On the Disappointment Cleaver route of Mt. Rainier, RMI Guides Seth and Solveig Waterfall led their Four Day Summit Climb Teams to the summit this morning. Meanwhile on the Emmons Glacier route of Mt. Rainier, RMI Guide Mike Haugen led the Expedition Skills Seminar - Emmons to the summit this morning. All teams reported light winds and warm temperatures while on the summit. The Four Day Summit Climb teams will descend back to Camp Muir before returning to Paradise this afternoon and the Expedition Skills Seminar - Emmons will descend to Camp Schurman for their final night on the mountain.
Congratulations Climbers!
Congrats to Team Healey, Hoge, Laird & Samac! Can’t wait to hear all about! Let the summer begin!
Posted by: Sheri Healey on 7/15/2015 at 11:07 am
Congratulations Climbers—especially to Mike Healey who has finally crossed this off his personal “bucket list”. He summits on the 4th attempt! Way to go team Healey, Hoge, Laird & Samac!!
We finally got around to packing up camp and climbing up to 19,600 feet, our High Camp for the expedition. Extremely cold and calm morning with a new blanket of snow on the surrounding Andean peaks made for a scenic day.
High Camp is never anyone's favorite camp for a few reasons:
1. Sleeping at 19,600 feet can be difficult.
2. There are no 'great' tent sites due to how the wind swirls around.
3. Lack of snow makes drinking water a time consuming process.
Good thing we are making our summit bid tomorrow and will be back in Base Camp telling stories before to long.
Wish us luck! We will check in hopefully from the summit on Thursday afternoon.
RMI Guide Mike King
The sun has been shining on us all day, and the temperatures are pleasant, but something has changed: early this morning the tents gave a foretelling rattle, and then the wind settled in. While the wind hasn't been too strong yet, mostly it just makes a lot of noise, the forecast is hinting that the winds may strengthen tonight, and that they may persist for at least a week. We are hoping that they allow us to move up tomorrow, and that a forecasted lull may give us our shot. At this point, everything is ready for us and we are in Dr. Suess' proverbial waiting place, so we just have our fingers crossed for our summit window to show itself. Keep your fingers crossed for us,
RMI Guide Pete Van Deventer, Juan, Alex, and team
We took a well deserved rest day today at Plaza Argentina. Though most woke early, everyone opted to stay in their sleeping bags until the sun hit the tents. Our long morning continued with a scrambled egg breakfast and some joke and story telling over coffee. We roused ourselves in the late morning to head to the camp doctor's building for our obligatory medical check. We are happy to report that everyone is as healthy as they look and we are all clear to keep climbing!
It wasn't all fun and games, as we all had to sort through the duffels that the mules have been carrying to organize our gear for our carry to Camp 1 tomorrow. Unfortunately, Base Camp is the end of the road for the mules, and from here on up we take over their job.
An afternoon siesta led into another delicious dinner, which led to a spectacular sunset that turned the whole sky a variety of red and purple shades. A large thunderhead that has been hanging to the east provided a canvas for the painting, and dusk is just now beginning to overtake the brilliant hues. We are lucky to be in such a beautiful place.
We'll let you know how the carry goes tomorrow. Hasta mañana,
RMI Guides Pete, Alex, Juan, and team
Hi there, this is Seth checking in from 10,000 feet on Kilimanjaro. Everyone is doing well after our first day on the trail.
We started early at the hotel, with breakfast at 6:30 this morning. I arrived a few minutes early but I was still one of the last ones to arrive. This is a motivated bunch of folks.
The drive to the trailhead was relatively uneventful but checking in at the national park entrance took a little longer than usual. The small delay was quickly forgotten after a few minutes of hiking. Everyone agreed that it felt great to stretch the legs after all the traveling.
The weather was great for the hike and we are hoping that carries over for the rest of our time on the mountain.
That's all for now.
RMI Guide Seth Waterfall
Greetings from the Relincho Valley, Camp One on the trail into Aconcagua. This is the January Rainier Mountaineering Inc. expedition attempting to climb the "False Polish Glacier". We converged on this mountain by way of Santiago and Buenos Aeries, with the whole team meeting for the first time in Mendoza. Peter Whittaker, Ed Viesturs and Melissa Arnot guide the clients on our team along with me -Dave Hahn, I'm guiding... but I am the rookie on this climb having never been to Aconcagua before and am wide-eyed and excited to see a new place. So to are our four climbers: Clark Vautier, Tim Sohn, Kelley Maybo and Andrew Turner. Additionally we have a camera team and still photography team attempting to capture quality footage and images for RMI. The videographers are Gerry Moffet and Kent Harvey, along with Thom Pollard. Jake Norton is shooting digital stills and Rachel Rosengarten is overseeing the collection of both video and stills. Seth Waterfall and Chad Peele are guiding the production team. Poor Seth is still back in Mendoza as of tonight, waiting for slow luggage to fly in on a fast plane. He'll catch up with us in no time flat when the gear arrives.
Last night we stayed in Penitentes... a small settlement built around a ski area high in the Andes, perhaps 12 miles from the Argentine border with Chile. We were at 9000 ft above sea level, but passed the night in relative comfort with steak dinners and comfy beds. Fernando Grajales Expeditions of Mendoza is our capable outfitter, and this morning they organized our loads onto 20 mule backs and got us to our trailhead for a journey into the Vacas Valley. We started walking at around 10:40 AM under blue skies and bright sunshine. The mules carry up to 60 kilos each... we carried slightly less for what will be a three-day trek into basecamp. The Vacas River was churning along in a series of rapids next to the trail and we gained altitude slowly on easy terrain. The terrain is stark and bare, with towering cliffs and scree slopes limiting the views. At first we had a few trees along the path, but before long, we were down to small shrubs, grass and the odd flower patch. Most wore shorts and T-shirts for the first few hours, but as afternoon came on the sky filled with clouds and we endured brief showers from time to time. We did pass over a couple of old and dirty snowbanks that had obviously become the final remnants of great avalanche debris piles that were deposited during the last Austral Winter. Peter -a veteran of 7 previous Aconcagua expeditions- views such evidence of a heavy winter positively, pointing out that our climb to the summit will be easier if there is more snow and less dirt and rock up high. Our camp tonight at Las Lenas is situated at 9400 ft. The gang put down a big pot of Chad's famous spiral pasta with red sauce and chicken chucked in for dinner. The clouds are now clearing, the sun is down and the light is fading. We can see new snow left by the afternoon showers on the high rock slopes above us. We'll call it a day for now... the first of potentially 18 on the mountain.
We woke to calm conditions and good sunshine around 9 AM today. After breakfast and a powwow among the guide companies regarding route conditions, weather predictions, emergency procedures and communications, we got into some basic review of how we intend to rig up and climb Vinson. At 4 PM, when the sun was getting good and strong, we roped up and set out for an acclimatization hike up the first few hills of the climbing route. Conditions were pleasant -by which I mean that we were warm and comfortable as long as we kept moving. We got a few miles up the Branscomb Glacier to where we could start to see neighboring peaks like Shinn and Epperly, to the north. By 7 PM we were back in camp, just as clouds began to form up and obscure the views. We had a long and leisurely supper in our dining tent, and headed for the sleeping tents at 11 PM. Weather forecasts call for some potential nastiness these next couple of days... we’ll hope they are wrong, but of course basecamp is not a bad place to be if the predictions pan out.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Today we woke to a windy, chilly morning at Camp 2 on Aconcagua. Snow swirls danced down the mountain and through camp as we waited for our water to boil. We enjoyed hot cups of Starbucks Vias and sugary bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast. Today we rested to let our bodies adjust to our new altitude. The afternoons activity consisted of a casual stroll uphill, getting a glance at our path to camp 3. The tippy top looks cold and windy as we look towards the summit. Fingers crossed Mother Nature gives us a warmer window for our summit bid. For now, we will focus on taking care of ourselves and enjoying the beautiful views.
RMI Guide Mark Tucker and team
July 2, 2017 6:32 pm PST
Hey, this is Dave Hahn, guiding the last RMI Denali trip for 2017. We're on the summit. We are up top on a beautiful day. Everybody's climbing strong. There are ten out of our original twelve, and we're quite proud of ourselves and feeling very lucky. It's a beautiful day, and we're going to climb safe and strong back down to High Camp and then give you a dispatch to let you know we got there safe. Thanks for following.
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
June 2, 2017
Our team sends their greetings from 11 Camp! Everyone did quite well on the move here and we enjoyed another perfect weather day on our way up. We left early to beat the heat and it paid off. Once at camp we enjoyed some mellow camp construction and rest whilst our comrades made their way down from 17 Camp. It was great to see some triumphant souls and friendly (if scraggly) faces. Tomorrow we hope to back carry and claim our checked baggage and spend the rest of the day training and resting before working our way any higher. All subject to our beloved Mom Nature of course.
RMI Guide Jake Beren
Congrats to Team Healey, Hoge, Laird & Samac! Can’t wait to hear all about! Let the summer begin!
Posted by: Sheri Healey on 7/15/2015 at 11:07 am
Congratulations Climbers—especially to Mike Healey who has finally crossed this off his personal “bucket list”. He summits on the 4th attempt! Way to go team Healey, Hoge, Laird & Samac!!
Posted by: Krista Hoge on 7/15/2015 at 10:58 am
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