The Four Day Summit Climb August 20 - 23 led by RMI Guides Dave Hahn and Jake Beren reached the top of Mt. Rainier today! They experienced very high winds with a cloud cap on top of the mountain. The teams began their descent from the crater rim a little after 9:00 a.m. PT.
RMI Guide Seth Waterfall and the Expedition Skills Seminar - Emmons will continue training today. Due to high winds and heavy rain last night the team will postpone their summit attempt until tomorrow morning.
Congratulations to today's Summit Climb team!
Yesterday, we awoke early, donned our technical gear and launched towards the Ingraham flats to train before the next storm system hit in the mid afternoon. Sadly the storm had other plans and hit Camp Muir around 9am. We retreated in a white out with winds averaging 58mph during our time on the Cowlitz glacier. The storm has been impressive in its power and consistency. It is not snowing so much as it is launching ice pellets at us with high velocity. Moral stayed high as we continued to practice various technical skills in the bunkhouse. The team took brief forays into the violent snow globe that was the outside world to shovel out the bathroom. We were highly motivated to maintain our access to the facilities.
We are excited to find a lull in the weather to head down hill, dry out and enjoy some pizza and beer at the Basecamp Bar and Grill.
Our Four Day Summit Climb led by RMI Guide Solveig Waterfall reached the summit of Mt. Rainier early this morning. The cloud covering made for a beautiful sunrise today. The teams have started their descent and are en route back to Camp Muir.
RMI Guide Zeb Blais and the Expedition Skills Seminar – Emmons team also reached the summit of Mt. Rainier via the Emmons Route. The team will descend the route back to Camp Schurman, spend another day training and will return to Rainier Basecamp tomorrow.
Congratulations to today's teams.
After a few snowy days at our 11K camp, we hoped for some kinder weather for our move to 14,000'. We all agree we got too much of a good thing. Yesterday's move validated the old mountaineering saying that "you either freeze or fry." Wednesday morning was clear, but quite cold at 11K. We ate our warm breakfast, anxiously awaiting the sun to warm our tents before we packed up to move. The cool morning climb up Motorcycle Hill quickly turned into a sweltering overly sunny slog through the Polo Fields and around Windy Corner which lacked the then desired wind of which it got its name. After refueling and rehydrating the well-oiled machine we pulled into camp 4 (14,000') at 5 pm. We were welcomed by our other RMI team, light snow, and many other climbers at this small makeshift alpine village.
Today (Thursday), we returned to Windy Corner to retrieve our cache of food and equipment in much of the same weather conditions as the day before. We are now resting back at 14,000' awaiting our possible carry up the fixed lines to 16,000' tomorrow.
To our many fans out there who are leaving messages on our blog, rest assured they have reached us!
Tuesday night over dinner we passed the iPhone around for all to read the kind words from friends and family. Keep them coming!
Until tomorrow,
RMI Guides Mike Uchal, Adam Knoff, Zeb Blais, and our team at 14,000'
Stay classy lower 48!
Hi to Mike R and fellow climbers. I am soo amazed by your courage, strength, and perseverance, you should be very proud of yourselves as I am of you Mike!I luv reading all the messages including the other teams as well, Its absolutely unimaginable to me, what you must be experiencing. Enjoy what you can. Thinking about you. Love Cheri
Posted by: Cheri on 6/29/2012 at 6:54 pm
Greetings John!
We are all so excited about your amazing adventure! Deann is on the phone with me right now and we are still talking about you! Enjoy your travels!
It is like a ghost town up here at ABC. We don't mind a bit, having fought half the day to get here from Basecamp. Most others were struggling to get elsewhere. There is a storm sumo wrestling with the exposed summits of Everest and Lhotse today. Since this one is coming out of the west, 25,000 ft Nuptse gives us some protection down here in the Cwm. We still get good strong belts of wind and blowing snow, but we know it could be a lot worse at Camp III and Camp IV in this pattern. Our friends up at the South Col - hoping for a break so as to ring the summit bell - didn't get a break. They were forced to retreat this morning just as we were tentatively moving up. We were tentatively moving up because that seemed like the smart way to be with a 4 AM sky full of clouds, a couple of inches of new snow on the ground, and untested legs in our crew.
It didn't take long at all for Erica's legs to prove they were ready for climbing today. I could hear her crampons digging in just a few steps behind me for all of the first dark hour-she was cruising over the same ice that had defeated her 24 hours earlier. I focused on other problems. The big one was the misbehaving cloud ceiling. It was steadily dropping as we climbed and the morning light came on. The more I could see, the less I could see. When we took the first short break it was snowing, and I polled my team as to whether they thought it would intensify. There were six of us today - the five usual suspects (Seth, Erica, Kent, Ang Kaji and me) plus Maila - the Camp II cook who had been enjoying a brief Basecamp vacation from one of the toughest jobs on the hill. Maila thought-as we all did-that the snow was just getting started, and that there wasn't much point in going on. None of us wanted to be doing the braille thing through a Khumbu Icefall whiteout. And there definitely weren't any takers for a stroll in close to the Nuptse avalanche chutes beyond Camp I, with serious snow coming down.
So we very nearly called it quits at 5 AM, before getting into the worst of the Icefall. The retreat plan was sound - and we hated it. This acclimatization round is important - it is our "tryout" for a summit bid. We want the extra strength, skill and confidence that may come from it. We can't really get that by going an hour out of BC every day. And the calendar is moving on to the phat part of May. We want to be ready. We decided to hedge our bets-pushing onto the middle of the Icefall - another hour along, for a final call on the weather.
In that next hour, the snow quit and the clouds lifted. We knew the storm wasn't finished, but we saw our little window of opportunity for scampering out of the Icefall and past Nuptse, and we were determined to take full advantage.
Long story short - our little gamble worked. We arrived at ABC at midday excited as kids (even those of us not quite kids anymore). Excited with storm adrenaline, excited to have put things on the line, and to have made correct climbing decisions, and to feel the fitness we didn't have 5 weeks ago.
We called down to BC to boast - but also to be assured that the rest of our team is coping well with their summit holding pattern. They are not alone in that - as I said, we've got ABC pretty much to ourselves - and we barely had to make room for other climbers today on the route. Most are lower. Most are waiting for summit weather.
The RMI Expedition to Vinson Massif began January 1, 2011 as the team members and guides departed the U.S. in route to Punta Arenas, Chile. The team is led by led by RMI Guides Peter Whittaker, Ed Viesturs, Seth Waterfall and Caroline George.
Today they met with staff from Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions for an orientation about life on the ice. The itinerary is for the group to fly to Antarctica tomorrow but it looks like the weather is good and thus the team is readying for a departure as early as this evening (10 pm Chilean time).
The big Ilyushin 76 has been loaded with gear, food and supplies. Everything the team will need for their ascent of Vinson Massif.
If the weather remains good down on the ice, the team may be in the air in just a few hours!
What a day it was today! We were able to cache at 13,500 ft. The winds were calm all day, and the clouds were only below us, which created a sense of floating through the sky as we carried out gear up the mountain.
Now we are back at 11,000' Camp, all safe and sound!!
Today was a little more relaxed than the last few, although we still got up early to beat the heat. We walked downhill to retrieve our gear from our cache, with commanding views of Foraker and Crosson. We were back at 11,000ft Camp by 11 in the morning and spent the rest of the day eating pancakes and reviewing mountaineering skills.
Weather permitting we hope to cache as close to 14,000' camp as we can tomorrow!
Greetings from 16,000' on Cotopaxi! This is the Ecuador Cotopaxi Express climb calling to check in. We are up at the hut relaxing, drinking some tea, and acclimatizing. We're getting ready to do a little bit of training tomorrow but for right now we are just bumping ourselves up a little higher into the atmosphere and we'll hang out and acclimatize for a bit before doing some training tomorrow and get ready for our attempt at the top the day after. So all is well up here; it’s snowing lightly but we anticipate it clearing out just in time for us.
RMI Guide Jake Beren & Team
I'd intended to wake the climbing team at 2 AM for their final day on Denali, but folks were snoring so hard at that hour that it seemed kinder to wait until three. Besides, our camp at 7,800' on the Kahiltna Glacier was blanketed with cloud and I didn't figure the snow surface had frozen up. But at three, the clouds began to flee and the snow got crusty, making sled-pulling and crevasse-crossing vastly easier and safer. We ate a hot breakfast, knocked down the tents and hit the trail at 5:15. There actually was a trail since a West Rib team had gone out the evening before, plowing an easy-to-follow groove in what had then been soft snow. After weeks of telling the team how tricky it could be to get through the lower glacier in mid-July, I was almost embarrassed that our task had become so simple. As we cruised along in the early morning shadows it was something of a surprise to realize that we were finding better bridges and fewer open crevasses than on our way in. The constant snowstorms that kept us from climbing high had greatly improved conditions down low. We made it to the Southeast Fork in just a couple of hours and began a slow walk up "Heartbreak Hill". The last of the clouds seemed to evaporate, leaving us in bright sunshine and giving us excellent views of Mount Hunter and Mount Foraker. By 9:30 AM we were unclipping our carabiners and shaking hands at the "upper strip". Since it was the first clear day over the Alaska Range in some time and there was a lot of flying to be done, we had to wait our turn for a pickup. But waiting was pretty easy in such wonderful conditions... we rolled out sleeping pads and napped, threw snowballs, and nibbled at the last delicacies in what -until then- had been our carefully rationed lunch food. K2 Aviation landed two beautiful DeHaviland Otters at precisely 4 PM. Fifteen minutes later we slid down the runway and off the mountain that had been our home for 19 days.
The flight out in perfect summer weather -our first of the trip- was spectacular. A million shades of green dazzled our eyes as we left the mountains and neared Talkeetna. Then it was a few frenzied hours of drying and sorting gear in the hot sunshine. With the chores done, we got to the pleasant and easy hours of celebrating over a fine dinner at the West Rib Pub. And finally there was the obligatory visit to The Fairview where open mike night was already in progress. Our Norwegian teammate, Frode, took the stage and had the big stuffed animal heads rocking off the walls with his thundering rendition of Hootchie Cootchie Man. And that was how our Denali climb ended... Without a summit, but with a lot of laughter and twelve new friends.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Dave Hahn, thank you for the wonderful updates! I could almost hear the “peft, peft, peft” of the team’s steps in the snow. But thank you most of all for guiding the team home safely!
Posted by: Monica on 7/19/2012 at 2:41 pm
Hmmm…
Safe journey, safe homecoming.
Thank you for your posts. This last one
was pretty as a painting.
SOUL, Denise:.
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Congratulations Dan & Dean!
Posted by: Denise on 7/31/2013 at 1:23 am
Congrats John and Dean! Looking forward to lots of pictures.
Posted by: Catherine on 7/30/2013 at 10:15 pm
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