Most Popular Entries

Hello everyone! Today was our travel day from the mountain to St. Petersburg. It was a pretty long day with the four-hour bus ride to the airport and then a three-hour flight. It was a pretty uneventful day, but the team is doing very well. Everyone is happy to be here in this beautiful city and looking forward to our city tour tomorrow. RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew

Today was packing day. We met for breakfast at the ‘Roadhouse’ in downtown Talkeetna at 8:00 am. If there’s one thing to remember about eating at the Roadhouse it’s to order the half size portions. The full size breakfasts are unbelievably huge. After breakfast we met up at Hudson Air. This is where the RMI storage unit is located. Hudson Air has been in the glacier flying business for 54 years and Jay Hudson, the owner, is very accommodating to our groups. He pretty much lets us have our run of the place. We spend the morning going through all of our personal gear. One of the things that makes Denali tough is carrying all of the gear and food you’ll need for the whole three weeks, so it pays to go through each and every item to make sure that you don’t have too much, but also that you don’t forget anything. After a break for lunch we meet at the NPS Ranger station in Talkeetna for our orientation meeting. This is a ritual that every Denali climber must go through. The Rangers meet with us and show a slideshow of the West Buttress route. This is also where we receive our Clean Mountain Cans and bio-degradable bags for disposing of human waste. After finishing up at the hangar in the afternoon we all adjourned to Talkeetna for our last night in town for 18 to 22 days!

On The Map

RMI Guide Dustin Wittmier checked in this morning to let us know the team reached the summit of Cayambe with 100% success.

The team will make a stop for lunch before continuing to their next hacienda, Casa Ilayku. The team will enjoy a well deserved rest day tomorrow.

Nice work team!

Hello again Everyone All is well here in Ecuador. Yesterday we had a nice leisurely start to our day. We packed up for the move up onto the mountain and left the comfortable Lodge around 11am. We first stopped by the massive market in Otavalo to take in the culture and we did our best at bartering for some local goods. It was a little intimidating as Saturday is the big market day and it was jam packed with people and their goods. The team snaked our way through never ending streets of goods chatting with locals and then had a nice lunch overlooking the main square. After lunch, we headed directly to the mountain with help from a few 4x4 vehicles to make it up the very rugged road that goes all the way to the mountain hut at 15,000ft. The team chose to hike the last hour to help with acclimatization, and allowed our vehicles to deliver the gear at the hut. It was extremely windy so we didn’t venture outdoors too much. We finished the evening with a nice warm meal then turned in early for a good night's rest. Today the team got up around 6:30am to have breakfast and get ready for our hike up to the glacier that’s about an hour uphill. We spent a few hours refreshing our mountaineering skills on the glacier and taking in the views when the clouds allowed. Everyone is doing very well and the whole team is in good spirits up here since the weather has mellowed out. Our plan is to have an early dinner then head to bed as tomorrow we’ll be making our first summit attempt. We’ll shoot for getting up around 11:30pm and hopefully be out the door in an hour's time. If things go well I expect it will take somewhere around 6-8 hours to reach the summit. Then we’ll descend via the route back to the hut. Keep your fingers crossed and wish us luck. RMI Guide Casey Grom and the mountain crew!

On The Map

When the weather reports we receive include the words gentle breeze, fresh winds, and tail end of a typhoon, you know you are climbing in Alaska! We had a great trip from our camp this morning with all of our team members handling these heavy loads like champions! Since we always hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, we fortified our new camp with large snow walls to block some of the winds that may or may not be headed our way. We were so proud of our walls that Rusty even put his civil engineering stamp on them. The weather was very good before a marine type cloud layer brought some new snow and the fresh wind we were told about. It already seems to be clearing up a bit. Meanwhile, we are hunkered down eating Tasty Bites and waiting to see if hurricane Horiskey hits us. RMI Guide Mike Haugen & Super Crew 6

Greetings from the lovely Plantation Lodge about 75 miles east of the town of Arusha, loocated at the top of the eastern great Rift Valley escarpment. Our morning once again fueled by unlimited quantities of local fruits and anything else your heart desired, gave the team the energy to game view with the pros. That is exactly who we have as our support team. Once again the Dik Dik Lodge has provided us with incredible staff. Our driver Joseph and his side kick Zachery are the best, their ability to see these animals among perfect camouflage is no easy task. So fun to hear the comments of amazement from our team. It's crazy that after about 300 of these game drives I can still enjoy them so much. The terrain in itself is overwhelming let alone the hundreds of animals, it is pretty darn cool. Tomorrow we move into the 1,000s of animals at the 8th wonder of the world, Ngorongoro Crater. Life is very good here in Africa and all is well. RMI Guide Mark Tucker

June 29, 2016 - 1:23 am PT We are all safe and sound back at high camp after an amazing summit day. I am proud to report that all members of our team made it to the highest peak in North America! The day started out cold but Denali was kind to us. It turned out to be a clear and sunny day with very little wind...a rarity on this big mountain. We were just under 12 hours round trip from High Camp including a long time on the top taking pictures and enjoying our success. We are gong to try to get up early and start our decent back to thicker air. Hopefully the weather cooperates like it has over the last few days! Congratulations to the June 14th Denali Expedition Team! RMI Guide Mike Haugen

On The Map

All of the pieces are in place for an attempt on the Upper West Rib, now we are just waiting on the weather. With yesterday's carry to 16,400ft we have had a chance to stress our bodies and progress the acclimatization process. The weather in the Alaska range can be a fickle thing. Moisture from the south mixes with frigid temperatures from the north, and the resulting scale of weather can be anything from light snow flakes to true arctic blizzards. Right now we are in a holding pattern waiting for the snow to stop. It has only snowed a few inches today, but two feet are predicted for the coming 48 hours. With our shovels at the ready we are waiting to see if the prediction comes true. There is a silver lining to the forecast, however. It appears as though after this round of snowfall, the weather will stabilize and we may get our window to climb. That is still a few days out, but we are hopeful. The highlight around camp today was a potluck style lunch. After two weeks on the glacier a little variety in the daily diet was a welcomed change. Thanks for following along, and if anyone feels like overnight shipping a snowblower and a few gallons of gas our way, it would be much appreciated. RMI Guides Geoff Schellens, Eric Frank and the UWR team.

Hi this is Seth. We are spending the day in the vast Ngorongoro Crater. The animal viewing here is excellent and we've already spotted our first lion of the trip. Everyone's legs are almost completely recovered from summit day but its still nice to relax in the vehicles. We'll be staying in our same hotel tonight before making the switch to Kikoti Camp tomorrow. That's it for now. RMI Guide Seth Waterfall

Thursday, July 3, 2014 - 7:09 PM PT Hello again, this Elias and the Ishinca Valley seminar. We're having a good time here during our second day at base camp. After our arrival yesterday we left a dispatch but didn't know if the call went through, or at least part of it. Today we're checking in letting you know we had a great day of training. We are going to bed right now getting ready for tomorrow's climb of Navado Urus, a 5,400m (17,800') peak. Everybody's doing well, enjoying ourselves up here. We will be checking tomorrow again with hopefully some good news from the summit. Hope all is well at home and we'll let you know of our progress tomorrow. Good bye for now. RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos