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The Four Day Summit Climb Teams led by RMI Guides Casey Grom and Jess Matthews reached the summit of Mt. Rainier today. Jess reported moderate winds and clear skies on the upper mountain. The teams left the crater rim at 7:36 am and are making their way back to Camp Muir.
Congratulations to today's teams!
We got a few more rain showers in the night at Shira, but the dawn was sparkly, cold and clear. Kibo had a dusting of new snow to dress up the ice fields, rock walls and hanging glaciers. Out to the West, Mt Meru could be seen poking through the endless cloud blanket below our camp. At 8 AM we got walking again through the high desert vegetation. Our time in the sun turned out to be short lived as the clouds enveloped us once more. It began to look as though we might get pretty wet at one point close to noon. We put on rain jackets -and endured at least 2.5 minutes of light precipitation before things got better -against all odds. We reached 15,200 ft -our high point for the day, at the Lava Tower. This represented a new altitude record for Olga, Pawel, Lynn, Joe, Dereesa, April, Steve and Colin. Only Kathleen and Patrick had been higher. We rested for a bit and then got moving down toward the
Barranco Valley. The trail was delightfully quiet on what can be a very busy climbing route. We seemed to have the place to ourselves. Dropping 2000 vertical feet, we came into chirping birds and exotic plants -the magical setting for Barranco Camp. We had some hints of the great rock walls of Kibo above, but the clouds never let up enough to reveal the big views. The team was surprised and enchanted by a rollicking singing and dancing performance by our entire fifty man staff as we came into camp. This was our longest day so far, nearly seven hours on the trail, but by dinner the gang seemed to have recovered nicely and spirits were high for taking on the Great Barranco Wall in the morning.
Best Regards
RMI Guides Dave Hahn
On The Map
The
Mt. Rainier Summit Climb team, led by
Brent Okita and
Jess Matthews, called from Camp Muir. High winds, blowing snow and poor visibility kept the team at Camp Muir. The team began their descent at 8:45 a.m. and will be back to Rainier Basecamp around 1:00 this afternoon.
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. Then made our way to the local ski lifts to help give us a jumpstart on our hike. I didn't hear a single complaint about riding up 1,500' before we started our hike to nearly the top of a local peak called Cheget. Normally we got to the top of the peak but being close to the border of Georgia, the Russian military had the upper part closed to climbers for some odd reason. Regardless, we enjoyed stretching our legs.
The hike went well with mostly clear skies and plenty of other hikers enjoying the day, and we even caught a few glimpses of
Elbrus too.
After the hike we made our 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
On The Map
Hello everyone -
All is well here in
Moscow, although it's been a little damp and cool. Most of the team arrived yesterday evening after some very long flights. As most of us are still adjusting to the massive time change we kept things simple with a little round of introductions and stepped out for a short walk and a nice dinner not too far from the Hotel.
Today we meet with our local tour guide and had a wonderful tour of the nearby Red Square, Kremlin as well as visiting several churches including the iconic St. Basil's.
We took a short break and then headed out once again for dinner and a nice walk.
Everyone is doing great and looking forward to heading to the mountains tomorrow.
That's all for now.
RMI Guide Casey Grom
Wonderful day of game viewing.
Ngorongoro Crater was the place to be. We did fine work of observing and filming all day. Perfect weather had to be dealt with and thousands of animals needed to be filmed. We made you all proud back home with our drive and our drivers. Eric and Joseph maneuvered us around the crater rim to floor with ease and grace. Not to mention Michele presented us with yet another tasty lunch in the bush. A hippo downwind made a move in our direction getting out of the pond to check out the bill o' fare but please observe do not approach and or feed the wildlife.
RMI Guide Mark Tucker
The May 15 - 20
Expedition Skills Seminar - Muir teams finished up their training at Camp Muir this morning. With a successful summit climb on Wednesday the teams spent yesterday working on crevasse rescue training. Today they packed up and left Camp Muir shortly before 11 am headed for Paradise.
We look forward to seeing them later today.
Congratulations to the Seminar Teams!
We're up at the
Jose Ribas Refugio on Cotopaxi at 15,953 ft. Tomorrow is climb day on Cotopaxi so we're hitting the sack early tonight in preparation for our alpine start. We'll check in again tomorrow and let you know how things go.
RMI Guide Mike Walter and Team
On The Map
June 23, 2015 6:31 am PST
We enjoyed a relaxing evening at the Papallacta hot springs last night. After a leisurely breakfast this morning, we are packing up and heading off to the
Illiniza climbers' hut. To get there we have a 3 hour hike ahead of us, carrying our sleeping bags and climbing gear to get to an altitude of about 15,400'. It will be hard work, and a stark contrast to leisurely soaking in the hot springs. But our team is up for the task, and it will be worth it; the hut sits at the saddle between the south (17,267') and north (16,818') Iliniza peaks, the 6th and 8th highest peaks in Ecuador, respectively. If weather and conditions allow us, we are prepared to climb both peaks over the next two days. We'll keep you posted on our progress.
RMI Guide Mike Walter
Definitely the nicest day of the trip so far. We spent it resting at
Low Camp. Rest was welcome after the big effort yesterday, but the day would have been a bit more relaxing had we not received the news that the wind would come back tomorrow. Things worked out well for the other teams on the mountain. While we all climbed the fixed lines to High Camp yesterday, ours was the only group electing to carry and return to Vinson Low Camp. The others stayed up and went to the top today. Of course we are happy for them, but we’ll be truly happy when we’ve gotten equally lucky with a calm day of our own up high.
We enjoyed the profound quiet today, without people and without weather. We read and rested, cut a few snow blocks for walls and ate a few more meals in our kitchen tent. We’ll enjoy the late sun on the tents tonight and we’ll hope the weatherman and the weather have both had a change of heart by tomorrow.
Best Regards
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
On The Map
Awesome! Congrats to my family making memories of a lifetime!
Posted by: Donna Burkeen on 8/17/2018 at 3:23 am
So proud of you both. What an adventure and an achievement!
Posted by: Carol Kelsey on 8/16/2018 at 12:00 pm
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