Good evening!
We're writing from our hotel in Cuzco after a full day of visits along the Sacred Valley of the Incas. With the city of Ollantaytambo as the pinnacle of the day, we also had the time to pet the llamas and alpacas of a South American Cammel's zoo we visited. The walking we did among the different Inca ruins we visited along the Urubamba river, between elevations of 9,000 and 12,000 ft, continued to help us acclimate to the altitude.
Tomorrow, an early departure (4am) will bring us to the trail head to start our trek towards Machu Picchu... a week filled with great trail hiking awaits!
Our next post will be from the trails.
Best regards,
RMI Guide ElÃas and the team
Greetings again from Cuzco,
We had a great first day of official activities, with a morning packed of visits to the main monuments of the city. From the amazing, earthquake proof Inca walls of Koricancha, to the 16th Century Cathedral, we did also, without noticing, start our acclimatization process by stretching our legs across this ancient city. Gear check and hike briefing with our local outfitter filled the afternoon. We look forward to yet another day of discovery, along the Sacred Valley Of The Incas tomorrow.
Best regards,
RMI Guide ElÃas and team
Buenas tardes from Cusco,
The 2014 Machu Picchu trek has started! All members have arrived to the former capital of the Inca Empire...really excited to launch the first edition of this trek, where we will travel a combination of the Salkantay and Inca trails into the citadel of Machu Picchu.
We have just held our initial meeting and are now ready to hit the restaurant for dinner. We're doing so on the early side to allow for an early bed time, well deserved after the many hours of international travel. Tomorrow, we'll have a morning tour to discover the sights of this incredible city. While exploring Cusco, we will also start acclimatizing since we're about 10,000 ft above sea level.
Best regards from Peru, and stay tuned for tomorrow's post!
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos
Ramona and Michael It was good talking to you yesterday and guess it will be a while before I do again. Hope that you’re enjoying the trail. Love, Momma
Posted by: Patsy Hollie on 8/1/2014 at 8:53 pm
Can’t wait for all the updates. Be safe and have fun! Oh and “GO TEAM JUNELL!!”
Hello! Good afternoon!
This is ElÃas and the Alpamayo climbing team. We are calling from Cashapampa, or the trailhead, where we have just arrived. IT is 3 PM local time on Friday, the 25th, and we have successfully finished our expedition. We'd like to apologize for their lack of a call last night from Base Camp following the call we made in the morning after the climb, but the sat. phone wasn't working properly or the cloud cover maybe even lower, but we arrived at Base Camp shortly, 4 hours after we departed High Camp. We had a nice dinner, re-encountering our cook and camp staff, and this morning the donkeys made our journey back to the trailhead very enjoyable. And, like I said, we're now at the trailhead loading our backs into the taxi, the truck that is going to take us back into town. And we'll be over. So thanks to everybody who's been following our progress on the mountain, and we send our regards to everyone, and we will be checking in the next time with some pictures and a final recap from Huaraz within the next 24 hours!
Thank you and goodbye.
Hello everyone, this is Elias and the Alpamayo Climbing team Thursday the 24th. It is 9:45 local time and we are calling from Camp 2. Guess what? We just summited this morning. We didn't have a chance to call from the summit, it's a pretty gnarly ridge, pretty exposed and there were some winds. We were a six person team, all the climbers Tony, Kenzie, Parker and Peter made it up. So pulling the sat phone out was a little bit out of the question. But we are psyched. We had an awesome climb. These guys were super strong and climbed really, really quick and efficient. Like I said we are back at camp, safe and sound.
We are looking forward to starting our descent. The plan is now to take a couple hours rest here and pack it up and initiate our descent to base camp where our cook, Emile, we hopefully be waiting with a nice meal, really well earned.
That is pretty much it for now. As an antidote, we would like to share that, we had a chance, to high five reknown Swiss climber Ueli Steck who was climbing here in the Cordillera Blanca and happened to climb Alpamayo today. It was pretty nice to see him climb next to us and, of course, smoked us on the way up. But hey, he's a different league, and we feel pretty satisfied with the job done. We were the first one's out of camp, the first one's on the summit and the first one's down back to camp.
We are reporting incredible weather, incredible views and everybody is psyched.
And if you stay tuned we will be checking in tonight when we arrive back at Base Camp, out of the glacier and ready to return to Huaraz tomorrow. That's it from me right now and thanks to all of you who have been following us. We will check in tonight when we are out of the mountains.
RMI Guides Elias de Andres Martos
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos checks in after reaching the summit of Alpamayo.
Hello this is the Alpamayo climbing team and the word is we are climbing tonight. It is Wednesday. 3:00 PM local time and we decide to take a rest day today as we arrived yesterday up here. And all is well, we're pretty excited. Tony, Parker, Kenzie, and Pete are really strong, healthy, and ready to go. So we will hopefully keep you updated from the summit tomorrow sometime in the early morning and... yeah. You can probably hear our voice from the top of Alpamayo. We'll initiate soon afterwards our descent and the goal we be to actually make it to base camp but that is yet to be seen. [Broken] Hopefully we'll have good news for you. That's all for now, we're going to go to bed pretty soon here and we'll check in tomorrow. Bye.
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos checks in from high camp on Alpamayo.
We just got word that you successfully summited! Way to go team. We are in awe of this magical experience. Can’t wait to celebrate over Face-time with you. Now focus on getting down safely.
Posted by: Rhea Campbell & Alex Lickerman on 7/24/2014 at 10:05 am
Good Afternoon,
This is the Alpamayo Climbing Team calling from Camp 2. We had a really good climb to here this morning. We arrived a couple of hours ago. It is 4:00pm local time, everybody is enjoying some resting time in the tent. We are melting water right now; you can probably hear the stoves. The weather is really good - stable. We are looking at the face, we might be climbing tonight, but we are going to see how it goes through the afternoon before we make a decision before we go tonight. Or we might take a rest and do it the next day. We will keep you posted.
Everybody is doing well. That’s if for now, Elias’ is out. We will call again tomorrow.
RMI Guide Elias deAndres Martos & Team
Elias and Team Checking in from Camp 2 on Alpamayo
Thanks for the check in. We’re following your progress closely and hoping the weather continues to be good. Sounds like the team is strong and well. Enjoy the climb and we want to hear all about it!
Good afternoon. This is the Alpamayo climbing team. It's 2 PM local time, calling from Camp 1. We decided to stay here. Different factors made the decision happen... some of them, a little bit of a dust of snow last night and a lot of teams coming down from High Camp made us decide to wait another day here and enjoy the benefits of acclimatization at this elevation. The plan is to move up tomorrow and, hopefully, climb the next day. Everything's looking good -- weather, team spirits, and everything. So, we'll keep you posted in a couple days, hopefully from the summit. Regardless tomorrow we'll check in from High Camp. I hope everybody back home is doing well. Take care.
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos
Good afternoon, This is ElÃas and the Alpamayo climbing team. It's Sunday, the 20th, at 3:30 pm local time, and we have just arrived at Camp 1, or Moraine Camp, where we deposited a cache a couple days ago. We are turning into our tents, and we're going to start an early dinner pretty soon here, with the hopes of Col Camp, or Camp 2 tomorrow. Potentially we could be going for the summit in just 36 hours, but we'll keep you posted on that. Again, tomorrow the plan is to get to Col Camp, and we will keep you up to date on that, as well.
Take care.
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos
Good afternoon from Alpamayo Base Camp. We are checking in from our rest day. We had an uneventful day today, just took our time to eat and drink, and rehydrate. And we witnessed a little bit of rain and light snow with hail today -- the first one of the trip. But the weather hasn't been very bad. It's just been normal Andean weather. We don't have much to share today. We're just excited to head up tomorrow to Camp 1, and other than the sighting of the birth of baby sheep that happened right here at base camp, nothing major today. So again we are just so excited to get packed tomorrow morning and head up to Camp 1, from where we will be checking in tomorrow. And so we are letting you know that the next day we are going up to Camp 1. That's it for now. We'll check again later. Bye.
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos
RMI Guide Elias de Andres Martos checks in from Alpamayo Base Camp.
Ramona and Michael It was good talking to you yesterday and guess it will be a while before I do again. Hope that you’re enjoying the trail. Love, Momma
Posted by: Patsy Hollie on 8/1/2014 at 8:53 pm
Can’t wait for all the updates. Be safe and have fun! Oh and “GO TEAM JUNELL!!”
Posted by: Beverly on 7/30/2014 at 9:57 am
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