Smearing uses the friction and adhesion between your boot soles and the rock grip surfaces that are too smooth or sloped to edge on. To get maximize your grip you need to do two things:
1. maximize the contact area between your soles and the rock
2. make sure the force you’re exerting is perpendicular to the rock surface.
This means putting the rubber to the road, or in this case, the boot sole to the slab. Articulate your knees and ankles so that the sole of your boot matches the angle of the rock. By putting as much rubber on the rock as you can, you increase the adhesion of the rubber soles to the rock and can grip some surprisingly steep slopes.
Make sure to apply your body weight as close to perpendicular to the rock as you can. This boils down to keeping your weight directly above your feet by keeping your posture upright. With your back straight and your head high, your weight will naturally rest directly above your feet. This keeps the normal force of your bodyweight pushing into the rock, which increases friction. The more friction, the better the grip and the more you can relax and look around to plan your next moves.
This body positioning is counter-intuitive for most people. Climbers that are unaware of their body position often lean forward, putting their body weight uphill of their boots, changing the direction of the normal force towards parallel with the rock, and reducing friction, resulting in a slip. It’s very common, especially when terrain gets steeper, to want to lean in toward the rock – resist the urge and climb strong!
Here's another EMS video showing smearing skills.
With both edging and smearing, the more practice you get the more comfortable you’ll be on challenging rock. You’ll develop a more realistic assessment of how secure your foot placements are and that will make a huge difference in how efficient you are. Being more confident with your foot placements will allow you to relax on difficult terrain and you will save a ton of energy.
You can practice these techniques at home. Get started at your local climbing gym or sniff out small rock outcroppings if you don’t have access to a rock gym. Keep your practice low on the rocks so that you don’t get stuck on top of something- it’s always easier to climb up rock than it is to down climb!
_____
Zeb Blais is a senior guide at RMI Expeditions. Zeb splits his time between the Sierras in California and the North Cascades of Washington. He guides worldwide for RMI, from Aconcagua to Mexico, Rainier to Alaska. A passionate skier, Zeb spends his free time pursuing personal adventures around the world, including an attempted traverse of the Fedchenko Glacier of Tajikistan.
Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!
The Four Day Summit Climb Teams for June 5 - 8, 2014 reached the summit of Mt. Rainier just before 7 am today. RMI Guide Seth Waterfall checked in from the crater rim. The teams are enjoying clear skies and cool temperatures during their time on top today. The teams will return to Camp Muir and then continue their descent to Paradise and return to Rainier Base Camp later today.
Congratulations to today's teams!
Our team had a great training hike today, taking a gondola from Quito to an altitude of around 13,000'. There we started our hike up towards Rucu Pichincha, the dominating volcano that towers over Quito. We hiked in clouds to an altitude of ~15,200'. Everyone did great with the thin air, and climbed very strong. After descending, we had a little free time to explore Quito before dinner. Dinner was delicious Ecuadorian cuisine including tomales, sea bass, and potato and cheese soup.
We're exited to head out tomorrow morning for our second training hike to the Illiniza volcanoes.
Wind found its way right down into Everest Basecamp today, flapping tents, tarps and prayer flags indiscriminately. The upside to this was that the air stayed quite clear and sparkly throughout the day, without any haze or smoke creeping up-valley from Nepal's inhabited regions.
Those of us down for rest knew by breakfast that the team at the South Col had not left their camp the night before on a summit bid. Peter Whittaker reported that the winds had actually decreased as the team approached their "go-no-go" decision point in the night, but that clouds had enveloped the peak of Everest and that snow had fallen in the night. Ultimately, Peter said that the poor visibility had torpedoed any attempt last night and that his team would put their hopes into a new bid this evening.
The Col team is spending the day at rest close to 26,000 feet above sea level. This shouldn't hurt their chances for climbing well: in fact, an opportunity to catch up on hydration, rest and feeding will probably make them stronger-provided that they are availing themselves of the bottled oxygen supply from time to time. But that supply isn't unlimited, by any means, and "kicking back" at 8000 meters isn't simple or easy. We are all hoping that tonight will be the night for the team to break free of the tents and go for a climb. Wind and weather need to cooperate, and the game may get a bit more complicated in terms of timing and traffic flow. Our climbers will not have the route to themselves, as several other teams will have made it up from Camp III to the Col today. But I'm certain our team has anticipated that and will make whatever adjustments are needed to avoid bottlenecks and jams.
Down here in Basecamp, it has been a day for reading, reviewing weather reports, playing games and mostly sitting inside, out of the wind. Linden Mallory (our Basecamp manager) went for one of his traditional fast hikes at midday. Tom (the video dispatch editor) experimented today with various odd beard configurations before scrapping the whole thing in favor of the clean-cut look. Erica and Seth went for the post-lunch-leg-stretcher-walk down along the glacial moraine toward Gorak Shep. Melissa is once again enjoying good health and a day to chat with her friend Amber (up to volunteer for several days with the HRA clinic next door). Cherie worked her normal morning magic with sat-phones, emails and BGANs in order to keep the team connected with Eddie Bauer/First Ascent headquarters back in Bellevue, WA. Kent Harvey tinkered with his cameras and heeded my monotonous advice to rest, rest, and rest a little more. Any day now, we'll spring back into action and put in one heck of a hard week of climbing... promise.
While the rest of the gang set out in the dark for "production work" up and over the ridge to Khumjung, I followed at a more civilized hour with Erica and Ed Dohring. Father and daughter were both feeling fine after two nights and a rest day living the Namche high life. On this calm and sunny morning, we hiked up to Syangboche, the sometimes-used dirt airstrip five hundred feet directly above Namche. The mountains were big and bright and unobscured by any cloud whatsoever. As we came to the forested ridgecrest separating us from the Khumjung Valley, we were granted a big view of Everest and Lhotse with wind tearing ragged cloud banners from their summits. We connected up with the early-morning film squad to find the gang over in the Khumjung Bakery. They finished up breakfast and then together we went out for a few more photos, posing amongst the peaks on a fine spring day. Once this was finished, Ed, Erica and I continued with our acclimatization hike, agreeing to meet one and all back down in Namche in the afternoon. But first we found our way to the deck of the Everest View hotel to enjoy... what else? The Everest view with a couple of plates of French fries at 12,000 plus feet. A humongous brown and gold eagle flew close over our fries on his/her way through the tree tops of the ridge. There were a few other tourists about, but for the most part we'd gotten away from the "crowds" of trekkers and porters on the main trail up-valley.
Our walk was quite leisurely and enjoyable, but it was not without purpose. Rest on a rest day is a great and valuable thing, but light exercise at a slightly higher altitude than one is currently sleeping at is also a great way to prepare for actually moving higher. We'll do that tomorrow, assuming that everybody has a manageable last night in Namche. But first, folks are back to resting... enjoying last showers and internet access and shopping in the metropolis of Namche Bazaar.
Climb Lacey Climb!!! :)
Farmer Dave
Posted by: Dave Kestel on 9/22/2023 at 3:13 am
Looks like it’s getting chilly! What temps are you seeing?
Posted by: Patti Tito on 9/21/2023 at 7:37 pm
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