Namaste everyone.
All is well here at Pheriche.
Today was a scheduled rest day, which doesn't mean we lay around, it usually means we have a little exercise to help our bodies continue to acclimatize. So today we climbed up the local hill, outside of Pheriche, that rises over 16,000ft, higher than Mt. Rainier, and set a few altitude records for some of the team.
We've been spending our time relaxing in the dining room of this tea house where it's the warmest. We are more than a thousand feet above tree line, so burning wood isn't much of an option. As per Tibetan tradition, the local Sherpa people collect the dung from Yaks and dry it.
Although this may seem like it could lead to an odiferous situation, the stove actually burns very clean and keeps us quite warm.
Everyone is in good spirits and looking forward to making our way slightly further uphill.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
June 16, 2015 9:32 pm PT
We had another early morning today. Instead of moving uphill, we went back to 10,000' to retrieve our cache. All went according to plan and we got back to camp around 8:30 a.m. We did a bit of relaxing and reorganizing of our reunited gear. The sun was out on the glacier, which provided some intense solar radiation that we tried to stay out of. Our plan is to get up early and carry some gear up to our next camp at 14,000' and then return to 11,200' tomorrow afternoon.
RMI 7 "El Siete"
Hi Dad (Parky)! We’re closely following your progress and eager to see you safely summit and safely return. Enjoy! We’ll be thinking of you as we enjoy the summer sun and teaching Jane how to swim! Love, Meggie-Moo & Anna-Banana
Posted by: Margaret on 6/18/2015 at 8:19 am
Hi! Thinking of you, Doug, and hoping you are feeling wonderful in all that sunshine. We see only rain, rain, rain here in Texas. We miss you… and the sun very much. Enjoy the climb and stay strong. All the best to you and the team.
Tonight I'm in the village of Jagat. The last 4 days were comprised of a challenging bus ride and 3 days of trekking. During the bus ride I learned why, although popular for it's price, a bus is sub-optimal for the road to Arughat -- the passengers are as much mules to help get it through the muck as paying customers. However, trekking in from Arughat has been beautiful; starting from rice fields, then through the rain forest, to now in more of a steep riverside canyon with heavy vegetation. The highlight of the trek has been midday swims in crystal clear waterfall feed pools. The low point has been the heat, humidity and incessant mosquitoes. The climate is quite stifling. Constantly wet with sweat -- day and night. Tomorrow I'm going for a bigger day to Namrung and hopefully it'll be my escape out of this Nepalese sweat locker. The occasional glimpse of snow capped peaks has me stoked for Manaslu! Though even after 3 days of trekking, the altitude at Jagat is still only 4500ft...
At some point this trail has to start holding onto gains right?
RMI Guide Alex Barber
May 30, 2014 - 6:29 pm PT
Our team is still at Kahiltna Base Camp waiting for the weather to improve so that we can fly back to Talkeetna. This is day 23 of our trip and we're all getting antsy in anticipation of a hot shower, food, and flush toilets.
We picked up another eight inches of snow over night, and the precipitation has continued pretty much all day. We're hoping for a break in the weather in the next few days so that planes can get in to Base Camp.
That's pretty much all the news from this end.
RMI Guide Mike Walter
Sorry to hear about the continuing weather woes. Sounds like everyone will need to turn in any sharp objects pretty soon! However, when it comes to flying it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
If you follow mountaineering much, you already know that climbers often don't do what they said they were going to do. And I assure you that there are good reasons for such contradictory and inconsistent behavior. For instance, yesterday I said that I would lead my sub-team of Erica, Seth, Kent and Ang Kaji in an effort to get up early and go on up the hill to ABC. I lied. We did get up early...at 3AM...and we did give it a try, but then we came back down to BC.
It was a beautiful night and each of us got up and out of the tents professing to have slept well. There was a massively full moon lighting things as we swallowed coffee and rice porridge. There weren't any headlights already in the Icefall, and in fact we were the first to venture onto the route this morning. This didn't surprise me as many potential summit climbers are well down valley in the tea houses right now, taking a rest before their final bids on the mountain. Their Sherpa teams have, for the most part, already carried all the equipment that is needed for those final bids. So things are quiet on the climbing route at the moment and we seem to be the only folks still thinking of going up for practice and acclimatization. Being slightly out-of-synch with the general mob is exactly to my liking though. As we strapped on our spikes, I was pleased to contemplate cruising through the Icefall route without any traffic considerations. I led the way and began to experience a strange fringe benefit of being first. The glacier kept popping and snapping with my passage...sometimes playfully, sometimes with a rifle-crack that made one want to duck and cover. Lots of daytime melt water runs on the surface of a big glacier in Spring and it freezes solid in cracks and seams at night...whoever puts weight on it first breaks the new bonds. Knowing this intellectually and being surprised out of your socks by a loud CRACK on a quiet night are two different things.
We'd been walking for just a half hour when the International Space Station whizzed through the dark sky over Lhotse's summit. Out to the West, the full moon was crashing dramatically to earth over Cholatse's summit. It was yet another very beautiful morning. But we all knew something was wrong, just the same. We weren't coming close to our intended pace for the day. Our initial hope was that Erica was just having a slow start, but after a couple of hours, it was clear that she was having more of an "off" day that we needed to pay attention to. Her knee was aching from an old twist and every awkward step up in the ice was a little slower as a result. These things happen to all of us...even when we've got big plans for the day. We'd already passed through the big avalanche scar on the route and were in the "popcorn" section when I did the math and figured it just didn't make sense for us to try getting to ABC as planned. We'd all be too tired, overworked and dehydrated from so much extra time spent out on the trail with packs on our backs. Better to get on back to BC, have Erica's knee checked by the HRA docs and with a green light, go for it again tomorrow...hoping for an "on" day. It was a little strange to be back in basecamp in time for the regularly scheduled breakfast with the gang, but I don't see it as too big a setback. Certainly not as big a setback as a grindingly slow day through the Icefall would have been. The rest of our team is still in a holding pattern, trying to get over minor ailments and trying to get enough exercise in so as to stay sane in this weather-waiting period. Luckily for their sanity, things clouded over and got cold, mean and nasty for the afternoon at BC. It is easier waiting for good weather when one feels like one is actually in bad weather, but of course the weather perceived from basecamp is not always the actual -and more significant- weather at 8000 meters. It doesn't take too much imagination and extrapolation today though to believe that things are rough and grim at 8000 meters, but rumor has it that climbers are camped at the South Col and gunning for the summit tonight. Good luck to them...if they happen to do what they said they were going to do, that is.
That's a wrap on another great trip to two of Ecuador's highest volcanoes. Unfortunately, we did not get the chance to summit Cotopaxi this time. The risk of lightning was too high for us to continue past 16800'. It was unfortunate to run into those conditions as we had a strong team who had all proven themselves on Cayambe. I felt confident we were all headed for the top of Cotopaxi as well. But it was a good moment to look inside ourselves. Sometimes more important than a summit is what we have learned about ourselves along the way and the confidence we have gained through diligent preparation. For this group, there will be many more mountains and they will be prepared when the opportunity for a summit exists.
With some spare time and due to our early finish, we did some light birding at Limpiopungo, a lake in the national park with a well-maintained trail around it. The time was spent identifying species of birds and reflecting on our experience on the mountain. This was a good reset for our minds and a nice way to round out an overall lovely trip to the Ecuadorian highlands.
A big day in Talkeetna. It was cloudy and rainy, but that didn’t prevent us from starting out with a breakfast meeting at the Swiss Alaska Inn, introducing the team and discussing expectations and strategies for the climb. We carried on by regrouping over at the airplane hangar to sort equipment and get packed. We broke things up with an excellent briefing from the National Park Service. Denali climbing ranger, Alan Davis spoke to us about current conditions and the need to prioritize safety on the mountain. K2 Aviation - our flight service- then let us know what to expect in regards to getting on and off the mountain via ski plane in variable weather conditions. We then buckled down and put in a few serious hours getting organized for the climb. This was capped off with a formal weigh-in, a prelude to loading up the airplanes -which we hope will take place tomorrow morning. The team then relaxed at Mile High Pizza Pie in the heart of Talkeetna. Enjoying dinner and the drizzle from low clouds. We are set and excited to get on the mountain.
Today is the day we finally pack up our chubby duffel bags, steal some chocolate filled croissants from our top notch breakfast buffet and hit the road. Quito is a beautiful city, home to an incredible history and architecture but it is also home to 3 million people. Buses here burp massive diesel fumes imitating tiny volcanoes and the horns are not quite a song bird, so after a few days, the country is calling.
On this note, our team all proved they are a timely bunch being packed and ready by 7:30, so we loaded Victor’s magic bus and headed toward our second acclimatization mountain, Fuya Fuya. If you strapped a gps on crow and flew it to the mountain it would only fly 85 miles or so but on the ground, that distance took three hours or cover. Upon arriving in the small town of Otavalo, our bus head upward into the hills on old cobble stone roads, similar to what you would find in Europe. Halfway to the trailhead we were stopped by a child no older that seven who had a rope tied across the road. In a fantastic show of entrepreneurship, he engaged those tiny arms, pulled the rope tight and forced the bus to a surprised halt. Out of pure respect for the hustling toll collector we paid him his asking price and off we went.
Where the road ends, there is a beautiful crater lake formed by the sinking of the volcano in its last eruption. We parked, shouldered our light packs and made the two hour hike through interesting native fauna and steep grassy slopes to the summit of this 14,000 foot peak. Being an adventurous crew, we then traversed west along a skinny ridge to Fuya’s neighbor peak providing some fourth class rock scrambling and enjoyable steep movements. Unfortunately the clouds decided to join the party and occlude our grand vista of surrounding peaks and the deep blue lake but overall the weather stayed dry and warm.
An hour long descent brought as back to the bus and another hour, back to town. Our toll collector did not greet us on the trip down but his encounter certainly provide a laugh for the rest of the evening.
After a nice lunch we landed at La Casa Sol or the sun house, in English, where we practiced some knots, ate dinner and enjoyed a good nights rest. Tomorrow we move up to Cayambe where things begin to get a bit colder and more real!
More to come.
Our entire Mt. Baker reached the summit via the Easton Glacier at 8:15 this morning! The weather has been great and the route is in good condition. Everyone is doing well. We are back at camp and will be packing up to head to the trailhead shortly.
RMI Guide Hannah Smith
Namaste from Namche Bazaar, a.k.a. "downtown Khumbu", as the Sherpa say.
Our second day on the trails delivered the best weather possible, which allowed for the first view of two Himalayan giants, Lhotse and Chomolongma in the distance, but also the towering Tamserku and Kushum Kangkaru, that overlooked our progress like patient sentinels.
Crossing the suspension bridges back and forth over the Dudh Koshi River, while taking turns with the caravans of Dzo Dzos (hybrid between yak and cow) added excitement to the steady elevation gaining of our legs.
Arriving in Namche was a surreal image, as people from all over the world merge here from the different circuits of this region. Our rewarding dinner is bringing us now close to bed, and we look forward to spending a day here tomorrow allowing our bodies to acclimate to the new altitude.
RMI Guide Elías de Andres Martos and team
Hi Dad (Parky)! We’re closely following your progress and eager to see you safely summit and safely return. Enjoy! We’ll be thinking of you as we enjoy the summer sun and teaching Jane how to swim! Love, Meggie-Moo & Anna-Banana
Posted by: Margaret on 6/18/2015 at 8:19 am
Hi! Thinking of you, Doug, and hoping you are feeling wonderful in all that sunshine. We see only rain, rain, rain here in Texas. We miss you… and the sun very much. Enjoy the climb and stay strong. All the best to you and the team.
Posted by: Chris on 6/17/2015 at 8:41 pm
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