Entries By michael murray

Saturday, May 11, 2024 - 7:10 pm PT

Skies were blue above us when I fired the stoves this morning. A foot or more of fresh snow blanketed camp and temps were frigid. Bagels, bacon, and coffee were warranted. By the time we left camp the skies were obscured. Deep snow, cold air, and a stiff breeze were the constants all day. Our team climbed strong and we arrived at 11,000' Camp by 2 pm. After a few hours of digging in a camp, some tent chilling ensued while the guides fired the stoves for dinner. Tomorrow we plan to retrieve our cache from 9400. We'll let you know how that goes. It's dinner time now and life is good at 11,000'. 

RMI Guide Mike Walter

We woke to 6-8" of snow at the base of Ski Hill. Light snow was still falling as we ate breakfast, but the trend was improving so we started packing up camp.

By the time we started climbing it was mostly sunny and quite warm. Climbing up Ski Hill in base layers was a treat. Clouds increased and winds ramped up during our climb. By the time we got to our second break, visibility was down to near zero, winds were steadily increasing, and temps had dropped enough to remind us we're in Alaska. It was obvious that conditions would continue to deteriorate, so we put our camp in at 9,400'. It's pretty nasty outside but we're all safe and cozy in our tents. We guides are suiting up to go set up our cook tent so we can fire up stoves and get everyone fed. Hopefully this weather passes overnight, and we can push camp up to 11,200' tomorrow. Time will tell, but 9400' will be our home for tonight. We'll check in again tomorrow with an update.

RMI Guide Mike Walter

Thursday May 9, 2024 – 8:09 PDT

We're back at camp after a good day on the Kahiltna Glacier. We carried a cache of gear and supplies up Ski Hill to around 9700'. Yesterday we had great views and warm temps. Today was quite different, as we were navigating inside a ping pong ball and breaking trail all day. We're hoping for good weather tomorrow so we can move camp up to 11k.

We’ll keep you posted.

RMI Guide Mike Walter & Team

UPDATE: Recevied 10:30 am PT

Just a quick dispatch this morning. Everything is flowing smoothly and we're busy making progress. We pulled heavy loads to the base of ski hill yesterday in beautiful weather. It snowed a couple inches overnight and it's snowing lightly this morning, but the sun is poking through and we're gearing up to carry a load of gear up ski hill today. Gotta run, lots of work to do! I'll check back in upon our return to let you know how our day shakes out. Mike.

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RMI Guide Mike Walter and team flew to Kahiltna Basecamp on Tuesday afternoon. They built camp and were taking in the views of their new surroundings.  They spent the night at Base camp at 7,300'.  Yesterday they started the work of climbing Denali, moving from Base Camp to the Base of Ski Hill, 7,800'.  To get to Ski Hill the team descends 400' down Heart Break hill (aptly named) and travels over five miles to establish their next camp. 

The first Denali Expedition of the 2024 Season is ready to fly to Kahiltna Base Camp. The May 5th Expedition team members met in Anchorage on Sunday and made the drive to Talkeetna where they have spent the last few days reviewing gear, packing, meeting with the Park Service and getting all the last details dialed in.  The skies are clear and the group is ready to depart Talkeetna for their expedition to North America's highest peak.  We look forward to hearing from them from the mountain.

Good luck team!

Today we walked.

It was a dusty, rocky, hot, and dry 15 miles from Mulas Basecamp to the park trailhead. In front of us sprawled an immense valley. Behind us, clear views of the summit we stood upon just a few short days ago.

A perfect setting for reflection.

Some thought back to the summit bid with all the challenges and struggles that came with it.

Others looked forward to the Michelin Star dinner that awaits us in Mendoza tonight. With FKTs being broken to meet the reservation.

Still others spoke of future climbing plans such as Mt. Vinson or Denali.

All in all we started this journey as strangers just a few short weeks ago. But we leave the Park as friends, by our shared experience of climbing Aconcagua.

Thank you for following along, we can't wait till we're back out in the mountains for our next objectives.

Climber Jon Honda 

Well well well. After a dusty walk downhill we have arrived back at basecamp, albeit a different basecamp on the other side of the mountain, we are back to the land of three course dinners, soda, wine, and real toilets (sort of). A welcome reward after our hardwork on the mountain the last few days.

I have said it before and I will say it again, while summits are great, my favorite part of these trips is seeing a group of individuals come together to create a family and work together towards a common goal. It has been an honor to work with this team and even sweeter that we were able to go 100% to the summit.

We will all be heading home with our heads held high knowing we accomplished what we set out to do.

That being said our adventure is not quite over. Tomorrow we will complete the 15 mile hike (downhill thankfully) back to civilization and end up back in Mendoza for a delicious closing dinner. We have negotiated a deal with the mules to get one more day of help carrying our gear which is greatly appreciated.

To everyone back at home who have been following and supporting our journey, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. The support means more than you know, and you will be seeing us back stateside before long.

RMI Guide Michael Murray & Team

It’s a beautiful thing, to challenge yourself to something you truly don’t know you can accomplish. You figure out truths about yourself that otherwise would be lost behind the comforts of home and the assuredness of monotony. It’s a beautiful thing to know that despite the outcome of an expedition, you’ll return with a lifelong memory. 

A lifelong memory we sure had. Today was a hard fought battle full of wind, clouds, and sideways snow. On typical summit days we revel in the brief reprieve from the cold at two rest stops, Independencia and the cave. Today, we were met with swirling clouds and snow; nothing but glimpses of the sun as the clouds whipped over Aconcagua. Though we weren’t treated to the views that Aconcagua had to offer we weren’t short of a sense of accomplishment. I am so proud to say that 100% of the team stood on top of the Americas today. We were more than likely the highest people touching the earth at the time. Congrats team. 

I do owe the team an explanation though. Ever since I was a kid, i hated the attribution of the saying “ that’s Just my luck” to mean bad luck. Ever since, whenever something good would happen, I’d say the line. The team heard plenty of it during the trip. Saying “ just my luck” to getting an extra lunch, or when the weather forecast was in our favor. Except you just read the above, the forecast wasn’t exactly in our favor, so what gives. Of course some things don’t go in my favor all the time, weather included, but the team showed up in the best shape of their lives, need I remind you we went 100%. The team showed up ready to mentally handle the hardship and discomfort of the wind, snow, and cold. The team gelled and laughed the entire time. So who gives a shit about the weather. If that’s not “ just my luck” I don’t know what is. 

 Congrats again, Team! For a hard fought summit and an excellent trip. 

RMI Guide Dominic Cifelli

Look,

If you had, one shot, or one opportunity, 

To seize everything you ever wanted,

In one moment.

Would you capture it or just let it slip?

Yo.

My face is dusty,

I'm not weak, pack feels heavy,

There's something on my puffy already,

Dom's spaghetti, we're nervous.

But on the surface, we are calm and ready,

To rest step, but we keep on forgetting,

What snacks we bear,

How many puffy's should I wear?

We open our mouths, to get the pressure breath out.

I'm not choking, how,

We are not joking, wow,

The time is now, breaks up, 

Over, pow!

Snap back to reality,

Ope there goes vanity,

Ope was that rabbit? Beef stew,

It's that bad, but it's all that I got,

So I guess I'll just have it.

We know we've gotta get up and go, 

It don't matter, we're dope,

We know that, and we're tired, 

But not stagnant, we know,

When we go back to our mobile homes,

That's when we check on our snacks again,

Yo, I'm going choclatey.

Better go capture this moment and not let it pass us and,

We're gonna lose ourselves in the moment,

These moments, we own it,

And we'll never let them go.

If we only get one shot, we won't miss our chance to go,

This opportunity comes once in a lifetime,

Let's go."

All MC lyrics aside, this team truly is ready to go. We are ready to make one final push towards our ultimate goal of standing on the summit of Cerro Aconcagua. Here we are at 19,600 feet with our packs packed, our bellies full, and our excitement unable to be contained. Tomorrow's summit day will test us both physically and mentally, but we are ready to rise to the challenge and give it our all. I want to give a huge shoutout to all friends and family who have been following us on this journey. Stick with us a little longer as our biggest day is right in front of us. See you all tomorrow!

P.S. - Happy Birthday Eddie :)

RMI Guide Ben Luedtke & Team

Rest day

Two things sprung to mind when I was asked to do this post. First what my wife would say “another rest day, you go on vacation and you need rest days?” The other was why me - am I the best rester, is that my speciality?

This put me to think about this. Am I incapable of discussing the climbing/trekking days?  Is that just too technical for me - walking uphill on a pile of gravel and sand everyday - left, right, breathe, left, right, breathe. Yeah, that is super technical so I’m never going to be out in that brigade.

However, am I the best rester, what about the rest of the bunch?

Start with the guides.  They are never going to be assigned as superior resters.  Job security with RMI suggests they’ll never get the rester job.

What about Norm, my tent mate? Norm never rests.  Whether it’s out shooting beavers to make his wife’s world famous beaver stew, or do DIY around the house - shelves and presses to keep everything in place (he could do with some shelves in the tent!). No, not Norm.

Mikayla , hmmm?  No not her either. On rest days Mikayla is off negotiating world peace and post Cold War detente with any passing Poles or Russians Mikayla is too focused on world peace.

Chris, surely an option.  However, Chris is the best dressed person on the mountain. As we crawl from our tents every morning, covered in dust and stained with the remains of last night’s dinner, Chris is like James Bond - clean, sparkling. I’m positive he gets overnight Amazon deliveries of new gear. But I digress, is Chris a rester?  No, Chris spends his rest time searching for the latest gadget or piece of gear. What’s the next 360 degree camera?  Also Chris is an inventor and an environmental evangelist- something we didn’t know at the outset of this trip.  His latest “the Oop stove” provides instant sustainable heat in your tent and solves the blue bag challenge.  Also, even when I wake in the middle of the night I hear Chris doing some wind experiments. No, Chris’s rest days are his busiest days.

Finally the three lads - Andy, Jon, Ben.  (Ben has been a champion sleeper since he reconnected with his sleeping bag).  Whenever I ask Jon how his afternoon sleep went he replies “I had a great sleep”. So the anesthetist, the pathologist and the unsuspecting patient spend their afternoons doing some macabre fiendish high altitude medical research.  It’s important that science progresses

Yeah, I guess I am the obvious choice.

So the rest day was just that.  A quick 90 minute saunter up a nearby hill, that we somehow completed in 45 mins - thanks Ben L.  An afternoon sharing all the excess food we carried to Camp 2.  A charcuterie board, dates, granola.  It was truly a rest day

Climber Myles O'Neil