Most Popular Entries

Saturday June 11 - 11:59am PT

The last few days have been a blur.

Yesterday we had a hard but a rewarding summit day. The autobahn was mild, but the summit ridge greeted us with high winds, and blowing snow. Despite the mountains best efforts, our entire team made it to the summit and safely back to 17k camp for a late dinner.

Even though we all wanted to sleep in following the summit - we woke up around 9:30am, had a quick hot breakfast, and tore down camp to begin the long process of descending back to the airstrip.

RMI Guide Nikki Champion and Team

The Five Day Climbs led by RMI Guides JT Schmitt and Jack Delaney reached the summit of Mt. Rainier early on this sunny July morning. The teams are on their descent and will be back at Rainier BaseCamp in Ashford early this afternoon.

Congratulations climbers!

Howdy everyone back home.

All is well in Tanzania. We’ve had great weather and the team is humming along really well.

We hit the trail just after 8am 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 six 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.

The team is in good spirits and doing great.

RMI Guide Casey Grom and the Kili crew

The team left the comfort of Puebla for the more rural town of Tlachichuca. Here is where we met back up with our climbing equipment and got to work. Packing and sorting for the climb ahead.
We ate a quick lunch and hopped in the 4x4’s for a rough ride. Long, dusty, and hot we swayed back and forth on what seems like the bumpiest road in Mexico. After two hours of that intense discomfort we arrived at Pico de Orizaba Basecamp and are now settled in to our tents, resting for the climb ahead. We’ll eat some carne asada and head to bed. It’s a clear night here at camp and we’re hoping for that trend to continue till we get back down.

Wish us luck!

RMI Guide Dominic Cifelli

We had a nice short day today. The sun was out and made for the quick 4 1/2 hour hike. We are back in Puerto Natales and looking forward to a nice dinner and some story telling from the eight days in Patagonia. Thanks for following along. 

RMI Guide Mike King

Today we visited the famous Ngorongoro Crater, and considered by many to be the 8th wonder of the world. The crater is what remains of a once massive volcano that erupted and collapsed on itself, leaving behind a giant caldera that's almost exactly 100 square miles. Every time we've visited the crater it's been excitingly different, and today was the same.

We were able to see several lions and it was exciting to see two other cats, a Seval cat and a Caracal! As we made our way around the crater we saw tons of other wildlife, zebras, Cape buffalo, wildebeest, jackals, Giselles, countless large birds. It was quite a day to say the least, and I'm certain one that won't be forgotten by anyone.

We finished the evening here at the plantation lodge and are looking forward to what tomorrow may bring as we head to Tarangire National Park.

RMI Guide Casey Grom and the Safari crew

Our Mt. Shuksan seminar tagged the top of Mt. Shuksan this morning. After many days of training in the rain, the team awoke to clear skies for their climb. The previous five days were spent learning about rope travel, weather patterns, avalanche safety, snow and ice anchors, etc. RMI Guide Alan Davis reported great route conditions and a top out time of 9:30am. 

The team is back at the trailhead and will enjoy some good food and drink before starting their journey home.

Nice work climbers!

RMI Guides Pepper Dee & James Bealer led their teams of Mt. Baker - Easton Glacier climbers to the summit this morning. All team members climbed strong and reached the summit! The teams will return to camp for their final night on the mountain.  Tomorrow they will descend to the trail head and conclude their Mt. Baker adventure.

Way to go team!

Thursday, July 30, 2022 10:20 am PDT

I’m going to start with the spoiler-100% of our team made it to the summit! This was very special because of the excellent chemistry we developed on this trip. To get to the summit, we had to travel across the Autobahn-clipping in and out of over 50 pickets, climb past Zebra rocks, take in the views at Denali pass, do the 100 yard dash across the football field, tackle pig hill before finally arriving on the summit ridge all while changing layers of clothing throughout the day. The summit brought tears to many of our eyes.  It took us just under 7 hours to reach the summit from 17,000 camp. At the summit, everyone exchanged hugs and laughter. Some commemorated with flags and special notes for loved ones. We took lots of pictures and celebrated our hard effort before we descended back to camp in 3 hours and were completely exhausted. Our celebration included watching Steve, who carried a hula hoop he found in Talkeetna to the summit, break the world record for completing over 30 seconds of hula hooping at the highest elevation recorded for the activity. We all videoed the event for the record book. 

We were blessed with incredible weather; 1st rate guides-Andy, Grayson and Ben; interesting, accomplished, funny and caring team mates.

I want to also share my own personal story which motivated me to climb Denali- The highest mountain in North America. After hiking the Appalachian trail in 2018, I decided I needed a new challenge which was tackling the highest point in every state. I quickly realized this goal included Denali and Mt Rainier and that i better get working on those two mountains since I wasn’t getting any younger. Having no mountaineering experience, I did some research and decided to climb with RMI since they guided on both mountains and came with high reviews. To get some experience, I decided to take the kahiltna seminar followed by a climb of Rainier. Covid initially delayed my plans by a year but in May 2021, I completed the Kahiltna seminar only to find out a month later that I had stage 1C ovarian cancer. I had surgery in July and started 6 rounds of chemotherapy which ended in December. I wanted to have a goal to focus on during chemo, so I signed up for the June 15th climb of Denali. Knowing this was a daunting task, I went hiking everyday during the four months of chemo no matter how sick I felt. Amazingly, I continued to get stronger and fitter and climbed a 13,000 foot mountain in Colorado in November. I think I had this overwhelming desire to push myself because I didn’t want to let cancer interrupt my goals. Another part of me wanted to do something that was as close to mentally and physically demanding as combating cancer as I could find. I certainly believe climbing Denali fulfilled that objective!  Standing on the summit was thrilling but at the same time I realized the yearlong journey was the meaningful part not the single destination.

Mary-Beth and Team