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Hello everyone out there following along in RMI Expeditions blogland... Our team made short work of today's hike and arrived at
Plaza Argentina (our basecamp) early this afternoon. We started off early early, firing the stoves before sunrise because we needed to hitch a ride on muleback over the river. The herrieros were planning on running the rest of our gear up to basecamp and then running the mules all the way back out to the road so they requested the early start. Normally we'd cross the river on foot but it's running pretty deep this year and the mule option seemed like a safer one especially considering my lifeguard certification expired about 15 years ago.. . Anyway, the team is settling in to life at just under 14k feet and hoping for a good night of sleep after three consecutive hot and dusty days on the trail.
Hasta mañana,
RMI Guide Billy Nugent
On The Map
Hello from Ixta high camp!
We woke up this morning at the Altzomoni Hut to a crisp and clear morning. The moon, out in all its glory, was suspended just above
Pico de Orizaba, far in the distance, and Popo was periodically producing puffs of smoke, creating an incredible view for us to begin our day with. Although it was a sight to behold, we had little time to sit and watch, because we had a high camp to get to!
Everyone made it up to approximately 15,500 feet in great style! The day proved to have as beautiful weather as the morning provided, and we enjoyed the blue skies the whole way up to high camp. The loads were a bit heavy, and the air a bit thin, but that was no issue for this team.
Now we are all relaxing in our tents and in true Mexican style enjoying a little siesta before dinner. In the morning we plan on waking up and climbing to the summit of
Ixta!
Hasta luego!
RMI Guides
JT Schmitt &
Grayson Swingle
On The Map
RMI Guide Hannah McGowan met her
Expedition Skills Seminar - Paradise team on July 29th for a day of Technical Training and gear checks. The next day they drove to Paradise and began their climb. The team moved slowly up the mountain setting up camp, learning new skills and practicing new techniques. Yesterday they moved into Camp Muir and prepared for their summit attempt. With an early alpine start this morning, the team left Camp Muir enroute to the summit. With blue skies and light winds they reached the summit of Mt. Rainier and after enjoying the views, began their descent to Camp Muir around 7 AM PT. Once back at camp they will pack up and continue their descent to Paradise. We look forward to seeing them at Rainier BaseCamp this afternoon to conclude their week of training and climbing.
Congratulations to the Paradise Seminar Team!
Heart rate monitors are a useful tool for planning, executing, and tracking your training. By tracking your heart rate throughout a workout, you can get a more accurate idea of the real intensity of the activity versus the perceived, and can adjust your current or future workouts to accordingly. Not all heart rate monitors are the same however, and they aren’t anything more than a tool to be more informed about the progression of your training.
Smartphones can do almost everything now and indeed, some of the newest phones include a small finger scanner that can detect your heart rate. Watches have also evolved to track your heart rate from your wrist without the chest strap that used to be required, though the top models still use a chest strap, albeit with improved technology. The difference between the three styles really lies in the accuracy of the measurement. While it’s nifty to be able to see what your heart rate is on your phone, it can’t track your heart rate throughout a workout, only at discrete points in time when you choose to scan it and to be effective for training, it’s best to have a picture of what your heart rate looked like throughout the workout.
Watches that measure your pulse through your wrist generally use reflected infrared or LED light to measure changes in the size of capillaries as an indication of a heartbeat. While these watches will track your heart rate throughout a workout, they tend to not be as accurate as the models that use a chest strap since you move and bounce while you exercise. Ultimately it offers only a rough picture of your pulse throughout. For an accurate idea of your training intensity, newer dedicated heart rate monitors with chest straps use conductive fabric and microprocessors that analyze your EKG, giving a detailed and accurate picture of your entire workout.
What does using a heart rate monitor get you? First and foremost, a heart rate monitor gives you the ability to track your training more accurately. Heart rate monitors use versions of the 5 training zones that most athletes utilize, so you can begin to build an accurate picture of how much time you spend in each zone and how effective a given period, week, or workout might have been for you. A heart rate monitor can also help you to hit your target intensity zone for a given workout. This works in both directions; it can help you to tone it down on your long level 2 endurance training if you start to push a little hard, or it can let you know that you need to push even harder to make it to your target L4 zone on a set of intervals. Tracking your heart rate over a period of time can also give you a picture of your overall fitness. As your training pays off, your resting heart rate should drop, and you will find yourself covering more ground and going faster, but at the same intensity. Conversely, a sudden spike in your resting heart rate may indicate that your training load is adding up and that you need to focus a bit more on recovery. A heart rate monitor won’t make you fitter, but it can give you a lot of valuable information that allows you to create a more informed training plan.
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Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!
Thursday June 11th 5:50 pm PT
Again we remain at
14,000 foot camp as we wait for the weather to turn for a summit bid. The snow keeps coming down around here like coconut flakes sprinkled on ice cream.
We did take advantage of a short break in the clouds this morning to walk to the Edge of the World, a viewpoint to the northeast fork of the Kahiltna several thousand feet below. Waddling out onto the saddle rock is an existential experience indeed, having all that air underneath you really makes you feel alive!
After our trek to the Edge of the World, we enjoyed a nice mid-morning brunch. With chilly temperatures and a light breeze we crawled back into our tents for an afternoon reading session. A few hours later we greeted
Jake's team, who carried from 11K Camp. It was nice to see his team, they all seemed to be doing well.
Keep sending good weather vibes our way!
RMI Guide Tyler Jones
June 5, 2015 - 6:53 pm PT
We woke this morning to silence, my first thought was that the weather had become good. Soon I rubbed my eyes and realized the we were completely snowed in. After digging out of the tent we spent another hour excavating camp before we could even start making breakfast. Obviously not a move day.
Once camp was dug out and coffee was coursing through us we spent the day sharing stories, reading, and napping in our tents. The wind and snow let up for most of the afternoon and we are all hopeful that tomorrow will bring good weather for us. The team is antsy to move higher on the mountain but there is nothing we can do about the weather. Spirits remain high and everyone is healthy and happy. Keep your fingers crossed for good weather tomorrow. Thanks for following along with us.
RMI Guide Geoff Schellens
On The Map
It's another day of rest for our
Aconcagua team at Base Camp. Initially our team was wondering why we were going to take a second day of rest here. After yesterday's carry to Camp 1 at 16,000 plus feet the team understands. This mountain climbing is tiring work!
We had a casual morning here at base.
Steve and I made our famous home fried potatoes that even brought the Base Camp cooks out to get a plateful. After breakfast we went for a walk and got a great view of base camp from a whole different vantage point. Now team members are lounging, taking showers and ordering pizzas. Tomorrow we plan on moving up to Camp 1.
If you don't mind, I need to address one of RMI's owners, the Legendary
Joe Horiskey. Joe, please, no matter what happens between the Sea...what's their name again...and the Green Bay Packers, I hope we can still be friends!
RMI Guide JJ Justman
On The Map
We had another great day of training today on
Mount Shuksan. We ascended the Sulphide Glacier and then stepped onto the Upper Curtis Glacier where we spent much of the day running laps on the steep ice pitches known as Hell's Highway.
Afterwards we practiced some 4th class rock scrambling on the ridge just west of the Sulphide Glacier.
The weather has treated us well so far, and the forecast looks favorable for the rest of out week here. Everyone is doing well and enjoying the beauty of the
North Cascades.
RMI Guide Mike Walter
We started our day at a reasonable hour with breakfast at 8:00 am; we had porridge, fried eggs, and of course plenty of the Starbucks coffee we brought along.
After breakfast, we finished the remainder of our packing and headed over to the gondola and hitched a ride further up the mountain to our new base camp. Two gondola rides and one super long single chair lift delivered us to
our new home just over 12,000'. Our new home is basically a retrofitted shipping container, and to be honest it's reasonably comfortable.
We had a nice lunch prepared by our wonderful cook, Albina. She's a great cook, but I think is a little over worked as she's been up here since my last trip.
With our gondola and chair lift rides this morning, we needed some post-lunch exercise so we headed out to stretch our legs and continue our acclimatization process by hiking for a little over an hour and gaining well over a thousand feet of elevation. Everyone did great and we are now back at camp watching the evening clouds roll in and getting ready for dinner.
RMI Guide
Casey Grom
On The Map
Another early wake up to good weather; good weather for Denali anyway. The skies were a bit overcast and light snows were falling but the winds were calm. We did a "back carry" today. This means that we went from our 11,000' camp back down to retrieve our cache at 10,000'. We bury our caches well over a meter deep so the ravens don't get into our food if the warm days melt the snow. Our strong team ascended back up to camp with style and spent another afternoon sport eating in the posh house (cook tent).
RMI Guide Mike Haugen
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Go Team!! Shannon - you are my hero! Love, M
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