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Sunday, October 26, 2026 - 6:05 pm PT
Welcome to Ecuador!
The team made their arrival and assembled this morning for their first time as an expedition. After morning introductions, the team talked through trip details before heading out to explore the lovely city of Quito. The team explored the city and visited the equator, getting our first taste of the beautiful South American culture that is Ecuador.
The afternoon lead into a team gear check before heading off to dinner and resting for the evening. Tomorrow's day will be an early start for our first acclimatization hike, Rucu Pichincha.
RMI Guide,
Mike Bennett
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Cotopaxi Express October 25, 2025
Hello Everyone:
The team got off to a moderately early start this morning leaving behind our beautiful lodge and have headed to the mountain towards the start of the climb.
We left around 8am and drove along the rural country side and small villages for two hours to reach the park entrance. Most of the area surrounding
Kilimanjaro has been cultivated and primarily used for coffee production and for a variety of other agriculture needs, but there are still some areas that have been untouched and resemble more of a savannah that Tanzania is known for. The base of Kilimanjaro is more forested and looks more jungle like and is called a cloud forest.
Once we arrived at the gate we had all of our gear weighed and divided into loads for our 48 porters and other staff to carry before hitting the trail. Once everything was in order we started our climb slowly making our way up the winding trail that ascends continuously through the thick forest. The canopy is quite dense thankfully, which provided some cover from the rain that arrive around midday.
The team hiked for a little over five hours and managed to not get too wet before we reached our camp for the night that sits around 10,000ft.
After settling into camp and getting situated, the team was served a nice warm meal for dinner consisting of soup, rice, potatoes and steak.
Everyone is doing well and looking forward to a good night's rest.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and Kili crew
On The Map
Half the team didn’t even make it to breakfast this morning. Which was perfectly acceptable (although it was the best breakfast we’d had in weeks). We got great sleep without so much as a ruffle of the tents due to the wind. By our standards it was warm, comfortable and easy. Union Glacier suits us just fine. As expected, the weather went from yesterday’s blue bird to today’s gray bird. It was overcast and snowing lightly all day, perfect for napping. Camp is chock full with 60 marathon runners, primed for their big event tomorrow. None of my team has yet been tempted to participate, but we’ll see if someone wakes up extra feisty tomorrow. Today we were content to sit in chairs at tables and to read books about Antarctica while sipping strong coffee.
The marathon runners were all curious about our strange tans and our experiences of the last two weeks. We told tales of the
big mountains and ate, drank and ate some more. Change is always difficult... except this particular change to comfort and easy living.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Hello everyone:
After a bit of four-wheeling and stellar driving we made our way to
Tarangire National Park, which is known for its abundant elephants, in fact, it has more per square mile than any place on earth. However, with all of the rain Tanzania has been receiving lately, there weren't nearly as many gathered around the river that flows through Tarangire, but we still saw a few. Some as close as a few feet away.
There were plenty of other animals as usual, and we got really close to a few big and young giraffes, which was amazing. We ended our day at a remote and off-grid camp called Tarangire Balloon Camp. It's a tented camp that lies inside the park with medium-size, screened-in rooms that allow the night sounds of Africa in.
Tomorrow we’ll have an early departure to increase our chances of seeing cheetahs and leopards, as they have still eluded us.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and the Safari crew!
We had a beautiful night and a gorgeous day here on our trek into
Aconcagua. We bid farewell to
RMI Guide Mike King and team this morning. Great work by all of them and what a job Mike and his crew did on their successful summit. Congratulations!
We had some scattered clouds and not much wind, which made for a very nice trek of eight miles to our new camp, Casa Piedra, at almost 11,000 feet. Fresh chicken over pasta and salad for dinner with a big bottle of Sprite to wash it all down. In the morning we will have an early river crossing with the help of our mule team. This will make for a nice start to the day. It will be a big day but no problem for this group of hearty souls as they all continue to do well. Basecamp here we come!
RMI Guide Mark Tucker
On The Map
Our summit has clearly angered the mountain gods. We woke to a blizzard at 12,300 ft. Not the worst blizzard though, winds are steady at about 25 mph, visibility is barely to the neighboring tents, the air is chock full of snow -at least some of which is “falling” from the cloud we are in. Moving -even to lower and more comfortable climates and airplanes- was out of the question. Besides, on the radio at midday it sounded heinous at
Low Camp, with fifty-knot gusts and busted tents. So we sat put. Our tents are holding up well, although great quantities of snow and frost seem to find their way inside. We recovered from yesterday’s climb with bed rest and hot meals and coffee and cocoa. A small price to pay for a visit to the highest point on the continent.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
The
Four Day Summit Climb led by RMI Guides Casey Grom and Elias de Andres Martos climbed to 12,700' this morning, but were forced to turn due to icy and firm route conditions. The team has started their descent and are en route to Camp Muir.
Congratulations to today's team!
May 20, 2017
We spent today building more snow walls for our camp, and trying to stay warm. Temps stayed cold today as our camp in
Genet Basin was in the clouds and snow most of the day. The morning dawned clear though, save for another lenticular cloud on Denali's summit, a not-so-subtle hint of the strong winds above.
Our team is hanging in there, but we sure would like to see a change in this weather. We'll keep you in the loop.
RMI Guide Mike Walter
On The Map
May 14, 2017 - 9:35 am PT
The May 12th
Denali Team is loaded and ready to climb. We spent yesterday in town packing, repacking, sorting food, and enjoying the Talkeetna restaurant scene. Our bags are weighed, sorted, and now we just need weather to fly. Rain moved in overnight, but the news this morning is that weather in the range is good, so once things clear out here, we should be ready to launch for base camp. Hopefully that's sooner than later. We'll give another shout this evening and let everyone know how it went.
RMI Guide Pete Van Deventer
It rained last night. Then it fired off a couple blinding flashes of lightning with a throaty growl of thunder that rolled on and on for what seemed like minutes. Then it rained some more.
We did the only logical thing we could think of this morning and put on the brightest clothing we all could find and crawled out to eat a breakfast of champions: cocoa puff and coffee.
The rain eventually diminished and we grabbed empty packs and returned to our cache to be reunited with the rest of our gear. An afternoon of rest and staying dry led to dinner, which showed promise with a brief glimpse of the sun. But it was not to be; within 30 seconds of putting out the dinner call, the hail began, which became rain once again.
Despite the 110% humidity, spirits are high, and we keep looking upwards at our next step, the glacier climbing towards
Lenz Rocks and eventually the summit. We shared our current reading endeavors, learning about the reality of fish farming, and the Russian stereotypes portrayed by Dostoyevsky. Tomorrow we will try for an acclimatization hike and small carry to Lenz, with an eye towards making that move the day after to start our summit push. We'll see if that lines up with the weather's ideas.
Best from a soggy camp one,
RMI Guides
Pete Van Deventer,
JM Gorum, and Team
Happy climbing…..wishing you good weather and sure steps on this wonderful adventure . Keep us posted. Godspeed !
Posted by: Barbara Sluboski on 1/22/2019 at 8:54 pm
Wishing you a safe and exciting adventure, thanks for the updates!!
Posted by: Judy on 1/22/2019 at 8:36 pm
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