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First things first: Happy Mother's Day from our Denali climbing team!
Yesterday we woke to clear skies and cool temperatures at Camp 2, and we packed up camp and moved up to Camp 3 at 11,200'. The snow conditions were excellent for traveling, and the temps were cool but comfortable, and perfect for climbing .
After good day of climbing, and a few hours of establishing camp, we settled in to the comfort of our cook tent to enjoy a delicious meal of chicken quesadillas.
Today we are resting, hydrating, and acclimating to this new altitude. After a huge breakfast of eggs and bacon, we have begun to fortify our camp- reinforcing our snow walls and our tent anchors. This afternoon we will spend time sorting our gear in preparation for taking a cache to 13,500'.
Everyone is doing well, and we're hoping for good weather tomorrow to get our cache in place. We will check in again tomorrow, and let you know what we're up to.
Mike
A shower never felt so good! We spent the night sleeping under the stars. The sky held more stars than one can imagine. No light pollution makes every star twinkle. No alarms were set, we just woke with the sun and the rustling of the other teams at camp. Breakfast looked like a continental breakfast, bagels, oatmeal, cereal. Of course copious amounts of coffee were consumed as well. Everyone can feel the compounded effects of the last few days. This day held a lot inventive to keep moving. Today we would walk to the end of the Vacas Valley and wrap up our expedition. Today we would enjoy a shower and wash Aconcagua off of us. Today we would sleep in a bed. The team walked in style all the way to the end. They earned their shower and bed. All clean and looking presentable the team took the night to relax. Tomorrow we will do an official closing to the exepedition and maybe some laundry too. Before we sign off for good, we would like to thank everyone for the kind comments on the blogs and endless encouragement.
Thank you all and good night,
RMI Guide Hannah Smith
Our last day in
St. Petersburg! The team had a great final day here in Russia. We visited the very famous Hermitage Museum, where we saw paintings and sculptures by many well known artists including Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and even Da Vinci. It's one of Russia's great treasures and houses several thousand pieces of art collected over the last few hundred years. The Hermitage consists of 5 buildings, each with 3 floors, and has hundreds of rooms. The team did their best to take in the highlights in a little over 2 hours. We took a quick lunch before stopping by the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, that's decorated almost entirely with Mosaics/ We then wrapped up the day with a wonderful 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 our family and loved ones. Thanks for following.
Casey and comrades
Casey Grom here checking in with RMI's first 2019
Kilimanjaro Climb!
All is well here in Tanzania and most of the team arrived late last night after some very long flights. It was a short and uneventful ride to our Lodge that is nestled in between Arusha and Moshi and not so far from the base of Kilimanjaro. The team had a quick dinner and headed for bed as the time change has us all feeling just a little off and pretty tired after all the traveling.
Today we had a leisurely morning with our official meeting at 10, where we did a round of introductions and then discussed the upcoming program for the days ahead.
We spent the remainder of the day getting our gear packed up, exploring the grounds of our Lodge, which is incredibly peaceful and has monkeys and Dik Dik running around.
See for yourself.
We wrapped up the evening with another delicious meal and plenty of friendly conversations. Everyone is doing well and excited to hit the trail tomorrow and get a little bit of exercise.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and the Kili crew!
Start to finish... another grey day of clouds and snow at Union Glacier... with no horizon, no contrast, not much visibility and zero chance of escape. Except... today was the Antarctic Ice Marathon and everybody was excited. Our own Abdul surprised his climbing team at breakfast by inquiring as to whether he might enter the race... scheduled to begin in an hour. It turned out that he could and did. 26.2 miles was going to be run in whiteout conditions over four laps on a ten kilometer groomed loop. But with new snow falling, the grooming wasn’t all that good. It was a lot like running in sand at the beach. Abdul took off with the crowd at 10:30 AM... his first marathon-and the only one of 59 entrants to have climbed to
Vinson’s summit three days earlier. Skeptics expected one lap from him. Abdul finished the marathon, completely comfortable and in control. The winner took 3.5 hours and the final contestant 13 hours with Abdul very respectably in-between.
The evening was a memorable and international celebration, with cheers going up from the Chinese, the Australians, the Dutch, the Austrians, the Russians, the Indians and the Sri Lankans... not to mention the Americans and Brits.
The end of the day was exactly like the beginning... snow, cloud, murk, calm and quiet. But pretty fun too.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Our Four Day Summit Climb teams led by
RMI Guides Elías de Andrés Martos and Ben Liken reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning and were beginning their descent from the summit around 7AM. It's a beautiful day with clear skies and warm temperatures, the guides did report some strong winds on the upper mountain. Both climbing teams will return to Camp Muir and then continue their descent to Paradise. The teams will return to Rainier BaseCamp in Ashford this afternoon.
On the Kautz Glacier route, RMI Guide Leon Davis led the
Expedition Skills Seminar - Kautz team to the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning. The team will descend back to camp for their final night on the mountain. Tomorrow, they will descend to Paradise before returning to Ashford in the afternoon.
Congratulations Summit Climb and Seminar Climbers!
May 29, 2015 10:41am PST
As the sun hit our tent we woke up ready for our back carry to above windy corner. We could hear the wind in the distance scouring the buttress above us. But here at camp it was calm and brisk. Since we worked hard on our move to
14 camp and our back carry would only take a few hours, we opted for a relaxing morning before our work had to be done. After lounging in the posh till late morning we geared up and retrieved our cashed equipment and food.
When we got back it was only mid afternoon, so the next task was to fortify camp with walls in case the wind decided to give us trouble. Little did we know that our team consisted of Egyptian craftsman. In no time or camp was secure.With much of the day left we took a solid break and made some fresh coffee, which is a real amenity up here. After being properly caffeinated we practice fixed line travel which will be a well needed review before cashing at 16,200.
We are feeling good and are putting ourselves in a position to head higher on the mountain. With a little more acclimation and calm weather we will be ready for high camp and a bid at the summit. We are all very excited.
RMI Guide
Adam Knoff & Team
Hi everyone, Billy (Nugent) here checking in after the first official day on our 2015
Aconcagua expedition. Today was a crazy one and the team spent most of the day scrambling around trying to get everything ready for tomorrow´s departure to the mountain. One of our team members was the victim of freezing rain and thus a cancelled flight from O´Hare so she arrived in Mendoza this morning and was forced to hit the ground running. We went straight to the permit office to handle that and then made a quick stop to freshen up at the hotel before we departed for Penitentes where Grajales, our outfitter, has a packing facility near the trailhead. The rest of the team spent the morning tying up loose ends; making runs to the grocery store and gear shop to pick up last minute items before we all jumped in the van for a three-hour drive up to Penitentes in the mountains. Once we arrived we spent several hours packing and readying our loads for the mules that were broken up nicely by a great dinner at Ayelen, our hotel. Lots of things to remember means a fair bit of stress but that will all evaporate once we hit the trail tomorrow. The team is ready and in good spirits, eager to hit the trail! We´ll check in again from our first camp along the trekking route into basecamp.
All for now,
RMI Guide Billy Nugent and the gang
Greetings,
Today was another fairly relaxed day for us. We had taken care of all our packing and last minute shopping yesterday, so we were ready for the "weigh in" at 11:30. ALE, the company in charge of all the flight logistics, came to the hotel to weigh and collect all our checked baggage for the flight tomorrow. It will be loaded into the plane tonight and be ready to go whenever we get the green light.
We had our flight briefing at the ALE office at 5:00 pm. All the passengers (climbers and skiers) were there, about 45 total, to learn about the procedures for flying to Antarctica. As you might guess, this is definitely not a normal flight. It's a cargo plane. There are no window seats, overhead bins, or cabin crew. The plane was built for only two reasons, hauling cargo and landing in "off strip" runways. And a blue ice runway in the interior of
Antarctica definitely qualifies as "off strip".
At the airport in Punta Arenas, we will board the plane in 40-45 degree temperatures, wearing or carrying our Antarctica clothing. The flight, about 3000 kilometers, takes about 4 1/2 hours, and when you de-plane, you are literally on a different continent, but more importantly, it is one of the coldest and remote places in the world. When you step outside, the temperature will be about -15 degrees Fahrenheit at
Union Glacier. And that does not include any windchill.
We got a flight update tonight at 7:30 pm. Tomorrow morning, they will get an updated weather report from Union Glacier at 7:00 am and after reviewing the new information, will call us between 7:30 and 8:30 am. If the weather looks good, they will give us a flight time with about 30 minutes to get ready for the shuttle to the airport. If there is any concern about the weather, they will give us the time for the next weather update. Hopefully the first call we get is the call to get ready, that the flight is a go.
We have already had dinner and are back at the hotel. We wanted to have an early night in anticipation of the big day tomorrow. We'll keep you posted.
Best,
RMI Guide Jeff Martin
The Four Day Summit Climb teams led by
RMI Guides Zeb Blais and Jake Beren were unable to make a summit attempt of Mt. Rainier this morning due to weather conditions. Jake reported steady winds of 50 mph overnight with gusts to 70 mph. As of 7:30 am conditions had improved slightly with decreased winds and partial clearing. Snow accumulation at Muir was estimated at 6-10 inches.
The teams will depart
Camp Muir around 9:15 en route to Paradise and then continue down to Rainier BaseCamp in Ashford.
Fantastic!
Posted by: David Hampton on 5/9/2011 at 7:16 am
Congrats to the team on making it to camp 3 - glad everyone is in good spirits! Jeff - hope you are hydrating and eating lots! We all miss and love you.
Erica
Posted by: Erica on 5/9/2011 at 7:06 am
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