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RMI Guides Casey Grom, Chad Gaffigan and their team made it to the top of
Cotopaxi! As you can see from the photo, weather was less than ideal but eight of nine climbers did summit.
Congratulations to the team!
On The Map
The Four Day Summit Climb teams led by RMI Guides Brent Okita and JM Gorum reached the summit of Mt. Rainier today. Brent reported a cold morning, and the team climbed into the a cap, so their time on the summit was brief. The are on the descent and en route to Camp Muir.
Congratulations to today's teams!
Today was another beautiful day on the lower slopes of Mt. Baker. We started with a leisurely breakfast and then packed our gear for a short walk above camp to reach the snow and our training site. After a good day of training, we’re relaxing in our tents before dinner and then off to bed before we gear up again early in the morning for the real thing. The team is looking forward to heading uphill to put our new skills to use with the summit in our sights!
RMI Guides
Jess Matthews,
Jessie Poquerusse,
Dustin Wittmier and Team.
RMI Guide Steve Gately called in from the Summit of Mt. Shuksan. The team reached the summit via the
Fisher Chimneys route. The team climb strong and efficiently making it possible climb the summit pyramid in 45 minutes. The weather was clear, but smoke from wildfires did fill the air. The team is on their descent and headed back to their high camp where they will spend the evening, tomorrow they will trek out returning to Glacier, WA.
Congratulations to today's team!
Greetings all!
Your
Peru Expedition Skills Team has arrived in the beautiful mountain city of Huaraz, Peru! What a nice introduction to Peru we’ve had thus far; breakfast in the bustling city of Lima, a drive along the Pacific Coast, and altitude gain up and over the mountain pass (13,500’) into the Rio Santo Valley. The views of the Cordillera Blanca (White Mountains) and the Cordillera Huayhuash were ‘out of this world’. We made a stop to admire the first of many ice capped peaks, Pastoruri (see photo). After a fantastic dinner here at Hotel Andino, our team is doing our best to rest and recover from long days of travel. Alpaca steaks, Inka Kolas, and apple fritters were popular choices for many of us as we dove in head first to some exotic Peruvian fare. Tomorrow, acclimatization hiking above Huaraz and body nourishment are the name of the game as we prep for our climbs later this week. Until then, thanks for following!
RMI Guides Robby Young,
Alan Davis, and your Peru 2018 Team
Saturday, June 2, 2018 - 6:56 pm PT
We decided that the perfect weather this morning demanded that we go take a run up the fixed lines to check them out, and finally gain the
West Buttress. We're sitting through a spell of fantastic weather, warm, calm, and sunny, and the views back over camp were stunning. The fixed lines are often a point of uncertainty, nervousness, and apprehension, right up until we clip in to them and everyone realizes that's it's just the same old climbing that we are all used to. Everyone did a fantastic job and we cruised to the top, took a bit to enjoy the views and breathe some thin air, then headed back down to camp for an afternoon siesta. Tomorrow we'll take one more rest day before we look to make our move to 17K Camp and get our summit push underway.
RMI Guides Pete Van Deventer, Jess Matthews, Taylor Bickford, and team
On The Map
The
Four Day Summit Climb led by RMI Guides Brent Okita and Hannah McGowan reached the summit of Mt. Rainier early this morning. The team was going to spend some time on the summit enjoying the views before starting their descent.
Congratulations to today's teams!
After learning the fundamentals of glacier travel and snow and ice climbing, we put our newly honed skills to good use as we climbed to 11,000' to check out the upper mountain.
Unfortunately, the weather came in fast and we had to beat a hasty retreat back to
Camp Muir. What a fun day!
RMI Guide Brent Okita
Winds plagued the mountain throughout the night, but luckily our hut kept us fairly sheltered from the raucous. The winds persisted through the morning with off and on showers as we enjoyed our breakfast of scrambled eggs, yogurt and granola. With the weather not letting up we opted to do some training inside our hut in hopes that it would dry out later and we would be able to to move up to the glacier for more training. We spent a few hours discussing anchor building and construction. The team enjoyed getting hands on and nerding out some of the more technical aspects.
Just as we had begun our second topic the skies cleared a bit and the sun popped out! We opted to gather our things, take advantage of the nicer weather and head up to the glacier for more training.
The climb up to the glacier takes about an hour and meanders its way through loose talus, sand and a few rocky steps. The wind persisted through this area and kept the temperatures cool. Once to the glacier we spent the next few hours discussing and practicing efficient walking techniques, cramponing, team and self arrest, as well as rope travel on a glacier. The winds died down shortly into our first topics and we were glad to stay warm and dry for the remainder of the session.
We started back down at around 1:30pm in hopes to get back early to rest and relax before dinner at 5:30PM. The rain has returned since our arrival back to camp and we'll meet in a moment to discuss our summit attempt tomorrow morning! The team is excited and anxious for the challenge of their first volcano of the trip,
Cayambe! It's not uncommon to get afternoon rains here so we're optimistic things should clear overnight, pray to the weather gods for us. Thanks for following along!
RMI Guide Steve Gately
We have arrived at the mountain! Wow! Is all any of us could muster when we rolled into "Driver's Camp" situated in a beautiful prairie at 16,500 feet.
Shishapangma is rising 10,000 feet straight in front of me like a fortress not meant to be breached. I don't think any writer in the world could look out his window and see a vista so impressive as he puts his pen down in a stupor of amazement.
This morning we all had to get our final emails and texts out to our loved ones. As we drove we were graced with stunning views of
Everest and
Cho Oyu 60 miles across the moonscape of the Tibetan Plateau. Fifty miles down the road should lead to nowhere but actually leads to somewhere, some of us still had cell service. We will learn to unplug soon enough. This place to all of us is beyond expectations. No place could be better.
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos
You guys are awesome,
your advice and firm suggestions where spot on!
Thanks for getting us to the top.
Posted by: Jeff Piccinini on 9/16/2018 at 10:52 pm
Yahoo thanks for a great experience.
Posted by: Adam Kaplan on 9/16/2018 at 7:02 pm
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