Most Popular Entries

This is Zeb checking in from Plaza Argentina, Aconcagua Basecamp. We arrived today after trekking up from Casa de Piedra. We had a great New Year's last night where we celebrated with an asado and some nice bubbly. Today's hike went really well and everyone is in camp resting and feeling good. We have a full day of rest tomorrow and then we plan on carrying to Camp 1. We'll check in again soon. Thanks for following. RMI Guide Zeb Blais

On The Map

Our final night in St. Petersburg! The team had a great last day here in Russia, with a visit to several beautiful churches full of mosaics. We then visited the very famous Hermitage Museum, where we saw paintings and sculptures by many well-known artists including Picasso, Rembrandt, and even Da Vinci. We took a small break and wrapped up the day with a fantastic evening boat cruise to see this amazing city by water. It's been a wonderful adventure here in Russia, but it's time to say our goodbyes and return to family and loved ones. Thanks for following, RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew

It is hard to sit under Alpamayo's southwest face and not stare for an extended period of time. Our team, along with three other groups moved up to the Col Camp (17,600') today and find ourselves trying to prepare for the ascent tomorrow, but constantly distracted by the beauty of the route. From our tents the route rises nearly 2,000 feet in a vertical line of frozen snow and ice. An alpinist's dream. Getting to camp today was a job in itself. We climbed up a glacier for 90 minutes to the base of a headwall. It took three pitches of ice to reach the saddle where camp lies. The team performed well, but climbing 60-degree ice at 17,000 feet with 45-pound packs had everyone breathing hard. Stay tuned for tomorrow. We hope to make an attempt and will call via satellite phone to update everyone with the results. RMI Guide Eric Frank and the Alpamayo team

Good morning everyone! It's a beautiful day here on the lower Kahiltna Glacier. Our team did an excellent job of moving to 7,800' at the base of Ski Hill yesterday. We got an early flight to base camp and spent a few hours getting organized and reviewing glacier travel techniques. After a solid 8 hours in the sleeping bags we are again packing and looking uphill in the direction of 9,500'. We'll be sure to check in after our move today! RMI Guide Mike Walter

On The Map

Jambo We are now back at the Dik Dik hotel for a last dinner and shower. We had a wonderful final game drive, with the great luck of a leopard sighting. It was a fantastic way to finish the Safari. It's off to the airport, where we will fly to Amsterdam and then to our respective homes. We have had an amazing adventure, and made some new friends for life. We hope to see you on a trip with RMI in the future. Until then, Get out when you can! Thanks for checking in.

The clouds cleared with sunset last night, but enough of them stuck around to make the moonrise spectacular through bright pillows of distant cumulus with lightning bolts adding to the show. It was an easy night at basecamp although it was somewhat curious -so far up a mountain- to be serenaded by latin hip-hop and rap tunes well into the evening as a dance party -presumably held for some returning and victorious summit climbers- went on for hours, long after we'd all climbed into our sleeping bags and clicked off the headlights. This didn't seem to adversly effect anyone's mood in the morning though. All seemed to have gotten the neccessary rest. We were excited for the day's climbing. Heavy loads were shouldered after a great breakfast. We hit the trail in bright sunshine at around 9 AM and made steady progress up on narrow trails of broken rock and volcanic dirt. Without much trouble at all, we crossed the "East Glacier" on piles of rocky rubble and enjoyed some great views of the Polish Glacier above. We'd prepared ourselves for six hours of uphill toil if that was what it would take to get food, fuel and gear to our planned site for Camp One, but in the end, we did it in much less time as all were feeling good and enjoying the exercise. Peter, Ed and Melissa, our veterans of previous Aconcagua climbs, were each happy to see that a good portion of our route today was snow covered. Our photographers and videographers were charmed with the nature of that snow cover since we walked for some time up a steep track through neve-penitente. Intense sunlight on the snow surface, with the addition of a little dirt blown onto that snow from surrounding ridges had formed its surface into a series of eight-foot high pinnacles. Artistically wonderful, such snow formations would be tough to travel through without the established track. Jake Norton could often be spied wedged between pinnacles with his camera pointed through the jagged openings onto the trail. Kent Harvey, Thom Pollard and Gerry Moffat set up ambush after ambush to capture images of our climbers, seemingly climbing the back of a great white porcupine. Rachel broke her altitude record as she came smiling into the site of our intended gear dump at 16,304 ft. Ever gracious, she thanked Chad and Seth for their guidance and hints while Tim, Andrew, Clark and Kelly were doing high fives and fist bumps with the rest of the guide team. We were already caching the gear at 1 PM and enjoying a look at the route ahead. Peter scouted a bit higher to find the perfect place for our tents following tomorrow's move. Melissa pointed out the ever-so-close sites for Camps II and III (those sites are not far distance-wise, but each represents a significant gain in altitude and so we all know that we'll be taking our time to get up to what we can now easily see... acclimatization is a slow but essential process to avoid altitude illness) We eventually left a gear cache and beat feet down the path and penitentes. We passed dozens of slowly trudging heavily laden upward-bound climbers... perhaps they were attendees of last night's dance party and thus on a late schedule for rising and seizing the day. Our work was all done by 3:30 PM as we pulled off boots back in basecamp and enjoyed the afternoon sun. Tomorrow, if all goes well, we'll report in from Camp One.

The RMI Denali May 8th Team led by RMI Guides Mike Walter, Alan Davis & Alex Halliday returned to Talkeetna yesterday. After lots of waiting at 14,000' Camp on both the ascent and descent, the weather allowed the team to depart Kahiltna Basecamp. Once in Talkeetna the team sorted gear, arranged rooms, shuttle transportation and flight homes. The trip ended with a celebratory meal before spending their final night in Alaska. All team members should be making their way back to their respective homes. We would like to congratulate them on a safe and successful expedition. Thanks for following along on their adventure.

This evening I am at Camp 1 (at 5,500m, or 18,000 ft). One of only two climbers on the mountain. The weather at Base camp has been consistently light to heavy rain. I think that has kept most teams off the mountain and holed up at Base camp. But occasional windows through the bad weather had me convinced that clear skies were not too far above. Tonight I am at Camp 1, and I am enjoying great weather and my first clear views of Manaslu! Last time I checked in I was in Jagat. I've been pushing hard with little rest. My gut tells me the summit window will come early and I want to be ready for it. The current weather forecast shows light snow for the next couple of days, then a heavy fall 2-3 days from now -- then another clear weather window. But weather forecasts more than a day or so out in the Himalaya are very suspect, so I depend more on the reality on the ground each day. The route from base camp to Camp 1 travels up a heavily crevassed glacier. A solo fall would mean serious trouble; there are simply too many of the seemingly bottomless black holes to take this traverse lightly. So the route to Camp 1 required careful thought and planning as a solo climber. Happily I can report no major mishaps or surprises -- thanks to that good plan, and extremely careful execution. Tomorrow I will explore the route to Camp 2 and prepare a good camp here at Camp 1. Recent snow has some areas of the mountain unstable, as several natural releases made plainly evident today. So I'll stick my neck out only so far on my exploration of the route to Camp 2 (at 6,300m, or 20,700 ft) over the next couple of days. Best regards from snowy Nepal, RMI Guide Alex Barber

June 27, 2014 - 12:00 am PT We were up and hustling to get ready this morning, anxious for the chance to get on Mount McKinley. But it turned out, after breakfast and a walk in the rain to the airstrip, that there wasn't too great a chance for flying today. The word was that several feet of new snow had fallen overnight at Basecamp. The snow, cloud and wind were predicted to continue up there for the day, but we were put on standby just in case things broke. We made good use of the day in the K2 Aviation hangar, reviewing rope techniques for glacier travel. The rain and low cloud persisted, but we stayed dry enough. We had one more "last" dinner in town and turned in to be ready for another day and another try. Best Regards, RMI Guide Dave Hahn

On The Map

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