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Greetings all! Your Peru Expedition Skills Seminar Team has safely arrived in Huaraz City, perched in the high Rio Santo Valley of the Cordillera Blanca. It was a long journey by bus, 8 hours in total, from the hustle and bustle and modern amenities of Lima, to the humble mountain city of Huaraz. We enjoyed an incredible dinner tonight at Hotel Andino, the nicest spot in town. Alpaca steaks, Lomo Saltado, and numerous classic Peruvian dishes filled our table. Everyone is excited to be in a new country, and looking forward to some trip preparation, and further acclimatization tomorrow. Until then, thanks for following along; the best is yet to come! RMI Guides Robby, Steve, William, and your ESS-Peru team

Zdravstvuyte (hello) from Russia, Things are good here in Russia. We left Moscow this morning and have traveled via plane and bus to the beautiful Caucus mountains. Our flight took us to southern Russia near the Black Sea, or if you remember Sochi from the Olympics, it not too far from there. We flew into Mineralnye Vody. This part of the country is predominately rural and is responsible for much of the agriculture that the larger cities depends on. We were meet by our trustworthy guide Yuri, whom I've climbed with many times. Then hopped in our van for the 3hr drive up the Baksan Valley to the base of Mt. Elbrus. The small town we are in is called Cheget, and it doubles as a ski town in winter and converts to climbing in the summer. We didn't do a ton of exploring this afternoon due to the rain and the adjustment of the time that we are all still feeling. However, tomorrow we will do our first acclimatizing hike and do a little exploring. All is well here and the team is excited to stretch our legs a bit! RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew

On The Map

Hello. This is the Peru Seminar calling in from our high Camp on Copa. We are going to bed. It's 6:30 pm local time and we are hoping to give you guys a call tomorrow from the summit. It's been a little bit of a taxing climb this year. Much drier year than others, but we managed to get up to camp. We hope to have a good climb tomorrow. Stay tuned. RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos

And another summit came our way! Urus East proved to be a steep challenge today; bare glacier ramps of crystal clear ice preceded by long stretches of gnarly boulders and slabs and an engaging fourth class summit pyramid, sure squeezed our skills and endurance. But the views of our pinnacle objective coming up, Nevado Copa, across the valley to the north, reminded us that today was only another milestone in our journey to the 6,000-meter mark, and we descended in style, as guides like to say "keeping it together", (and perhaps also animated by the improvised karaoke that Dan improvised on top to the tunes of Phil Collins' "On a The Air Tonight" song.) Tomorrow we finish our leg in the Ishinca Valley; we'll be heading back out to Huaraz for the evening, and to an earned shower before "getting dirty" again for the last leg of our trip. Check tomorrow for some pics as soon as we get internet again. Good night, RMI Guide Elías de Andres and team. -Spanish climbing word of the day: "mochila" (backpack)

Sunday, June 15, 2025 - 10:01 pm PT

It was a long but good day of getting ready to go climbing.  The team met for a fine breakfast at the Swiss Alaska.  We began by hearing out each other’s motivations and inspirations for taking on such a challenge.  We talked over our priorities and strategies and then we got out to the airplane hangar to go through the gear.  Breaking up the day, we made a run over to the National Park Service ranger station in Talkeetna to register and receive a presentation on keeping the mountain clean and ourselves healthy.  But the bulk of the day was spent at the hangar, listening to trains and airplanes revving up and rattling past as we packed and weighed gear for the climb.  We’d finished by early evening and relaxed in town at Mile High Pizza Pie.  Either a little luck we’ll load up the planes and go climbing in the morning. 

RMI Guide Dave Hahn

May 6, 2017 11:18 pm PST We had a very successful day today, carrying a load of supplies up to around 10,300' where we buried it under a couple meters of snow so that the ravens won't dig it up. Then we returned back to our camp at the Base of Ski Hill (7800') for the night. After a good hot dinner, we've all retired to our sleeping bags for well earned rest. Tomorrow we are hoping to move camp up to 11,200'. We'll let you know how it goes. RMI Guide Mike Walter & Team

Well, we're on the mountain now! After a farewell breakfast with Mike King and company, our team loaded up packs with tents, sleeping bags, and high mountain essentials, and retraced our steps back up to Camp 1. Knowing the route, and averaging lighter packs than our carry day, everyone on the team made it up to 16,500 feet in fine form. We picked a campsite more or less in the middle of the sweeping moraine of camp 1, with fine views down the valley and up higher to Ameghino Col. Tents are set up, bellies are full of Mac and Cheese, and we're getting ready to hit the hay on our first night above basecamp. Love from the hill! RMI Guides Mark Tucker and Pepper

It poured rain all night. It was still pouring this morning when we woke up. It took us awhile to work up the courage to get out of our tents and pack up but we did it. We packed our gear and booked it down the trail to find somewhere a little less wet. Now we are back in town, still soaking wet, but oh so happy to know we can finally start getting dry. Despite the soggy finish to our trip, we had a great time training on Mt. Shuksan. RMI Guide Mike Walter and team

Good morning everyone. This is Eric Frank calling from the top of Mount Shuksan. We just climbed the Sulphide Glacier Route. Everything is going well. We walked up in the fog yesterday and didn't have much visibility, but this morning was beautiful. We woke up to starry skies and had a nice climb up the glacier, and a great climb up the final summit pyramid. We are going to hang out for a few more minutes, and then make our way back down and rest, relax and hopefully get a nap in this afternoon. Take care. Bye. RMI Guide Eric Frank

Hey, this is Dave Hahn calling from Barafu Camp. We got back here to Barafu at 10:45 this morning. We were on the summit on Uhuru the highest point in Africa. The highest point on Kilimanjaro at 7:35 this morning. It was a little too busy up there this morning to give a call, but now we are catching up. We are back down at high camp. We're going to finish the day down at Mweka. I will send you a full dispatch then, but everybody is happy and healthy and we got 10 out of 11 to the summit this morning! So it was a good day with lots of great help from our local staff here. Thanks. I'll catch you up later. Sunday, September 24, 2017 10:12am PST As promised, a dispatch from Mweka Camp -near 10,000 ft- at the end of our summit day. We set out for the top at 12:35 AM under clear and starry skies. It was a windless night, which is always a plus when climbing in the cold. Initially we encountered a few other teams starting out of camp, but within an hour or so, we'd put a fair bit of distance between the teams and so had the route pretty much to ourselves. As we gained altitude and got closer to dawn, things got plenty cold -as expected. We kept our rest breaks short and business like and tried to move steadily. Most reached the point of having all of their cold weather clothing on at once. It was just getting light enough to see as we reached Stella Point on the crater rim. The sunrise was eagerly anticipated and hit us as we made the walk along the rim to Uhuru -Kilimanjaro's highest point. By the time we hit the summit at 7:35, things had warmed up nicely. We spent a half hour on top, checking out the glaciers and the immensity of the crater. We didn't have big views as an upper level layer of cloud had formed just below the mountain top. Descent to Barafu Camp took us just under 3 hours. A great mid morning meal in the mess tent helped fortify the team for the continued three hour descent to Mweka Camp, which we reached at 3:45 PM. All in all, it was a pretty exciting day. We discovered just what it takes to climb above 19,000 feet and to the highest point in Africa. We were pleased to be both capable and lucky...and to have the friendship and help of six amazing Kilimanjaro guides; Patric, Freddy, Naiman, John, Fillbrit, and Happyson made our climb memorable and successful in a hundred positive ways. Best Regards RMI Guide Dave Hahn