Climb for Hospice

Karanga Hut to Barafu Camp

And then there were three…

Last night Steve and Amanda made the decision to stop their climb and head back down to Marangu. For 5 days we have been hiking, and its been pretty fun… but we all knew that this day was coming: Day Six, where we hike 6 hours to Barafu Camp, climb into our tents to sleep, then are woken up at 11:30pm to prepare for our start-at-midnight summit attempt. This day does NOT seem fun. So, Steve and Amanda said to themselves, ‘we’ve been enjoying this trip up until now, so why would we want to put ourselves through two days of NOT having fun?‘… and so they wisely chose to go the opposite direction that we were going today. Their decision to head DOWN the mountain was something that I played over and over in my head for the next two days that I was continuing UP the mountain. Good call, you two, good call.

And so, Christopher, Ali and I set off to Barafu Camp. Visually, this was the weirdest freakin’ day, man. We hiked through the mists of endless plains of loose, gray shale. And it was eerily quiet. All that could be heard over your own breathing was the ‘tink-tink-clack’ of the moving shale as we stepped on it, cracking it beneath our weary feet. It very much felt like we were the only people on  Earth Mars.  I’d certainly never seen an environment like that… It was, well, kind of spooky actually.

It was all very, very quiet.

After about 3 hours, we reached our final high camp: Barafu…

Two Tired Girls at Barafu Camp

Not exactly the most hospitable place

But certainly one of great and awing beauty when the clouds permitted us a brief look

After we arrived, we had some lunch (by FAR the best lunch of the trip! HUGE grilled cheese sandwiches, hot soup, and CAAAAAAKE!!), then went to our tents to nap until it was time to be woken up for dinner. (If we weren’t feeling so horrendously inhuman, we may very well have felt like cats).

The Last Supper:

And so, off to bed one last time. From this point on, no matter what happens in my life, these were the final hours before I summitted Mt. Kilimanjaro. Nothing would ever take that away from me, and life would never be the same.

Next time: Day Seven – To the Summit