Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Day 5 of 7

Kilimanjaro Climb (7 day Machame route) Day 5/7

We have opted for this highly recommended additional acclimatisation day at Barafu camp. 

To quote: 

"Acclimatization day at Barafu camp with additional acclimatization hikes up the assault path" (Assault path???)

Oi!

After that we will try to rest, have an early dinner and prepare for our summit attempt. The key here  is to eat if we can and go to bed as early as possible and rest as much as possible.

We will be woken at around midnight for our all night trek to Uhuru Peak.

Send us lots of love and good luck for this night!

THAT'S WHAT THE BROCHURE SAID, THIS IS WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:

As mentioned in the previous post, we stopped at Karanga camp rather than going all the way through to Barafu. So instead of doing the hikes mentioned above, we hiked instead from Karanga to Barafu and stayed there for the day.



We got up at 7:30 again and left Karanga at 8:30. This was a fairly short hike seeing us reach the camp at 12:00. 

We've entered Alpine Desert territory and being so high up the UV is very strong. This was a particularly hot day. Notice the extreme weather variations from one day to the next? 

Because you don't know what you're going to get, you end up taking clothes for all occasions in your day packs, which the higher you go, the heavier they seem to get.

The campsite itself is very hot and very windy. Signing in at the campsite seemed challenging (I don't think my entries are at all legible)

The view from our tent and you can see Mawenzi, which is one of the 3 volcano peaks that make up Kilimanjaro. (The other two peaks consist of one we climb to the summit and the other is actually collapsed and is now the Shira Plateu)

The lack of oxygen here is really hectic. Moving from the tent to the toilet is exhausting. Taking my sleeping back out of my bag and getting it ready for sleeping seemed like an endless exhausting chore.

We had an early dinner (at around 5pm) and were told to go to bed and try to sleep. They were waking us up at 11:00pm and we should be ready to go by 11:30pm.

We were advised to pack everything we'd need for the summit and to sleep in all our layers except the outer ones and to wear all our socks and have our shoes ready so that when the time came we didn't have to do much. That was good advise!

Marco and I were both exceptionally lucky in that we managed to get some sleep before we left. Most people, I believe did not - again I have to stress the importance of the ear plugs and the blow up mattresses - I really believe they made all the difference.

At 11:00 we were woken up. We had a nice hot cup of tea and then had to begin our accent.

With the one day old full moon we didn't need our headlights in the end. Again, weather wise, we were superbly fortunate to have perfect weather for the entire ascent. No cloud cover, no wind, no rain... the previous night, we'd heard, people made their summit attempt in a blizzard... so I guess you just never can tell!

It was awesome going up by moonlight. There were lots of people on the trail with head lights on, so whenever you looked up, you could make out the trail by following the lights of those ahead of us.

For me, the first portion went well. I was surprised when we stopped for a break and even more surprised to learn that we had been going for 2 1/2 hours. We were going Very Slowly, but steadily. We learnt very quickly, however, that every time we stopped the cold seeped in very quickly. So our breaks were few and far between.

The next break was at 4am. Also, when I say breaks, I'm not referring to all the little ones where I had to stop for a minute to catch my breath. I am referring to the official 3-4 minute breaks where we could take our packs off.

From here it started getting difficult for me. I felt I needed more breaks more often. My breaks became almost as rhythmical as my climbing... 15 steps up, 20 seconds to break, 15 steps up, 20 seconds to break.

I was beginning to feel tired and so would look up occasionally only to see the stupid head lights still just going up and up and up... Where The Hell IS Stella Point??

So by now, I'm cold, tired and there just isn't any end in sight. I say to Marco - Babe, I don't have any more legs to keep going... Don't worry they say; just another 40 mins to Stella Point. 

Hmf. 40 mins. Those last 40 mins to Stella Point believe it or not were the steepest part of that climb!! Just when you think the elevation could not get any worse.... it does! 

Actually to their credit, we had 3 guides for the 3 of us and they tried their best. They joked with us, talked to us, sang for us. They were superb - kept our spirits up and distracted us from the cold and pain that was seeming eternal.

1 comment:

stuart black said...

Good luck! Thinking about you lots,

love stu xxx