These are the days that I really love being a mountain guide. Sharing the beauty of Mt. Rainier in September can only be understood by experiencing the beauty of Autumn on Rainier.
The wild flowers are popping in full color. The marmots are whistling. And despite marginal weather, the low marine layers really make the mountains appear luminous and majestic.
The photos don't do it justice so get off the couch, push yourself away from the desk and get on out here!
RMI Guide JJ Justman
Janet & Peter, Random says 4 hooves up for the summit tomorrow! Resting and relaxing at home, Gretchen says “I could have done the first 17 miles with you!” We are hoping the weather will be perfect and that you enjoy your climb to the top in the morning. Cheers!!!
Pat and Jeanne
Buenos dias. Yesterday our team traveled to the Pasachoa protected forest for an acclimatization hike. Despite rain and a muddy trail, we enjoyed our hike through the cloud forest, reaching over 12,500' of altitude before heading back to Quito. Hot showers felt good upon our return, as did dry clothes. We dined at a great authentic Ecuadorian restaurant. Cuy (fried guinea pig) and chicha (fermented corn cider) were sampled, as were the classic dishes of fried pork fritada and llapingachos (potato and cheese patties). This morning the sky is blue with some broken clouds, so were hoping to stay dry on our hike to the climbing hut on the Illiniza volcanoes. This hike will take us to over 15,000', and help prepare us for the altitude on Cotopaxi. I'll be in touch with more updates.
Monday, June 17, 2019 - 4:22 AM PT
Greetings from Moscow. Most of us awoke at 4am this morning for no reason. The sun rises early here, which doesn’t help with the jetlag. Today we embarked on a city tour of Moscow that included St Basils Cathedral, the Kremlin, and Red Square’s otherworldly shopping mall. We’re working on rounding up some delayed ski bags and delayed teammates, which hopefully will all be in one place by this evening. So far so good here in Russia...
RMI Guide Tyler Reid
Ryan, guess it’s going to be difficult for you to NOT stand out in a crowd in Moscow. This is such an exciting adventure and you are the perfect one to do it! Have a great experience and take it all in.“Time of your life kid.”
Posted by: John & Leslie Cooper on 6/18/2019 at 7:05 pm
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!
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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.
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The team survived sleeping at 15,600 ft In fact there were still smiles all around and everybody was into going for a hike. It didn’t hurt that daybreak in Gokyo was beautiful… Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world, was just up the valley and glowing magically. We headed toward it after breakfast. We walked for three hours along the massive Ngozumpa Glacier to a place called Fifth Lake (by those of us unable to pronounce the local name). There, from 16,500 ft, we had a few minutes of unimpeded views of Everest and Lhotse as well as the nearby and spectacular Gyangchungkang. Then the clouds came in and we headed back toward our comfy digs in Gokyo. We were back before the snow flurries flew. The day was made more enjoyable by the fact that we saw a total of two other people in the giant valley we chose to explore.
We’ve got a final night in Gokyo now before we point downhill in the morning.
Today we visited the famous Ngorongoro Crater, and considered by many to be the 8th natural wonder of the world. The crater is what remains of a once massive volcano that erupted and collapsed onto itself, leaving behind a giant caldera that's almost exactly 100 square miles.
We were able to see several lions and it was exciting to be close to those big cats! As we made our way around the crater we saw tons of other wildlife, zebras, Cape buffalo, wildebeest, Giselles, countless raptors and many other large birds. It was quite a day to say the least, and I'm certain one that won't be forgotten by anyone.
Before heading home we made a quick stop by to visit a Maasai village. The Maasai are a semi nomadic ethnic group that live a very simple life in remote areas of Tanzania.
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.
The Mt. Rainier Summit Climb teams were walking into the crater rim just before 7:00 a.m. The weather is fairly warm with a cloud deck at 6,400'. They will spend some time on top as they cross the crater rim to Columbia Crest before starting their descent.
We didn’t get much sleep last night due to 40 mph winds ripping through camp. If 40 mph doesn’t sound that bad, try this: next time you’re riding in a car, stick your head out the window when you hit 40. Now imagine your whole body is hanging out the window. Now imagine it’s 15 degrees. Now imagine that instead of a car made of aluminum, glass, and steel, you’re inside of a tent made of nylon. It’s not great, but we endured the night no worse for the wear.
After our blustery overnight, we started the morning slowly, keeping an eye on the ridge above camp. The wind seemed to be dying down, and eventually it reached a level that we thought was appropriate for moving uphill. We broke down our home at Camp One, and headed uphill around noon. It turned out to be a beautiful sunny day, but not without a consistent breeze. After about three and a half hours we pulled into our new neighborhood, set up camp, and began the time honored expedition tradition of straight chillin’. Mac and cheese for dinner, some sunset photos, and then off to bed for this crew. Tomorrow we’ll take another rest day, and then we will see what kind of weather the mountain gives us.
RMI Guides JM Gorum, Hannah Smith, Avery Parrinello
Hi there, this is Seth wrapping up a month in Africa. Most of my recent team has flown out of the Kilimanjaro area, with some folks headed home and others to Zanzibar. A few hardy souls headed back into the wilderness early this morning to join some bushmen on a hunt.
As for myself, I spent the day handing the reins here over to my buddy and fellow RMI Guide, Casey Grom. He's just beginning back-to-back Kilimanjaro Climb and Safari adventures like I just did.
Everything is running great with our local team from the Dik Dik Hotel. I'm a little sad to leave them but other adventures await. I'm headed straight to Moscow to meet a new team. We'll be tackling the north side of Mt. Elbrus and that should be a grand adventure!
RMI Guide Seth Waterfall
I bumped into Solveig on the way up to Muir on Saturday. She was her usual smiley self in a lime green puffy and pink vest. Couldn’t miss her!!! She told me you were off to Elbrus. Lucky you! One of these days I’ll get myself on a travel adventure with RMI and hope you are the guide! Hope to catch up when you sit still long enough. Cheers, Jo
Posted by: Josephine on 8/20/2013 at 4:17 pm
Seth, thank you for your daily updates. I know Mark Miller had a great time and what an experience for you all. Thanks to RMI for their help in us that could not to. Cornelia Miller
Posted by: Cornelia Miller on 8/19/2013 at 11:29 am
After spending the night at the Dik Dik Hotel celebrating our summit success, our team loaded into “pop-top” Land Rovers to begin our safari. Today we explored Lake Manyara National Park and saw many animals, which some are included in the video below.
The team is doing great and enjoying the different landscapes that we are experiencing here on safari.
RMI Guide JJ Justman
Janet & Peter, Random says 4 hooves up for the summit tomorrow! Resting and relaxing at home, Gretchen says “I could have done the first 17 miles with you!” We are hoping the weather will be perfect and that you enjoy your climb to the top in the morning. Cheers!!!
Pat and Jeanne
Posted by: Pat on 9/5/2013 at 9:32 pm
Be safe and finish strong!
Posted by: julie grooms on 9/5/2013 at 7:57 pm
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