Jun
Today, our group is hiking for another 8 hours, ascending about 600 meters (or about 1,000 feet) only to go back down 500m to set up camp, as the rules of climbing at this height require that we sleep lower than our peak daily altitude, to avoid illness…and to camp where there is a source of water, to avoid not having any.
Breakout the sunscreen: As we climbed above the cloud layer, the rays became intense.
Our group is well fed, our porters are excellent, our guides are knowledgeable and we are in high spirits as we head into Day 3, with Mt. Kilimanjaro’s peak and the glacier directly in front of us.
We walked about 8 miles spanning the length of about 8 hours, moving from sort of a high desert region with small shrubs and the stubbly, hardy, rock-clinging flowers, into an area called, somewhat cinematically, the “Lava Tower.”
Lava Tower is a very tall, very vertical frozen spray of rock underneath the glacier that tops Mt. Kilimanjaro; we had a very satisfying lunch of hearty vegetable soup (we were so impressed with the daily soups that Tanzania Journey porters made that our group asked the cook for his recipes, to create a “Kilimanjaro cookbook the guides can sell themselves). In fact, Mt Kilimanjaro is a volcanic mountain – the tallest peak in Africa, formed by a volcano.
Think your job's tough? Kilimanjaro porters have our eternal respect, carrying unbelievably heavy loads, up insanely steep inclines, at ridiculously high altitudes.
After lunch we passed through a narrow chute in the ridge line leading up to the peak. We then descended, because part of the strategy of climbing Kilimanjaro is to climb higher each day than the elevation at which we sleep to avoid altitude sickness. We walked downhill for about 2-3 hours, a fairly steep downhill trudge through rocks and a new kind of desert landscape with giant, cactus-like trees, although they really are not cacti at all but enormous flowering desert plants unique to this area.
Descending after ascending, past Mr. Cloud, toward Barranca Camp.
Walking downhill, as our group found out, is actually more difficult than walking uphill because you’re using different muscles in your legs to constantly arrest your fall. Climbing downhill is also much harder on the knees than going uphill. It was another endurance test but our group remained in very good spirits, as we each were mentally comparing the gut-it-out nature of our Day hike to this one.
We camped at a camp called Camp Barranca, at about 10,000 ft, overlooking the lights of Moshi, the market town where we began our trek, far down in the distance. Behind was the peak of Kilimanjaro.
Straight outta Star Trek: descending back down into a cloud, past Kili flora that grew increasingly exotic.
We woke up this morning and had our usual breakfast of porridge and eggs. Now we will begin another climb uphill, although all of our climbs are up-and-down; no climb is all uphill or all downhill. We will go further up the mountain than we have been at any other point and then descend a little bit further, to almost the same level we are today to prepare for our final approach to the summit in a few days’ time.
from left: Stef, Julie, Susan & Jo, all current NYC residents, sharing a light moment over breakfast.
For the most part, our group is in very good spirits. Our knees and legs and heads are holding up and no one has had any serious maladies at all – a few cuts and scrapes and bruises from falling down in the mud on Day 1 and Day 2. Absolutely nothing serious, and we in fact had a nice round table discussion with our guide and the 30 porters we have who are carrying all of our gear, our food, our tents except a small pack that each of us carry with our water and clothing and hats and sunscreen, etc.
Getting to know you: Before dinner, our guide, Goodluck Charles, in dark cap at left gesturing, translated questions and answers between Roadmonkey expedition members and some porters.
So we were able , through our guide, to have a translated discussion, and they were asking us about where we come from and what we do back home. We in turn, were asking them about why they chose to become porters, and the elements of their job, which are by accounts all very tough. We’ve all been commenting how difficult their jobs are and how hard they work to carry a lot of weight up to 19,345 ft.
After this enlightening discussion, we had a nice meal and of course we were, as usual, asleep by 9pm, knackered by not only the accumulation of fatigue but also the increasing cold and thinning air.
Good night for now,
Paul
