Sue and I spent one of my favorite nights I've ever had in Mexico, camping on the slopes of Orizaba last night. We slept on a floor of pine needles surrounded by blue bunch grasses. Yesterday we hiked from the town of Tlachichuca to a camp at 12,000 feet on the forested side of the mountain. We had a fire and watched cows till the sun set leaving us chilled and ready for bed. This morning we lounged around our precious camp with enough time for two cups of coffee. Then set off for Piedra Grande, the typical starting point for climbers on Orizaba. We are grateful for the extra days of acclimatizing and time to enjoy this countryside. Tonight we bed down at 14,000 feet hoping for some good rest.
RMI Guide Christina Dale
Hard day of climbing today for our team. The day began (at eleven AM) with great weather but some uncertainty anyway. The forecast was calling for marginal weather again a couple of days out and so teams were struggling to decide whether to commit to the ascent. We committed and left Low Camp at 3:40 PM. The previous carry up the fixed ropes, plus a day of rest in between, both seemed to have done the trick. We were moving well and the day was staying good. We reached our previous high point (about 11,200) and then suffered a mishap. We dropped an essential piece of gear down the hill. The loaded backpack cruised on down our of sight. There was no choice but to descend, retrieve the gear, regroup and recoup at Low Camp. We've now accomplished a good chunk of that. We are thankful that nobody was hurt, that we've still got our gear and that we've got the resources and fortitude to try again when conditions allow.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
The Four Day Summit Climb led by RMI Guides Elias deAndres Martos and Leon Davis reached the Summit of Mt. Rainier early this morning. Elias reported beautiful clear skies, but very cold temperatures.
Congratulations to today's team!
The Expedition Skills Seminar - Muir, led by RMI Guides Eric Frank and Adam Knoff, reached the summit at 7:30 this morning. Eric reported windy but clear weather. After spending some time on the top, the team began their descent and are currently around 13,500 feet.
Yesterday the team had fun practicing crevasse rescue. Check out their photos below.
Congratulations to the seminar teams!
Hello again everyone
Today we had a very nice hike to help with our acclimatization on a nearby peak called Pichincha. It is one of the many local peaks that is situated above Quito and is used by many climbers to help adjust to the higher altitude here in Ecuador. We made use of the gondolas to help us gain access to around 13,000 ft then hiked the additional 2,500 ft to the summit. It took our team roughly 3 hours to gain the top after a little scrambling up the final bit to reach our high point thus far. It was a personal high point for a few of us, and the entire team did a fantastic job. After spending a bit of time on the summit and getting are photos we descended all the back to our hotel for a brief nap before dinner.
Everyone is in good spirits and looking forward to tomorrow.
RMI Guide Casey Grom
Hey, everybody, this is Casey Grom checking in from Ecuador. Today we had a nice leisurely morning. Woke up at the wonderful Casa del Sol, had a nice breakfast with scrambled eggs and some home-baked bread and some fresh marmalade they made for us. We got packed up and left our wonderful hacienda and headed into the center of Otavalo. Otavalo is a northern city in Ecuador that is famous for being one of the largest outdoor markets in all of South America. We spent a good hour walking around sightseeing and doing a little bartering to purchase a few trinkets. Everyone had a nice day. The weather was pretty nice all day. We had to wear plenty of sunscreen because it's obviously a lot of UV exposure here on the equator. After we spent some time at Otavalo, we headed over to the town of Cayambe, which is at the base of the mountain that we are here to climb, and had a nice lunch. After we wrapped up lunch, we got back into our bus and we slowly made our way up the flanks of Cayambe. We get out of the city and get onto these cobblestone roads and slowly zigzag our way up grassy hillsides and vegetation that is up here near the base of Cayambe. We made it up to about 14,000 feet where we got out and loaded our stuff into a four-wheel drive vehicle and sent our gear up to the hut. Then we continued on foot, to help with our acclimatization, we hiked the last remaining thousand feet, which took about an hour, up to the refugio or the hut that is at the base of the mountain. We just finished a wonderful meal of trout and potatoes and some soup. Everyone's doing great, We are heading to bed here pretty soon. Game plan is to get up and do a little training tomorrow, so thanks for following. We'll check in again sometime tomorrow afternoon.
RMI Guide Casey Grom
RMI Guide Casey Grom calls in from Cayambe Climber's Hut.
Cool blog and some awesome pics already! Good luck to all on your climb.
Mark and Shawn, shoooooooooo muck dooooooo eeeet!!! Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em!! How how!!
Posted by: Bo on 12/4/2015 at 12:13 pm
Hey Mark,
Love this website, as we sit by the fire watching Netflix…..not much of an adventure for us! So take lots of notes and bring back your stories. Be safe, enjoy each moment.
Xxx ooo
Doug and Ann
Hello! Today our team had a great day acclimatizing on Peak Cheget. We had gorgeous views of Mt. Elbrus the whole way up and we are excited to head on up to the mountain tomorrow. Here is a video of our day. Enjoy!
RMI Guide JJ Justman
We took a full and proper rest day today. It has been snowing more or less all day in camp, and the winds started to pick up a bit this afternoon. That made it easy to take a long breakfast, rest and read in tents, and take naps throughout the day. We spent a bit of time building some snow walls, which everyone got quite excited about, and some more time reviewing fixed line techniques for when we go higher. We are working on a reindeer sausage jambalaya for dinner, and we'll see if the snow and wind let up over night.
Update 4:17 pm PT
Everyone is safe and sound back at high camp. It didn’t take long for the team to eat dinner, wrap up in their sleeping bags, and pass out. Tomorrow we’ll move back down to the booming metropolis of basecamp.
Summit Call
Hey this is JM Gorum calling from the top of Aconcagua. We got kind of a late start this morning. We ended up having a beautiful day. We are standing on top right now. We are getting some high clouds and snow a little bit. We are going to start heading down hill. We will check in when we get back to High Camp. Talk to you then.
RMI Guide JM Gorum
RMI Guide JM Gorum checks in from the summit of Aconcagua.
Hello everyone,
All is well here in the beautiful Khumbu Valley. Today was a scheduled rest/acclimatization day, so we did just that. After breakfast we made a long slow climb up the big hill that’s just behind our tea house. We climbed just up over 16,000ft to help our bodies adjust to the upcoming altitude of BC (base camp). The team did great and thoroughly enjoyed the amazing views in nearly all directions. We could see Makalu in the far off distance which is the world's seventh highest mountain, as well as countless other huge mountains. It’s very surreal to be higher than anyplace in the continental US and be surrounded by so many big mountains.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing at the tea house chatting with other trekkers and recovering from our day’s outing.
Most of us took showers again and rewarmed ourselves by the big wood stove that burns dried Yak dung, just as the Sherpa people have done for centuries. We are a little ways above tree line and firewood is scarce, but Yak dung is plentiful.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and a warm crew
Hi Nini,
What a beautiful mountain and it looks like a great group. Have a ball and take lots of photos.
Peace and love
Dad
Posted by: peter von Mertens on 1/22/2019 at 6:44 am
Hi Christina! I’m excited to follow along. I am doing this trip with Eric and Jenny in March.
Dave
Posted by: Dave Kestel on 1/16/2019 at 3:18 am
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