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Saludos from the beautiful hacienda, Chilcabamba, at 11,500' on the flanks of Cotopaxi. The weather is great, and we have amazing views of our climbing destination, Cotopaxi from our bedroom windows. We left the city behind today, and ventured south down the 'Avenue of Volcanos'. After an hour and a half of driving, we began our 2nd acclimitization hike. This time we climbed to around 15,400', to the climbers' hut at the saddle between the Ilinizas. This hike travels above treeline, through the rolling hill grassland known as the paramo. Good weather afforded us views of the expansive valleys below, but clouds kept the Ilinizas obscured from view. Everybody did great on this foray into thinner air. It looks like we've got a very strong team for our summit attempt, and the weather looks promising. But, you take it day by day in the mountains... Tomorrow we'll head to the cliimbers' hut on Cotopaxi, at 16,000'. But right now, our minds are on dinner, the beautiful setting of our hacienda, and comfort and warmth of the woodburning stoves in our bedrooms. Life is good. Thanks for following our trip, I'll keep you posted with updates.

It was a pretty start to the day down at Karanga Camp. There were just enough clouds around to make the sunrise colorful, but not enough clouds to make us worry about the weather. It was calm and clear when we walked uphill just after 8 AM. The path upward was an easy one, on broad open slopes. Our gang had no trouble matching Naiman’s pace and in just a few hours we were going up the final, slightly steeper, slopes to Barafu Camp. As fast as we were, our support crew was faster still and we moved into a fine camp and took shelter from the strong midday sun in our tents.  Tosha served up a great lunch and then the team sat for a detailed meeting about the big climb and how to prepare for it. This all left plenty of time for resting through the afternoon in preparation for our “alpine start” tonight. In s few minutes we will chow down on an early dinner at 5 o’clock… Spaghetti! And then we will go to bed before the sun sets at 6:30.

We’ve got big plans for the night!

Best Regards,

RMI Guide Dave Hahn & Team

This is RMI Team 6, standing on the summit of Denali at 6:10 p.m.. A little bit of a cloud, not much wind. Everybody is super happy and super healthy, we are looking forward to a good descent. Thank you everybody for your support. RMI Guide Mike Haugen

On The Map

Woke up this morning to beautiful blue skies up here at the Cayambe hut with views of the mountain, Antisana in the distance, and a sea of clouds blanketing the lowlands. It was a bit of a rough night being our first evening sleeping at over 15,000' but everyone took it in steed and felt much better once we were moving around and enjoying a not so rustic breakfast. After downing breakfast burritos and coffee we packed up for a day of training and set out from the hut for the glacier. After about an hour and change of scrambling up a buttress, we hit the glacier and geared up with helmets, harnesses, ice axes, and crampons refreshing up on some of our basic climbing skills. Clouds came in and out, we chilled and boiled... Then headed back to the Refugio to eat dinner and get to bed early for tomorrow's alpine start. If the weather continues doing what it has been we should be poised for a good crack at the summit. Wish us luck! RMI Guide Billy Nugent and the gang

On The Map

Hey, this is Mike Walter calling on Tuesday the 25th of June. We are all at Chilcabamba Hacienda outside of Cotopaxi National Park. We spent two days at Cayambe, sleeping up above 15,000'. Yesterday we went out for our summit bid on Cayambe, we had a great day of climbing. The winds turned us around above 18,000'. We were within about 1,000' of the summit maybe 700' of the summit. But the winds, a cloud cap and some riming ice on our clothing turned us around. We are back at Chilcabamba resting and we'll head to Cotopaxi tomorrow to attempt that one. We are all doing well and enjoying our climbing here in Ecuador.

On The Map

We broke a bunch of personal altitude records today.  The team stood at 15,200 ft by the Lava Tower and didn’t seem much worse for the wear.  In fact we had a picnic lunch up there before dropping down below the stunning and immense south face of Kilimanjaro to descend to Barranco Camp at 13,000 ft.  We took seven hours from Shira Camp (including the picnic) which is just what we were aiming for.  The team enjoyed walking through the Giant Senecios and Lobelia plants that guard the approaches to Barranco.  It was breezy in camp as we rested and recuperated.  We ate another of Chef Tosha’s excellent dinners and told each other mountain ghost stories to finish the day. 

Best Regards,

RMI Guide Dave Hahn

PC: Dave Hahn

Tuesday June 16,  2021 - 8:30 pm PT

Good evening,

Higher and higher we go! We continued moving gear uphill today. We left camp in the morning and made our way up motorcycle hill. It’s a rather steep hill, very much in your face. But with good cramponing and pressure breathing we made it to the top. Next, we cruised up squirrel hill, across the polo fields, around windy corner to our cache site. Some firm snow made digging our deep hole difficult but the effort is worth it so the ravens don't get at our food. The team is feeling good and looking great. We are all very excited to move to 14k camp tomorrow. There is a weather system possibly hitting the mountain Wednesday night so it will be nice to get out of 11k camp and up to 14k camp in case it produces a bunch of snow. Plus, a new scenery and home will be a fun change as well. It’s the little things that bring you joy on mountain.

Goodnight,

RMI Guide Hannah Smith and Team

Jambo everyone!

Today was our first day of safari and we headed west to visit the beautiful Lake Manyara. The lake is known for its many migratory animals and home to more than 300 different birds. Everyone enjoyed the day cruising around in our safari vehicles with cold beverages in hand while seeing the animals up close. 
We managed to see a few wildebeest, zebras, Cape buffalo, lots of baboons, a few impalas, and a few elephants pretty close, but sadly no lions. 

Hopefully tomorrow the big cats come out. 

All in all it was a really nice introduction to the incredible diversity of wildlife that Africa has and the team is looking forward to seeing more tomorrow. 

We wrapped up the evening with a few cocktails and a wonderful meal at our new lodge. Plantation Lodge - See for yourself!

RMI Guide Casey Grom and the Safari crew

We busted out of Base Camp today. Just over five hours of walking up the Branscomb Glacier put us at "low" camp, which isn't all that low at 9300 ft above sea level. Half way along the route we picked up our cached supplies and equipment from yesterday's carry. We were alone for our day of climbing, since the other teams in our rotation have about four days head-start on us. One of those, a German team, made the top today in a speedy ascent. They were early enough in the day that they came all the way back down to low camp. So we have neighbors. The other two teams are still at high camp hoping to get a shot at the summit tomorrow. We had great conditions for coming along directly under Vinson's giant western face, and we had perfect and unobstructed views of Mounts Gardner, Epperly and Shinn. Camp was built quickly and easily and after a filling dinner, the team retired to bask in the strong, late night sun. We'll get that sun until at least three AM, but then, while it is behind the mountain, our teeth will be chattering until 11 AM. Best Regards RMI Guide Dave Hahn

On The Map

The RMI Vinson teams traded places this evening. It was a day of wait-and-see as far as flying was concerned. High winds at Union Glacier, high winds in the intended flight path through the Ellsworth Mountains, and big winds that we could see on the upper slopes of Vinson. But things began to calm as the day went on and there was continued hope that the flight would happen before the day was out. I'd just sat down to dinner with group one at Vinson Base when news came that group two was in the air headed our way. Kara, Juan, Piotr, and Spencer packed fast and watched the ski equipped twin otter make a perfect uphill landing on the Branscomb. It was great to see Bill, Sarah, Fatima, and Larry emerge from the plane. The two teams mingled and compared notes as the plane was unloaded and reloaded. We were all happy to hear that team 2 was treated to such a fine time during their several days stay at Union. And I believe team 2 was relieved to see that team 1 had managed to come through a Vinson climb appearing happy and no worse for the wear. Then it was load up time and I said goodbye to team 1. We shared some wonderful times together. Rumor has it that there are Ilyushin flights scheduled as early as tomorrow, so perhaps they'll be luckier on their Antarctic exit than they were on their entrance. Team 2 bedded down for the night at VBC... Ready to climb. Best Regards RMI Guide Dave Hahn