Chad Peele reporting from 21,000 ft
Casey, Scott, Rob and I moved up from Basecamp yesterday. We woke to clear skies here at Camp Two. After a nice breakfast we walked up to the base of the Lhotse face for exercise. We are preparing to climb up to Camp Three on the face tomorrow and spend the night, weather permitting.
At Basecamp today, Tuck and some of the RMI Basecamp cook staff, along with a group from the HimEx team, helped build a second heli pad.
Word on the street is that four more people stood on top of the world at 6:00 am today.
Hola from Ecuador. We're all safely back in Quito, on the last day of our climbing trip. We hoped to climb Cayambe this morning, but the weather took a turn for the worse. All night the wind howled; by the time I woke at 11:00 pm, a cloud had descended upon the climbers' hut, and everything was covered in ice. I monitored the weather all night and early morning, but it wasn't improving at all. It was so icy outside that we struggled to stay upright just walking outside to get into our jeeps for the drive back to Quito. We were all excited for the ascent of Cayambe, but such is life in the mountains. We had great weather for Cotopaxi, and we wouldn't have traded that for anything.
So now we're all resting and packing, enjoying Quito this afternoon. We'll be on our way back north to the states shortly. Tonight we'll have our final dinner together as a team, and celebrate our experiences on the trip.
Thanks for keeping track of our journey!
Today we spent the day in the capital city of Ecuador, Quito. Everyone is still recovering from a long day of travel to get here. We spent the day going on a city tour with a local guide. On the tour we visited the colonial parts of town, historic churches, plazas, and the presidential palace, and we learned about the country's history from pre-Incan times through to the present. We then travelled north of Quito to visit Ecuador's namesake, the Equator. Here we took an interpretive, cultural tour, got to stand on the true equator, and sample some authentic empanadas, meat and cheese filled turnovers.
A light afternoon rain gave most of us an excuse for a quick siesta before dinner at the Magic Bean restaurant. The rain let up in the evening, and allowed us to wander the streets of the popular and lively Mariscal district of Quito, which was hopping was nightlife.
Tomorrow we head to Pasachoa, a protected cloud forest and very old volcano, for an acclimatization hike.
The Four Day Climb July 28 - 31 led by RMI Guide Dave Hahn reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning. The teams enjoyed a perfect day on the mountain with clear skies and light winds. They enjoyed a bit of time in the summit crater before starting their descent around 7am. The teams will work their way back to Camp Muir, take a short break to repack and then continue the final 4,500' to Paradise. They will conclude their program this afternoon with a celebration of their adventure this afternoon.
Many thanks to the super guides for their expertise, wisdom and guidance in facilitating this climb, and of course to the mountain……..seems like an amazing, life changing experience…….congratulations to all you climbers, hope you’re resting/celebrating now
Posted by: Natasha on 7/31/2025 at 6:38 pm
Fantastic!! Well done!! You guys are the tamers of 14ers. Safe travels down. Take care
The Five Day climb with Seth Burns and Mike Bennett made a sunset climb of Mt. Rainier. The team enjoyed a great route, and beautiful sunset on their way to the top. They plan to depart Camp Muir around 10am.
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.
This morning, we woke up early, had our last teahouse breakfast and headed for the helicopter pad.
It was a busy day at the airport since the weather was clear. We saw planes and helicopters land, take off and finally, it was our turn.
After a 45-minute flight, we landed safely in Kathmandu.
We got together for one last team dinner tonight. Reflecting on our nearly 3 weeks in Nepal and enjoying a delicious meal at Le Sherpa.
Some of us fly home in the early hours of the day tomorrow and the rest soon after.
What a trip! Thank you for following along and we can’t wait to see our friends and family to share more about this incredible adventure when we get home.
The team rallied for a pre-dawn start at Lolkisale Camp. We were escorted from our tent cabins so as not to lose anyone to predators. We ate breakfast as the light came up on the vast wilderness surrounding camp.
As we drove back into the mix of animals, trees, rocks, grassland and riverbeds we had high hopes of spotting the leopards and cheetahs that had been eluding us thus far. We saw a million more beautiful things this morning… but not the big cats. Something left for future safaris. By midday, this one was winding down as we headed east toward Arusha. The team was happy to get back to the familiar ground of Rivertrees Inn to have a chance to clean up and repack for extended travel. Inevitably, we started having to say goodbye to one another as we began a last migration to Kilimanjaro International Airport.
It seemed hard to believe that the project our team had been dedicated to for years -raising funds for the American Lung Association- and then actually climbing Kili for clean air- that it could all be coming to a conclusion… but of course our ambitious climbers were heard to be hatching dozens of new goals and challenges for the coming years.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn & The ALA Climb for Clean Air Team
The cyclone pushed us out of Everest Basecamp. Early yesterday morning, it tried to crush us in our tents. Heavy, wet snow was falling at the rate of perhaps three inches per hour. Everything was getting buried fast... tents, yaks, climbing gear. It was tough to tell just how much accumulation there was since the ground is so uneven to begin with at BC, but it was common to be thigh deep while attempting to get from one tent to another. We'd eaten breakfast in our comfy dining tent, insulated from the storm, when Lam Babu suggested (politely) that we think of leaving. It was becoming impossible to maintain the camp in the continuing storm and it didn't seem farfetched that we'd soon reach a depth of snow in which we could no longer walk to escape down-valley.
Each team member went back to his or her soggy tent for a rushed packing effort. It definitely wasn't an optimal way for leaving the mountain. Ideally one would like to have everything dry before it gets stuffed and duffled for a trip to Kathmandu. Ideally, it would be great to be standing over an expanse of spread-out gear so as to figure what will be needed on the trek out and what won't be needed until Kathmandu. Ideally, one would know that the bags were going to get yakked out in the next couple of days... enabling one to make onward travel plans that included said gear. Except... there wasn't time, space or heat for anything like "ideally". We hunched over in damp tents, pushing damp gear into damp duffle bags and we weren't so sure when we'd see them again because the last yaks we'd seen fleeing basecamp were in snow up to their horns.
It made good sense to leave anyway, but we determined to do it as a team and to make noon the exit hour. A skeleton crew of Sherpas would remain at the gear dump formally known as Basecamp. At the appointed hour, Seth, Melissa, Kent, Cherie, Jake, Erica, John, Tom, Gerry, Lam Babu, Kaji and a handful of others (it was tough to see who was who with all the matching jackets, hats and goggles in heavily falling snow) followed my lead out of camp. The escape trail was surprisingly well-packed by people and packless animals in the preceding hours. I looked back often through the storm to make sure all were safely in the parade behind me, and I tried not to stop. We meant to go five hours down to Pheriche, but that depended on everybody staying strong and not rolling an ankle or knee in the powder.
It all went fine as we trudged down through the landmark villages of our long-ago trek in; Gorak Shep, Lobuche, Thukla... and finally Pheriche... all in much whiter condition than we'd seen them seven weeks ago. In Pheriche, we walked out of the storm to experience the novel INDOOR comfort of Nuru's Himalayan Hotel. Long forgotten appetites came back, coughs mellowed in the marvelously humid air, and real sleep was had by all... 14,000 ft sleep, not the 17,500 ft version that we'd been calling sleep for so long.
And today dawned without much sign of the cyclone. The sky was blue again and the mountains were white again. We hit the trail and within a short time we were actually out of the snow and onto the dirt. Then there were trees... then green trees. And next there were flowers... and flowers in trees. The rhododendrons of Deboche and Thyangboche Hill were in bloom and beautiful. We walked up hills and down hills and along hills until we reached good old Namche Bazaar. Civilization as we know it... with internet and commerce and tourism and comfort at the easy to love altitude of around 11,500 ft. In two days, we'd come down what had taken us approximately 8 days to go up... long ago... in the Spring, when we were younger.
We'll walk to Lukla tomorrow and we will begin hoping for cloudless flying weather which might get us to Kathmandu sooner. And we'll just hope that our wet duffels find us before the contents rot... Life is not, by any means, trouble-free as yet but it is sure getting easier.
Greetings from Everest Basecamp! I still have to pinch myself to make sure I'm really here. To come here and climb has been a longtime dream for me, but it's only been the last four or five years that I thought it would be possible. I never really imagined I'd be doing so as a part of this amazing team.
For me personally, this couldn't be a better opportunity. I get to pester Ed Viesturs with pretty much any question I want about climbing in the Himalaya, and learn how to guide these peaks from Dave Hahn. I can't really see me ever having access to this kind of brain trust again in my guiding career. To add that in with climbing in gear that we have all helped develop from the ground up makes this truly a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
It was just over a year ago that I was doing a normal guiding rotation at RMI. For me, that has meant starting in May on Rainier, then heading to Alaska to work on Denali then back to Rainier until August, then I head over to Africa to guide on Kilimanjaro. When my boss Peter Whittaker invited me to be a part of this team, I had no idea what it would lead to, yet here I am at Everest Base Camp getting ready to head into the Western Cwm.
This is our third day in base camp and I'm still trying to judge the scale of the mountains here. I'm used to the feeling of getting my bearings in an unfamiliar mountain range. It's one of the best parts of climbing somewhere new. With no trees or buildings or anything familiar to give you reference, you can get vertigo trying to approximate distances or elevations. Typically, the novice will underestimate distances drastically. I've spent enough time in the mountains though to have a healthy respect for this trickery.
The difference here is that there is no grander scale. When I first saw Everest from Namche Bazaar, I couldn't believe how big it was or how far away we still were. Now that we're closer and the satellite peaks of the Everest massif block the summit from view, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't even more intimidated.
But if there's one thing I've learned over the years from all of my mentors and climbing partners, it's how to tackle big objectives. In a sense, this one is no different... wait, what am I saying?! It is different. It's the biggest mountain in the world. Step by step, that's how we'll do it. With a healthy respect for the mountain.
In a few days, we'll head into the icefall for our first real physical test of the trip. I'm really psyched to put the boots on and get the crampons and ice axe out. My job on this trip is really just getting started. I can't wait to get going.
Many thanks to the super guides for their expertise, wisdom and guidance in facilitating this climb, and of course to the mountain……..seems like an amazing, life changing experience…….congratulations to all you climbers, hope you’re resting/celebrating now
Posted by: Natasha on 7/31/2025 at 6:38 pm
Fantastic!! Well done!! You guys are the tamers of 14ers. Safe travels down. Take care
Posted by: Dan Wright on 7/31/2025 at 8:49 am
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