Most Popular Entries
The clouds cleared last night after dinner and for an hour or so we sat in the evening light at 11 Camp, watching the cloud bank below us race through Kahiltna Pass and over Kahiltna Dome, a peak across the valley from 11 Camp. Unfortunately the improved conditions did not persist and when we woke up this morning we were back in the clouds with a light snow falling. After a quick breakfast we grabbed our nearly empty packs, pulled on our gore-tex shells and goggles, and headed back to our previous camp. As is typical near Kahiltna Pass, where the weather funnels through the low gap in the mountains, the conditions deteriorated with the wind whipping snow by us. But we pushed through it, reaching our old camp at 9200' before long.
We dug up our food bags and supplies we left cached there yesterday and loaded everything into our packs before setting off back uphill. The knowledge that our warm tents awaited us was good motivation for the team and we motored back to 11 Camp through the wind and blowing snow. When we got back to camp we found our tents starting to sink beneath the accumulating snow so we pulled out the shovels and cleared out camp from the drifted snow. Before long everything looked as it had when we left this morning. We've spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in the tents. The skies have cleared a bit and the sun is managing to poke through every now and again.
We are hoping to carry a cache of supplies to 13,600' tomorrow but the conditions are looking questionable. There are a few teams here that have been waiting for a few days to do the same thing but haven't because of the weather. Unfortunately the forecast for tomorrow looks like more of the same, but we're keeping our fingers crossed anyways.
RMI Guide Linden Mallory
Posted by:
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Mt. McKinley
This is Adam checking in from Mt McKinley.
Yesterday our team made an exploratory reconnaissance up the NE Fork of the Kahiltna. This is the approach glacier that leads to the bottom of our climbing route, the West Rib.
It was an instructive day. Without going into detail, suffice it to say for reasons based on mountaineering experience we have decided to forego climbing the lower portion of the West Rib. Rather, our revised plan will be to follow the West Buttress route to 14,000’ and from there intersect the ridgeline and climb the upper West Rib to the summit.
We are aiming to make camp today at 9,500’. The weather is gorgeous, the team is strong, and everyone is excited about our new strategy.
RMI Guide Adam Knoff
Glad to hear that you guys are making smart, safe decisions. While I know you had hoped to complete the full West Rib, it’s always better to be safe and prudent, and I’m sure the Upper Rib line will still be amazing. Good luck to my Peter and the rest of the team, and stay safe!
Posted by: Esther Kim on 5/30/2011 at 10:22 am
Man that sounds great! Wish I was there! Have a great climb guys!
Posted by: Ben Fraley on 5/29/2011 at 6:51 pm
After yesterday's adventure the team slept soundly, some a little too soundly, if you know what I mean (read snoring). We had a leisurely morning with breakfast at 9am and then finished packing up all of our gear and headed back down the combination of lifts to reach Azau once again. The thick air of 8,000 ft was warm and welcoming. There was a look of panic in everyone's eyes when I reminded the team that there were 12 of us who were hoping for hot showers and the water might be limited. Everyone quickly raced off, but there was plenty of hot water and everyone is looking and smelling much better.
We spent the next 2 hours stuffing our bellies with chicken kebabs and some tasty local beer. After lunch the team headed out on a gift shopping mission from which we have just returned.
There is a celebratory dinner on schedule for tonight that usually ends with a little sampling of the local vodka. I'm sure it will be a fun night as everyone is happy to be down from Elbrus and ready to head to St. Petersburg tomorrow.
That's all for now.
We had something of a celebration dinner in BC last night. As Peter, Ed, Jake and Gerry made it all the way down from the South Col to regale us with summit stories.
After all that, it was strange as anything to get up by myself early this morning - and to eat breakfast alone. I have become accustomed to nearly constant companionship in the past few months.
I walked out of basecamp and into a cloud at 4am. This didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling - despite the fact that the cloud had kept overnight temperatures mild, and visibility was fuzzy at best. I like my glaciers frozen solid, and the lower Khumbu icefall was soggy this morning. The high humidity had me dripping sweat and the soggy-ness had me worried that snow bridges would collapse under my crampons. Life got better when daylight began to roll around and found me climbing out of the tops of the clouds. I was delighted to have the whole place to myself. It wasn't until I nearly reached Camp I that I began to meet dozens and dozens of very heavily loaded sherpas coming down along with the foreign climbers they guided to the summit in the preceding days. My work for the day became "congratulations" as I ran into many friends - tired - a little beat up from wind, cold and sun - but obviously content to have just completed their great goal of recent months... years... lifetimes. At Camp I, I made contact via radio with Linden at BC and Seth at ABC. Linden let us know the latest forecast and we all agreed that May 23rd was shaping up as our best summit chance. This meant that Seth, Melissa, Kent and Ang Kaji needed to rally at ABC in order to get on up to Camp III. We'd go ahead with the plan that had us all moving to Camp IV tomorrow. This was fine as all at ABC were sounding strong and ready. A quick check of my own watch showed that I was actually enjoying a day of good strength as well. I got my pack on and walked easily up the Western Cwm to ABC. I didn't reach the camp in time to see my teammates before their Camp II departure, but having made it up from BC in 5 hours, I was satisfied nonetheless.
Through the morning - our Sherpa team collected at ABC, and I was able to strategize with Tendi and Lambabu. I also got to hear their stories of the big summit day on the 19th and was quite impressed with the massive amount of work our Sherpa team had contributed. Tendi himself had spent 5 days at or above the South Col and on summit day he'd heroically initiated a rescue for an exhausted climber from another team. He ran out of oxygen himself in the long and arduous process of getting the man safely back to the Col. The rescue ended up involving a number of teams - ultimately Jake Norton and John Griber from our own team geared back up and finished their own marathon day by climbing back up to aid in the rescue effort. I began to understand where a few of the coughs I was hearing at dinner last night had originated.
My afternoon at ABC was spent resting - the midday heat was nearly unbearable - and preparing for a few hard days of climbing. My team reported good times on the Lhotse Face today and all were moving into Camp III tents in plenty of time to get their own rest for these next make or break days.
It was an early morning, hustling out of hotels and bustling onto buses for the short pre-dawn ride to the airport. After a moderate amount of hurry-up-and-wait we hurried out to board a pair of Twin Otters primed for flight. There was a haze lying over Katmandu that we quickly busted through to find generally clear skies and big mountains spread across the horizon.
I had a window seat next to the port propeller and during the fifty minute flight to Lukla my eyes were mostly pressed against that window. It was only ten months since I'd left these same mountains on this same aircraft, so how could I possibly have forgotten just how spectacular and formidable these peaks could appear on a clear morning? It was as if I was seeing Ghari Shankar and Menlungtse and a thousand others for the very first time... and just like that very first time eighteen years ago, I was humbled to look out at all the impossible ridges, sheer faces and jagged summits that I will never be bold enough to attempt. Finally, the plane turned just enough for me to get a clear view of Everest lording over everything and about thirty miles distant. I turned in my cramped seat in an effort to get Erica and Ed Dohring to recognize the dark pyramid now dominating the horizon. The engine kind of messed with their view so I went back to enjoying it for myself... picking out the South Summit and noting how little snow seemed to be covering the rock of the Southwest Face. I smiled at the obvious lack of wind aloft and granted myself a clichéd climber's observation that it was "too bad we weren't going for the summit today" Of course, then remembering that temps at 29,000 ft in the last days of March were likely around -50 degrees F while with patience we could be in line for a balmy -15 degrees F in the latter half of May.
Our Yeti Air Twin Otter started diving down into a steep sided valley and I lost the view of the big hill while focusing on the small ones not so far from our wingtips. Now in the lower Khumbu Valley, it was easy to pick out terraced fields and small farms as the plane lined up for a Lukla landing. The pilot greased it, somehow matching the plane's steep descent to the opposite slant of the small runway. Within minutes we were out and walking toward a nearby teahouse to regroup as the planes sped noisily away. We sat and ordered a breakfast while discussing the best ways to keep fifteen people looking out for one another on the trails. All were relaxed, as we knew the walk to Phak Ding would be short and relatively easy. In fact, we would lose about 700 ft of vertical over the course of the morning. The trail took us past blossoming cherry and apple trees, past a few flowering dogwoods and a selection of well-tended vegetable gardens. Things were easy enough that the gang could spread out and pursue their own interests. Ed Viesturs, typically, wasted little time in getting the day's work done. Walking a more moderate pace with Erica and her Dad, I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack along with Peter Whittaker and Melissa. Our camera teams had various projects along the way, including some vegetable mo mo's that beckoned seductively from one café menu along the track. Eventually, we were back to a full compliment of climbers, cameramen and trekkers hunkered down for the evening in our teahouse along the rushing river and protected from steadily falling rain (the good flying weather was merely temporary) in the suburbs of Phak Ding.
Hey everybody, this is Casey Grom checking in from the Ecuador Volcanoes Expedition. We are up here at just over 17,000 feet at our high camp on Chimborazo. We had a pretty nice day to hike up here. Was a little bit of clouds, which was nice to have it cool for our hike. The team had a great time and we hired a couple of porters to help expedite our arrival to camp, which was great. We just wrapped up a nice dinner of hot soup and watched the sun go down up here, which was incredibly beautiful. We're crawling into our tents and do our best for a little bit of sleep until we get up. Similar to our game plan as we had on Cayambe. We are going to try to get up at 11 and try to start climbing around midnight. So that will be our game plan for us. We will do our best tomorrow to give a call once we are back down off the mountain. I'm sure it's going to be a long, busy, hard day for everybody. We'll update you guys tomorrow once we are off the mountain. Thanks.
RMI Guide Casey Grom
RMI Guide Casey Grom calls in from Chimborazo High Camp.
glad to hear you all made it to High Camp and enjoyed the views. By now you should close to back from the summit.
Can’t wait to hear the good news and of course, am sorry I could not be there with you.
Posted by: danny on 12/17/2015 at 7:43 am
Hi! This is Solveig checking in after a successful summit day on Mt. Shuksan. We left camp just before 5 AM this morning and enjoyed perfect weather all the way to the summit. The team climbed strong and we made it round trip in a little over eight hours, with a nice rest on the summit. Our plan is to relax in the sun here in camp and begin our descent early tomorrow morning.
Thanks for following along!
RMI Guide Solveig Waterfall
Posted by: Pete Van Deventer, Seth Waterfall
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Elbrus Northside
Hello from Moscow.
The RMI Mt. Elbrus Northside team has all arrived and the trip is officially under way. We met up this evening for a meet-and-greet and then went out to dinner. The team seems very well aligned as far as goals and expectations for the trip. It was a short night for us as many folks have just arrived in Moscow and, it's raining with thunder and lightning all around the downtown area.
Tomorrow we're scheduled to take a tour of the Kremlin and the other sights around Red Square. I'll take some photos and send them on in the afternoon.
RMI Guides Seth Waterfall & Pete Van Deventer
Posted by: Hannah McGowan
Categories: Guide News Guide Grant
Geese gabble on the banks of the Crooked River as it winds around the cliffs of lithified volcanic ash that make up our classroom here in Smith Rock State Park, Oregon. It's day nine of ten on the American Mountain Guide Association (AMGA) Rock Guide Course, a program focused on multi-pitch rock guiding and rescue techniques in fourth and fifth class terrain. This course is the first step to becoming certified by the AMGA in one of three guiding disciplines - rock, alpine and skiing.
In the days leading up to this we have worked through systems on the ground and on the cliff, and have guided each other while maintaining a play-by-play discussion to ensure that each participant learns from the mistakes and successes of the others. As participants, we are here to transition from competent recreational climbers to facilitators of climbing in a professional setting. There are myriad new techniques and subtleties that I have been exposed to in the last eight days.
Today is framed as a mock exam in which participants are put in the driver’s seat for a few pitches of climbing and descending. I do my best to put it all together - to select the best new tool in my tool box and implement it successfully. Throughout the exercise I notice how much more comfortable and confident I am with this process since the first time I was given the reins only a few days ago. I now feel equipped to enter the realm beyond recreational rock climbing.
My participation in this course was made possible by the RMI Guide Grant, and I cannot express my gratitude enough.
RMI Guide Hannah McGowan
Posted by: Casey Grom
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Kilimanjaro
Today we visited the famous Ngorongoro Crater, believed by many to be the 8th wonder of the world. It is a two million year old collapsed caldera that is home to more than 25,000 large mammals, and has a dense population of lions.
We spent nearly the entire day driving around looking at all the animals and waiting at times for either the wildebeest, or zebras to get out of our way. We saw about a dozen lions, a far off black rhino, thousands of pink flamingos and many others. I'm pretty sure everyone had a great day.
We finished off the day with a quick visit to a working Maasai Village to see how this semi-nomadic group of people still live the way they have for thousands of years.
Hopefully tomorrow we'll catch a glimpse of a cheetah and leopard to round out the safari.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Words cannot describe my envy, but so happy at the same time for these experiences for you. Love and miss you (and Gig ‘Em)!
Posted by: Tasha on 9/14/2013 at 7:34 am
WOW. Just like on Wild Kingdom. “Jim, jump down and get that lion”. ( showing my age here). Waiting on giraffe pictures.
Posted by: Tracy O. on 9/13/2013 at 8:44 pm
Wow! Talk about a bucket list item. Send some of that cold weather our way. I’ll say a prayer that the weather cooperates.
Posted by: Ric G on 6/28/2011 at 4:33 pm
Remember what Ed Viesturs says: Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.
Posted by: g3niusgirl on 6/28/2011 at 4:32 pm
View All Comments