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The Four Day Climb June 16 - 19 led by RMI Guides Brent Okita & George Hedreen reached the summit of Mt. Raineir this morning around 7 am. It's a beautiful day with blue skies, light winds and cool temperatures. The team enjoyed about an hour in the summit crater before starting their descent from the crater rim shortly after 8 am. Once back at Camp Muir the climbers will have a short rest and repack, then continue 4.5 miles down to Paradise. They will have a short celebration at Rainier BaseCamp later today to conclude their adventure.
Congratulations to today's climbers!
Summit!
RMI Guide Steve Gately and his Mt. Shuksan team reached the summit via the
Fisher Chimneys Route. They will descend to Upper Curtis Camp and then possibly to Lake Ann this afternoon because of rain moving in this evening. Tomorrow the team will then complete their descent back to the trailhead.
Congratulations to our team of climbers on their climb today!
It wasn't easy, in fact far from it.
We started the day with a 10:30 pm wake up call that no one ever enjoys, but everyone made it to breakfast relatively quickly and seemed excited as the weather looked to be in our favor. We then hoped into our 4 wheeled vehicles and drove about 20 minutes to the start of the climb. The weather continued to improve as we made our way to the the start of the glacier where we put on our crampons and roped up for the rest of the climb. The initial part of the glacier was mostly bare ice which made for rather easy climbing and slowly increased in angle and crevasses. Everyone did a great job of taking care of themselves and stayed calm even though the terrain was challenging.
After several hours of climbing we reached the final headwall that looked to be too much, but with perseverance the team surmounted the last steep slope and made our way to the top of Antisana. All in all it took 9 hard hours to reach the summit where we enjoyed the views and took a few photos. The descent was no easy task either having to reverse the climb, but we all made it back safely in a couple of hours.
Everyone is in good spirits and maybe just a little tired ;)
Special thanks to Sally for the wonderful Sahale mixed nuts that were sent along, we enjoyed them!
RMI Guide
Casey Grom and a happy albeit tired crew
6:30 pm August 18th
Around 12:30 today, our entire team stood on top of Mt. Shuksan. Today the weather was mostly cloudy, but we were rewarded with a break in the clouds on our descent. Tomorrow morning we will pack up camp and head into town to celebrate. Congrats to the team!
RMI guide Sam Hoffman, Hannah Blum, and Brooks Ordway-Smith
Your first night at 15,000ft, you almost never sleep well. The team slept like babies last night. We woke up for five minutes, went to sleep for 15 minutes, tossed and turned for another five, until it was time to get up. Today is a training day, we’ll walk up to the glacier to review some glacier travel, rope, and crampon skills prepare us for our climb tomorrow. Time to make our summit bid!
RMI Guide Seth Burns
RMI Guides Garrett Stevens and Casey Grom led their teams of
Four Day Summit Climbers to the summit of Mt. Rainier today. Garrett reported a thin cloud cap starting to form but a pretty nice day overall. Winds were very low on the lower portions of the mountain but had increased near the summit. The teams will spend a bit of time in the crater and then descend back to Camp Muir. After a short break the teams will continue down to Paradise and conclude their program with a short celebration at Rainier BaseCamp.
Congratulations to today's Summit Climb teams!
May 23, 2014 - 7:18 pm PT
Our first night away from the airstrip here at 7,800' and it's under beautiful clear blue skies. The winds above 14,000' are moving hard but here it is calm. We walked 3.5 hrs north on the
Kahiltna Glacier to the base of Ski Hill and occupied some vacant sites. All told a pretty relaxing afternoon after adjusting to our pack & sled loads. Tomorrow we will gain 2,000' to our next camp at 9,800' which puts us near the base of Kahiltna Dome's east ridge.
Good night friends and family!
RMI Guide Leon Davis & Team
Hello, this is the May 31st RMI McKinley Expedition checking in. We are all packed and ready to go. Everybody is super psyched, looking good and strong. It looks like a great crew and we are all super excited.
Unfortunately, the weather is not being super cooperative for us to fly from Talkeetna to the Kahiltna Glacier. We spent today getting packed up, rigged and ready for the glacier so as soon as we have a break in the weather we'll take it and get flown on.
All of our gear is packed in the K2 Aviation Hangar and we are staged and ready to go. We will return to the hangar in the morning and hopefully we'll be able to fly.
We will send more dispatches as we get further along in our expedition.
RMI Guide Garrett Stevens
The weather cooperated today allowing us to finally take in the incredible views to be had on the Kahiltna glacier. Which was nice given that we opted to make a single carry up to our camp at 9600', and at least the views helped distract us from carrying loads that were heavy beyond belief. But we all made it to camp by mid afternoon, appreciative of the fact that this was to be our last single carry for the trip. From here on, we'll be making double carries, that is, making two trips to every camp we establish and carrying only half our loads at a time.
Tomorrow we'll be moving up to 11,200' and establishing camp there, but we'll leave a fair amount of our food, fuel and assorted other personal equipment not needed for the next couple of days here at 9,600'. We'll pick this gear up the day after tomorrow. This will allow us to spend longer acclimatizing at 11,200' in preparation for our move later in the week to 14,200' camp.
Leon, Maile and I were impressed by the group yet again as they took to the job of getting camp set up like pros. And this after a grueling day's climb. What a great team.
We are all looking forward to getting up to 11,200' tomorrow!
RMI Guide Brent Okita
On The Map
Our team has all safely arrived in Quito (the capital city), and is presently getting accustomed to the new environment and the high altitude here. Today we went on a city tour of the historical parts of Old Town Quito, where we saw much of the colonial center of town. We learned a good bit of interesting Ecuadorian history from our very knowledgeable and enthusiastic local guide, Jorge. After various stops at historic points of interest we traveled to the hill in the south of Quito known as El Panecillo, where beautiful weather afforded us expansive views down on the city of Quito, as well as views of the mountains we will attempt to climb: Cotopaxi to the south and Cayambe to the north. Next we headed south to the equator, where we were able to stand with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere! We also visited a very interesting ethnographic museum at this site and we learned about the very diverse cultures of Ecuador. The day ended with a delicious dinner in the relaxing atmosphere of the popular Magic Bean restaurant.
Tomorrow we will take our first of two acclimatization hikes. We will take a gondola ride from Quito to 13,500' and begin a hike up the Volcano Rucu Pichincha. The hike will take us up over 15,000' and (weather permitting) will allow for views of the Avenue of Volcanoes. Everyone is doing well here in country, and we're looking forward to getting some exercise on our hike tomorrow. I will check in tomorrow to update you with the events of the day.
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Luke and rest of team,
Success in Ecuador! Congratulations!
Jim
Posted by: Jim Hill on 2/13/2015 at 1:45 pm
Brad and Brian;
Simply Amazing…Safe journey home!!
Posted by: Bobbi on 2/13/2015 at 6:14 am
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