Monday, May 20, 2019 5:40 pm PT
We slept in a little bit this morning, enjoying our first full rest day. The weather was cloudy with light snow and strong ridge top winds--perfect for a rest day!
We had an extended brunch with substantial portions of hashbrowns, bacon, egg, and cheese burritos, and plenty of coffee of course.
Other than eating and resting, our team rallied a work party this afternoon to start building walls around our camp to protect from any potential winds.
The weather forecast calls for sunny weather with strong ridge top winds tomorrow, decreasing by Wednesday. Right now the plan is to rest again tomorrow as our bodies get used to living at high altitude. Hopefully we'll be able to make a cache up high on Wednesday.
RMI Guide Mike Walter
Appreciate the updates and photos from Denali. Sure hope the weather cooperates for more climbing tomorrow. Glad they have an excellent contractor to help build snow walls around the camp. Hope you are keeping warm up there, Tom!
Posted by: Susan Royce on 5/21/2019 at 11:23 am
Great newsy updates! Sounds like this year’s climb is going well. Hope your rest day and snow walls prove successful! Good luck with the winds!
We are all thinking of you, Tom M, and hoping your new gear is keeping you safe!
xo
The Five Day Summit Climb June 15 - 19, 2018 reached the summit of Mt. Rainier this morning led by RMI Guides Casey Grom and Chris Ebeling. Chris reported good clear weather with no winds. The team will spend return to Camp Muir and then continue their descent to Paradise.
Congratulations to today's climbers!
Hello everybody, Casey Grom checking in. Just wanted to let everyone know that those of you who didn't receive a phone call from the summit of Kilimanjaro, we had 100% success today!
Like I said last night, we left pretty early to beat some of the traffic, but unfortunately I think many of those people have the same idea as well. It was a busy day on the trail for us which wasn't too much of an inconvenience, but it definitely made things a little more challenging with breaks and trying to keep a nice steady pace. But the team did fantastic and as they know that goal number 1 is to take care of yourself, and they did a fantastic job today of taking care of themselves. A little after about 7 hours of climbing, we were able to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro along with most of those other people that started the night with us. So there was I'm guessing close to 100 people on the summit, some before us, and a handful after us. Up there all the same time, it was a little bit of a struggle to try to get people in to get their photos at the actual sign. It's pretty painless on Kilimanjaro, but we managed to get quite a few.
Unfortunately still no cell service, so I haven't been able to get any pictures out. And that's going to happen tomorrow for sure, as we have descended all the way back to the Mweka Camp tonight. We're at about 10,000'. Tomorrow we get to the park gate...our hotel and freshly showered, at about 3-4 in the afternoon.
Anyway, all is well; team's doing great. Everyone's very tired after a very long day, but again 100% success and looking forward to sharing some of those pictures with you guys alright.
RMI Guide Casey Grom checks in after the team reaches the summit of Kilimanjaro.
Buenas noches from our High Camp on Ixta where we are tucked in for the night. The team did great moving up today and with any luck we will be calling from the cumbre. So all is well here. This is Jake and the Mexico crew signing off for the night. Adios
RMI Guide Jake Beren
Summit! With bluebird skies and lights winds, the summit climb teams reached the top of Mt. Rainier. The teams, led by Eric Frank and Paul Rachele, began their descent from the Crater Rim just after 7AM.
We look forward to congratulating them here at Rainier Basecamp this afternoon.
Today RMI Guide Billy Nugent and the Mt. Shuksan team reached the summit! Climbing the Sulphide Glacier Route, the team's round-trip was eight hours and 40 minutes. The weather was sunny and not a breath of wind. After returning to camp, safe and sound, Billy was able to send us the photo below.
RMI Guide Billy Nugent
Hello again everyone!
It was a beautiful day here in Russia. We had a nice relaxing start to the day with a traditional Russian breakfast of porridge, eggs and bread. Afterwards we made our way to the local ski lifts to help give us a jump start on our hike. I didn't hear a single complaint about riding up 1,500' on a chair lift before we started our two-hour hike to the top of Peak Cheget. Yes, it is also the name of the town in which we are staying. The hike went well with mostly clear skies and we even caught a few glimpses of Elbrus between the clouds.
After our hike we made it back to town relatively quickly thanks to the ski lifts, where we had a hot lunch waiting for us. After lunch, we dropped off our gear and made a quick stop to pick up a few extra items and even managed to try on a few local hats.
We wrapped up the evening with another nice, home cooked meal here provided by our ever so gracious local outfitter.
Things are good here.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Friday June 26th 12:30 am PT
We are on our way down!! After waking up when the sun hit our tents at 17,000, we packed up and headed downhill. Although sore and tired from a long summit day, we made good time down to 14,000 feet. We met up with Billy Nugent's group and had a healthy round of hugs and high fives. We picked up some cached gear and partook in the time honored tradition of fitting twice as much gear into a pack than should be possible and carrying said pack down another 3,000 feet to 11k Camp and our awaiting sleds. We are currently in a holding/napping pattern at 11k. We are going to walk early in the morning towards base camp and the landing strip in hopes of an early flight to Talkeetna. That is weather dependent of course!
RMI Guide Mike Haugen
Great news! Can’t wait to hear your stories and see your pictures. I am sure everyone on El Siete has wonderful stories
to share. I am looking forward to Doug’s!
Posted by: Chris on 6/26/2015 at 7:18 pm
Great news! Stay safe on your descent, El Siete.
Judi
We are currently back in Plaza Argentina enjoying some well deserved pizza and ice cold beverages. The team cruised down hill this morning, picking up gear and waste, leaving Aconcagua in better shape then we found it. When your descent takes only 4.5 hours compared to the 9 days it took on the ascent, you have to just shake your head a little.
The team is all smiles, waiting on shower water to heat up, enjoying time out of their boots and laughing.
This will be our last dispatch of the climb. We will walk to Leñas on Saturday for an amazing Argentine BBQ (that's slow cooked beef for you non-southerners). Sunday will see us with a short hike to the road and back in Mendoza.
Thanks for checking in on us during the climb.
RMI Guides Mike King and Steve Gately
Hey Everyone,
This is Team 4. This is JJ, Steve, and Gonzalo and our great climbing team at Leñas, our first trekking camp. I'm sending a Google message. It's tough camp to get email out, but we had a great day walking in. Actually, it was cloudy skies thought it was gonna rain for a bit but it held off. Now we are in the beautiful sunshine here. We're making an assado dinner with the cowboys under an open camp fire. And we're actually watching as I speak Team 2 led by Walter Hailes walking in. It's his crew we wanna give a big congratulations to for a great job done up there making the summit! We will be providing dispatches now on a daily basis let you know how things are going. So far it's all smiles, giggles, and laughs. People were doing really, really well and we are keeping spirits high. We are going to have another great dinner and enjoy another beautiful walk here in the Vacas Valley tomorrow. Thanks for following along. Tell your friends, tell your family and everyone else to follow along.
We will see you later on, bye bye.
RMI Guide JJ Justman
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Appreciate the updates and photos from Denali. Sure hope the weather cooperates for more climbing tomorrow. Glad they have an excellent contractor to help build snow walls around the camp. Hope you are keeping warm up there, Tom!
Posted by: Susan Royce on 5/21/2019 at 11:23 am
Great newsy updates! Sounds like this year’s climb is going well. Hope your rest day and snow walls prove successful! Good luck with the winds!
We are all thinking of you, Tom M, and hoping your new gear is keeping you safe!
xo
Posted by: Susan Mulvey on 5/21/2019 at 10:55 am
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