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Wednesday, June 12, 2019 - 4:45 PM PT
After 7 days of work the Team wanted 10 hours of sleep/tent time and the guides were happy to wait until the sun hit our tents before we had a casual breakfast of hash browns, scrambled eggs and bacon. There’s not much going on today since it’s our first full rest day. People have been reading, writing in journals and walking around camp. We are just back from some fixed line rehearsal on the little hill outside of camp. This practice got everyone tuned up for a potential carry of gear on the
West Buttress tomorrow morning. To gain the Buttress we ascend a moderate slope and then get on the fixed lines with our ascenders. There is some snow currently falling through a thin cloud that is making the tents an optimal temperature for napping so with that we’ll check in after our cache tomorrow. Thanks for following along.
RMI Guide Mike King
Rest days are the best days. Days for reading, napping, sport eating and shooting the breeze. We all did plenty of that plus a few chores. Everyone had to visit the
base-camp doctor, to which everyone received a green-light to go up the mountain. More shuffling of gear was done to get ready for our carry tomorrow. Tomorrow we will head up to Camp 1 to cache some of our gear. With nice weather in the forecast, it's going to be good day.
After while crocodile,
RMI Guide Hannah Smith and Team
May 21, 2017
We had another chilly day at
14 Camp as the the sun never poked out from the overcast sky. We spent a several of hours reinforcing the snow walls surround our tents in anticipation of a significant upcoming storm. We're planning to hunker down, weather the storm, and hope to have decent weather for a summit push on the flip side. Time will tell...
As we were reinforcing our camp, we were joined by the RMI Denali team led by Pete Van Deventer as they moved into 14 Camp. They're busy building camp and adjusting to the thin air up here as I write this.
We'll keep you in the loop with how the weather treats us.
RMI Guide Mike Walter
...Happy anniversary Kelly!
On The Map
May 19, 2017
Light snow overnight made everything quiet and still this morning. Camp was sleepy, as it seems everyone took the opportunity to sleep in. We munched our way through a big brunch of hash browns and eggs, and then trotted back downhill under empty packs to grab our cache. That short trip left plenty of time for naps and some chilling time this afternoon before a quick climbing skills refresher to get ready for tomorrow. We intend to trade sleds and snowshoes for crampons tomorrow and get our cache up to
Windy Corner. We'll see if the weather let's us.
RMI Guide Pete Van Deventer
On The Map
Good evening from "Los Perros Camp". Our third day marked a before and after on our trip; the start of the journeys along the less crowded "back side of the park" which is walked by a fraction of a percentage of the visitors, the narrower and more primitive trails, the more frequent but also elusive fauna (indigenous ducks, woodpeckers or owls were seen along the path...) are now our territory. But it also marked a change in the weather, which has confined us to our tents since we arrived to camp. Being in
Patagonia, is a synonym for mysticism, and glacial lakes, towering peaks and dense forests wouldn't be the same without its clouds, misty rain and restless winds. With the gradual climb that we started in the morning, we arrived at the highest camp of all where we'll spend a night. Not too wet, and in great spirits, we had dinner under the covered structure that the park service erected here, and we're now headed to bed in anticipation of the big day ahead tomorrow.
More to come from our adventure,
RMI Guide Elías de Andres Martos and team
There was optimistic talk yesterday evening of a flight to South America today. The weather didn't cooperate, but we certainly didn't mind another day in the heart of Antarctica. We ate well, we rested, we rode fat tire bikes on a 10k groomed trail, we watched clouds come and go, and we mingled with other "tourists" and staff of ALE (our logistical company). Everybody wanted to know about our big storm and just how hard the wind really blew.
Union Glacier camp feels like a major city compared to our small camps on Vinson. Ski planes come and go at all hours, snow cats and snowmobiles roam about, folks come and go from skiing and climbing, from excursions to the coast and the pole. It is a bustling crossroads in the middle of a beautiful nowhere. It is hard to interact with so many well-traveled people without hatching plans for the future. Our immediate future involves northward travel and word has it that the IL76 will be in tomorrow morning. We could be in South America tomorrow evening. One day at a time though.
Best Regards,
Dave Hahn
Hey-
We are checking in from
High Camp on Ixtaccihuatl. We had pretty good conditions coming up and getting our big loads up to camp. We have been here about four hours acclimatizing at 12,000'. As we pulled in, the weather came in we had a little bit of a lightning event that went over. It wasn't a big deal as we already had camp set up. Then the sun broke through for a little while and we were able to get in a little training to get us ready for tonight.
RMI Guide Mark Tucker
On The Map
Judging by the conversation over our evening campfire at Kikoti Safari Camp, this was a great day. The team recalled a fine night at the Plantation Lodge and a great start to the day there. We then drove a couple of hours to reach
Tarangire National Park. We'd only been in the park boundaries for a few minutes when we got to watch a beautiful lioness clear a waterhole of a hundred zebras and wildebeest. She only had to take a step in their direction to get the herds running frantically and kicking up dust. She did this in a few directions, seemingly just to buy herself some space. We left her in charge and then went exploring, over Tarangire's great savannah expanses, through forests of Boabab trees, across rivers and alongside vast swampland. We saw herd after herd of wildebeest and zebra. There were waterbucks and impalas and elan. There were elephants and giraffes and more lions. There were Cape buffalo and birds of great variety. There were Dik Diks and mongoose. And just when we thought we'd seen everything the park intended to show us for the day, Joseph -our driver and guide- made a typically astounding discovery of a beautiful leopard. None of us could understand how he'd seen her at the distance that he did. She was on a red-dirt termite mound next to the road and she permitted us to get fairly close, which was thrilling. When she moved off the mound, it turned out that she was minding a leopard cub. This final treat of the day made for a sensational finish. The "big five" completed at 5:50 PM. Sunset was at about 6:30 and not at all dull and boring either. We pulled into friendly and tranquil Kikoti Camp then and discovered yet another place we'd all like to spend more time in. Such things are on our minds now, of course, because we are running out of time. Tomorrow evening we'll be jetting back to the world. But first, we'll wake out in this wilderness and see just what we can find in a final morning on Safari.
Best Regards
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Team Aconcagua is getting down to business! This morning we awoke to windy but clear skies. After we loaded up on coffee and waffles we threw the backpacks on and climbed uphill. The team did a fantastic job reaching Camp 2 at 18,000 feet. We emptied our packs into a duffle bag and zipped it shut. Our second cache of gear is done and the team is now even more acclimatized.
We are now back at Camp 1 and we just finished a round of hot soup. The guides are busy melting snow for water. Needless to say, the team is tired. Tonight is pizza night so I need to start making the dough.
RMI Guides JJ Justman and Christina von Mertens
On The Map
More Rest. Today was one of the nicest days since we flew on. We are all feeling the exertion from yesterday so we spent the day eating a drinking and getting ready to move to high camp. Everyone is a bit more relaxed now that we have a cache on the West Buttress. It was quite a show today watching all of the teams that have been here longer than us trying to move up. We’re lucky in that we flew on a few days after some larger groups and they seem to be always trying to do the same things at the same time while we just cruise along a day or so behind. Let’s hope the luck holds.
The weather pattern has been pretty similar over the last few days. It has been windy for most of the day with the winds trailing off in the afternoon. We can see up towards the summit from 14 and it seems like the winds are staying pretty high up there. We’ve had reports from some folks coming down from high on the mountain and they basically back up what we’re observing down here. We are planning on trying to move our camp to 17,000’ tomorrow, if the weather is good.
On The Map
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We’re enjoying reading the daily blogs on your progress Gareth. Well done to you and all the team. Keep safe. Lots of Love from Mum and Les xxxxx
Posted by: Christine Jones on 6/13/2019 at 1:22 pm
Glad you all are doing well! Tell Gareth I’m getting his messages keep up the good work!! And me and the kids miss you!
Posted by: Meagan jones on 6/13/2019 at 11:27 am
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