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Today's
Mt. Rainier summit climb teams, led by RMI Guides
Tyler Jones and
Hannah Smith, turned at the top of Disappointment Cleaver (12,300'). The guides reported cold and icy conditions. They are currently on their descent to Camp Muir and will be in Ashford early afternoon.
A quiet day for us at 16,000 ft in
Lobuche. Things are certainly colder up at this end of the valley, but the sun was good and strong this morning and so we ventured out for a short walk along the lateral moraine of the Khumbu Glacier to stretch legs and catch views. Nuptse is front and center and ridiculously steep when viewed from
Lobuche (and from any other angle as well, come to think of it) but our eyes kept straying toward Everest Base Camp and the peaks that surround it- Pumori, Lingtren and Khumbutse. It isn't very far away now... We'll be there tomorrow with any luck. But first things first, we made the most of this rest day with a short visit to the Italian research "pyramid" a few minutes away and up a side valley. One of the staff gave us a fine tour of the facilities and described the atmospheric and glacial science being conducted. Then it was back to our tea house as the sky clouded up yet again. Snow started falling after lunch, which made it just that much easier to kick back and rest away the afternoon. We've got cards, chess and scrabble... Books and naps worked pretty good as well.
Last night in a tea house... Tent life begins tomorrow.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
On The Map
All is well here in the Baksan Valley, at the base of Elbrus. We've settled into our comfortable hotel here in Cheget, which doubles as a ski town in the winter. It reminds me of Jackson Hole with Mt. Rainier instead of the Grand Tetons.
We woke to a beautiful morning and finally we were able to get out and stretch our legs a bit. We made the most of the local ski lifts, (to save our knees of course) and hiked up the neighboring peak to start our acclimatization. It started off a little cloudy today, but eventually cleared for some decent views of
Elbrus. After our ascent we headed back down to town for a nice lunch and headed over the local climbing shop to pick up a few last minute things. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, getting our bags packed and just wrapping up another enjoyable Russia dinner with plenty of borscht.
All is well here and we'll check in again tomorrow!
RMI Guide
Casey Grom and Crew
Namaste!
The 2014 Dhaulagiri team has reunited in Kathmandu after the three waves in which all of us arrived. With the last minute of extra food shopping done, we had the mandatory briefing at the ministry of tourism this morning and paid a special visit to Ms. Hawley, the "bookkeeper" of Himalayan climbing. She helped us understand this endeavor even better with some statistics pertinent to our team: among our nationalities, only 14 Americans (2 women) and 28 Spaniards have summited on this mountain with just 300 total ascents. Really exciting!
Tomorrow we fly early morning to Pokhara, and then a six-hour drive will take us to Darbang. This is the trailhead to our week-long approach to base camp. We'll check in next from the trails!
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos
All is well here on Mount Everest.
Most of the climbers are up at Camp 2, tomorrow the last wave will make a push up to Camp Three and back to Camp Two for acclimatization if weather and route conditions allow. If all goes well all teams will be safely back to BC by Monday.
Thanks to Jim Whittaker and his Sherpa climbing partner Nawang Gombu for paving the American way to the summit on this day 47 years ago.
Saturday, June 29, 2019 - 10:10 PM PT
To deal with the heat, we got up a little earlier than we might ordinarily have for an easy day at 14 Camp. At 7:00 AM it is still shadowy and cool in camp but not so cool that we rushed our breakfast of bagels and salmon with cream cheese. The main task for the day was our back carry dropping down from 14,200 ft to retrieve the cached food and fuel at 13,500 ft. We were out of camp at 9:20 and down to the cache just 15 or 20 minutes later. The ravens showed no interest whatsoever in our buried treasure although we’d seen where they raided a nearby poorly done cache a few days back. After a bit of hard digging, we distributed the load and began trudging back up at 10:00. The route happens to be quite direct this season -- just a factor of a few crevasses either being bridged well or not in a given year -- and so it only took 45 minutes to get home. On the spooky side of things we witnessed the normally stable and well-frozen West Buttress shedding rock down its steep flanks due to the heat. Back at camp, the easy part of our day began. We took shelter and drank water. The forest fire smoke grew thick enough that we couldn’t see down onto the Kahiltna Glacier and all but the top 3000 ft of Mt Foraker was obscured. We were pleased to connect with
RMI Guide Mike Walter’s victorious team when they came down and became our neighbors.
In the afternoon we reviewed the techniques we’ll employ to safely ascend the fixed lines between 15,000 and 16,000 ft. Tomorrow the forecast calls for a weather change, but if that is slow in arriving, we’d like to
carry up onto the West Buttress.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
And the heavy winds kept us bounded at
Camp 1 today, folks. We woke up to clear skies that soon turned cloudy, but the if we had some hopes to move up early on, the everlasting winds killed it for today. We did what what we had to, and was rest, re-hydrate, eat, and fortify the wall we made around camp. Our forecast gives us hopes to move to Camp 2 tomorrow, so we're ultra motivated for that. In the meantime, we know that the extra night here will be beneficial for overcoming the thin air that awaits above. We're armed with plenty of food and desire to continue this fight, so stay toned for more. Everyone is healthy and eager to climb!
RMI Guide ElÃas de Martos and team.
RMI Guide Zeb Blais led the Five Day Summit Climb June 4 - 8 to the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning. The Four Day
Summit Climb June 5 - 8 was led by Mike Haugen. Both teams reached the summit early this morning. They were beginning their descent from the crater rim around 7 am. Zeb reported pleasant weather with winds from the west. The teams will return to Camp Muir for a short time before continuing their descent to Paradise and returning to Ashford.
Congratulations to today's climbers!
RMI Guide
Brent Okita radioed from the
Mount Rainier summit! He reported fairly warm temperatures, sunny skies with winds 5-20 mph and gusts to 45 mph. At 8:15 a.m., the team left the summit and started their descent back to Camp Muir.
Congratulations to today's summit climbers!
Jambo from Mt. Kilimanjaro! We are on the trail. Last night was wonderful at
Barranco camp and this morning we slept in a bit before heading up the wall. The climbing was great and the group did very well. We can see the upper mountain glaciers and the high camp. We are getting close to our goal!
We are now at our Karanga Valley Camp. The team did great on the trail into camp. We had a great lunch here and have been relaxing this afternoon. Everyone is psyched for the trip to high camp tomorrow morning.
RMI Guide Seth Waterfall
On The Map
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Glad you got a chance to give it a try! See you.next month.
Posted by: Ken Wanderer on 7/19/2019 at 10:37 am
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