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Greetings from Alpamayo BC! We initiated our descent this morning from high camp and retraced our steps back out of the kingdom of the ice and into the warm confines of base camp. We are excited to savor lower altitude air and the amazing food of our cook. Our plan is to head out tomorrow and get into town in the evening. We are all super proud of our climb, yet looking forward to telling our accounts in person to our loved ones, so stay tuned for our arrival tomorrow into town! RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos and team

Hola amigos! It is Robby and Steve and your ESS-Peru team. We are here at High Camp on Nevado Copa and about 16,500 feet and just enjoyed the beautiful sunset up here. Just ate some dinner, now we are brushing our teeth, bedding now and getting ready for tonight's climb, which will come very shortly. We're waking up in the middle of the night, sometime tonight to attempt to summit Nevado Copa, which is just over 20,000 feet high. We certainly have our work cut out for us, but the team is strong and ready. We're having a great time here in Peru in the Cordillera Blanca. We will touch base hopefully from the summit of Nevado Copa tomorrow sometime in the late morning. Until then, hasta luego. RMI Guide Robby Young

Hey, everybody. This is Casey Grom checking in from the Kilimanjaro climb. I wanted to let you know that everything's going great. Today we left behind the Arumeru Lodge and made a few hour drive to the base of a Kilimanjaro. We drove up the Machame Valley, which is actually lined with quite a few banana plantations. A number of porters are making their way to the gate entrance to find some work. Once we got to the gate, we got organized, and then got the green light from the park service, we slowly started making our way up hill. The team did great today. We climbed for about six hours up through this incredible lower slopes of Kilimanjaro. It was a nice break from the sun to be tucked into the trees. And again the team did great. We pulled into camp about 6 o'clock or so today and everyone just finished dinner. Everyone's relaxing right now and getting ready for a little bit of sleep. Everybody's in good spirits. We will check in again tomorrow and hopefully be able to get a picture or two out in the next day or so based on our cellphone service up here. Thanks for following. RMI Guide Casey Grom

Today we left the comforts of Base Camp and moved to Camp One! Our whole team did great on the way up, and we are excited to be making upward progress on the mountain. Our journey today was mostly on rocky trails that wove through moraine material, and finished with walking up a big snowy hill the last hour before camp. The view from here is stunning. We can't see the summit, but we can see shape-shifting clouds rip over it. Looking downhill we can see the warm multi-colored mountains that make the far side of the Vacas Valley. Dinner tonight was not three courses, and it's cold and windy and we no longer have well maintained outhouses... And this is exactly what we came here to do! Everyone is in high spirits. And now the game of chess begins. We're expecting strong winds over night and tomorrow, but we'll see what happens. Wind permitting, our plan for tomorrow is to walk to at least 17,000 feet for acclimatization. Meanwhile, a couple of us guides will move some group food as close to camp two as we can get to set the group up for success if we end up having to make a quick move to camp two in the coming days. As the moon wanes the stars are becoming increasingly more spectacular through this dry and thin air. If it wasn't so cold it would be easy to stay mesmerized all night! Wish us mellow winds and dissipating headaches... RMI Guide Steve Gately and Team

The Expedition Skills Seminar - Kautz, led by Mike Haugen, spent the week training as they built up to their summit push. With an alpine start from their high camp on the Kautz Glacier, the team began their quest. They accomplished their summit goal just after 7:00 a.m. this morning and then began their descent via the Disappointment Cleaver Route. Mike reported moderate winds and snow. The team will make their way back to Ashford later today.

June 3, 2016 - 10:54 pm PT The Upper West Rib team started the day like any reasonable person in Talkeetna would, lots of coffee, eggs and bacon at the Roadhouse. From there we headed down to the K2 Hangar and went through all our gear and got packed up for flying into the Alaska range tomorrow. In the afternoon we had our NPS orientation and put the final touches on gear packing before relaxing a little. It began raining here in town but even the inclement weather couldn't bring down the stoke in our group. Everyone is extremely excited to get into the Range. Keep your fingers crossed for good fly weather for us tomorrow. RMI Guide Geoff Schellens

May 31, 2016 - 8:15 pm PT Today turned out to be the perfect day to take a rest day at 17 in preparation for our summit attempt. Sometimes the forecast is correct, and sometimes not. Sometimes it's wrong in a helpful direction (like yesterday) and sometimes not (today). Winds were cranking out of the East this morning over the summit, and gusting through Denali Pass as well. Clearly not a summit day, we rested in tents and recovered from yesterday's big loads and tough camp building effort. Luckily, we were pretty protected from those East winds, so we had a relatively warm calm day. A field trip to the vista that overlooks 14 let us stretch our legs and get some frame worthy shots. Things look promising for tomorrow, so we're going hit the sack early and be ready for the morning. We'll be dreaming of summits. Best, RMI Guides Pete, Jess, Robby, and team

On The Map

May 26, 2016 - 10:04 p.m. PDT After lots of anticipation we are here on the mountain!! This morning we had our final meal at the roadhouse, followed by good weather news from the pilots at the K2 hangar. The team changed from our street clothes to our action suits and before we knew it we were in the air flying to the glacier. We landed and assembled our mountain of gear in to individual loads. With a nice cloud cover and cool temps we made the decision to get the train moving! Travel was pleasant, though a bit hot when the sun started to peek through near our first camp. We have a strong team and everyone did a fabulous job. We made a tasty meal and are bedding down after a very productive day. Will keep you updated! RMI Guide Tyler Jones

Another day in Paradise! The team is enjoying a sunny, glorious day in base camp. The great news is everyone woke up feeling good. It can be a difficult first night at 14,000 feet and the doctor here in camp even confirmed that everyone is marvelous during our medical check-up. Today is a rest day. However, after a scrambled egg and veggie breakfast we all got busy organizing gear for tomorrow's carry to Camp One. For now we are going to finish packing and I, personally, am going to start drinking one of the four 2-liter coca colas that I brought with me. All this organizing is making me thirsty! RMI Guides JJ Justman and JM Gorum and team

On The Map

Today was our first day of safari and we visited the beautiful Lake Manyara. The lake is a brief stopping ground for many migratory animals and home to more than 300 different birds. The birds were nearly of every shape and color you could imagine. Everyone enjoyed the day cruising around in our safari vehicles with cold beverages in hand while seeing the animals. We manage to see a few wildebeest, zebras, Cape buffalo, lots of baboons, a few impalas, several elephants and even managed to get pretty close to a few lions. It was a nice introduction to the incredible diversity of wildlife that Africa has and the team is looking forward to seeing more tomorrow. We wrapped up the evening with a wonderful meal at our new lodge, The Plantation Lodge. and even celebrated one of our teammates birthday with a cake and plenty of singing. RMI Guide Casey Grom and the Safari crew