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Saturday, July 8, 2023; Day 9 and Sunday, July 9, 2023; Home

After another night of decent sleep, we turn on the light at 4:45am. It’s a cozy 50F in the tent. Our coffee should arrive in 15 minutes, and then breakfast will begin 15 minutes after that.

Breakfast was quick — porridge and eggs, and we’ve run out of coffee powder. The dining tent was almost too dim to see, with just one solar-charged light in the middle, so I went back to my duffel and grabbed the LED light strip we’ve been using for the tent. Unrolling it, I get both cheers and teasing “REI, you waited until the last day for this?!?”

There was a light drizzle as we began the hike, so I finally got the chance to use my day pack cover. I’d misplaced my headlamp somewhere in my duffel, so I just wrapped myself in the 6-foot LED strip and walked with that and my small red flashlight. In twenty minutes or so, the sun had come up enough to see the trail, but I kept the LED on for fun and because there was no longer any need to conserve battery power.

Alas, the drizzle continued for the morning and the trail, while not super steep, was a muddy, mucky mess. We slipped and slid and there were several falls, but none of them serious. The mud was deep at points and my boots were coated.

The porters and assistants in the back sang for half an hour or so, and then the Doc played Taylor Swift’s last few albums on her phone for an hour or so. The juxtaposition amused me. My brother was filming a video for his non-outdoorsy teen daughter (“See, you can still listen to TS on the trail…“) when he slipped off the side and landed in the mud, unhurt. We laughed later as we played it back; the camera view abruptly flies skyward as he starts to fall.

After around 3.5 miles, we reached an access road and made much better time, despite turning down a lift from a passing truck. We finished our 6.1 miles, arriving at the Mweka gate at 930a.

A small crew was offering boot washes for $2 a pair and I happily accepted. After getting the muck off my boots, I told them not to bother with my rain pants as I’d be taking them off momentarily. We all want into a surprisingly clean office building to sign their logbook before leaving the mountain.

We all piled into our pair of Land Rovers for a short drive to a little “mall” with long open-air tables set for lunch, giant paintings on the walls, sculptures in the courtyard, a bar, and a large souvenir shop.

I bought a shirt, a fridge magnet for my parents, and a small canvas painting. The painting was obscenely overpriced (I didn’t ask when I picked it out, and they charged $120 for it. Apparently anyone with a clue knows to negotiate) but I was fine with paying it. Because they were willing to take my Mastercard, my minimal remaining cash supply wasn’t impacted.

After making my purchases, Jason and I bought bottled sodas (a bargain at $1 apiece) and returned to the team’s table for lunch. Several of our crew were hitting the Kilimanjaro Lagers, noting that despite the weak 4.5% ABV, empty stomachs and 9 days without alcohol meant they hit pretty hard.

Matt quietly bought a round for the 21 porters who’d come with us, his surprise a relative bargain at $42.

We had a quick lunch of beef in gravy over rice, and salad before a short ceremony where Respicius presented us with our official “mountaineering” certificates from the Tanzanian government. Respicius had a few lines to say about each of us, citing for me my pre-trek mention that I’d only ever spent 3 days outside, but saying that I’d turned out to be “strong” after all. Aww.

After the ceremony, we packed up, reunited with our duffels, and leave-behind backpacks. The bags got somewhat lighter after donating my gaiters, yak tracks, my nearly-unworn “heavy-not-heavy” coat, and nice-but-unnecessary fleece-lined snow pants. I accidentally left my muddied rain pants somewhere (probably on-board the Land Rover). I was bummed because they turned out to be great, but it’s unlikely that I’ll have any use for them in the next few years anyway.

Most of our group headed back to the Planet Lodge hotel to stay in “dayrooms” — this time, Jason and I were in Room #19 at the back (last time we had #25 in the front).

Upon arrival, I dropped my gear in our room and headed to the hotel bar while Jason took the first shower. I’d hoped that some others from our group might show up, but enjoyed a popcorn, two Serengeti Lagers and one Kili Lager without anyone else appearing. Ah well.

I was happy to be back, but also already nostalgic… Would I ever again have cause to wear these most excellent boots?

I got back to the room pleasantly buzzed. Jason wasn’t feeling well (chills) so he laid down while I took one of the longest showers of my life. My wash cloth got filthy.

After showering, I started to repack my bags for the flight, shedding unneeded trash and such while Jason tried to sleep. He feared that he’d contracted something dire (Typhoid or something) while I half-heartedly tried to console him that it seemed unlikely. A quick COVID test turned up negative.

I started writing in my journal, finishing up around 5:20. Our shuttle is scheduled to take us over to the airport at 7pm.

We had a bit of trouble getting in to the airport (we hadn’t printed boarding passes) but eventually convinced the guard that we really did have an outbound flight.

Check-in and exit immigration was tedious and slow. Jason had a few rocks he’d collected in his carryon and they took them away at security. My rocks (small black volcanic bits) were checked and arrived at home safely.

When we arrived at our gate, it was much like every other airport in the world, with a lot of standing around. While we waited, I bought the boys some Adidas TZ soccer uniform sets (a bargain at $15 per set) and yet another refrigerator magnet.

When our flight was finally called, we had to walk ~120 yards out to our plane, parked on the tarmac. We had a short 52 minute flight south to the Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania, before changing direction to fly north to Amsterdam.

The Amsterdam flight was 8.5 hours and was entirely forgettable. Annoyingly, they never brought headphones for the entertainment system, so I just watched Suburgatory on my iPad. I must have slept a bit somewhere in there, though I don’t remember doing so.

We arrived at Amsterdam at 7:30a and found Jason some Ibuprofen. We grabbed coffee and apple cakes at one of the eateries.

Shopping and breakfast killed a good hour or two, but since boarding for our flight back to DC isn’t open until 12:30p, we have a lot of time to sit around on our phones (decent wifi, thankfully!) and walk laps around the terminal to look at more shops. Ultimately, I decide not to buy the boys any chocolate with my spare Euros– it’s expensive, mostly available in the US nowadays, and the kids won’t need extra junk after what I’m sure their grandfather has been letting them graze on for these last two weeks.

KLM names its planes after world heritage sites, and our plane is named “Mount Kilimanjaro.” Neat.

I write in my journal as I settle in for what’s slated to be a 7.5 hour flight back to DC. Since we’re going to be racing the sun, our clocks will only move about 2 hours on the trip. After baggage claim and customs, we will probably get out of Dulles before 5pm. I expect to be super-tired by then, but who knows…

My legs are now pretty sore in new places (e.g. the front of my thighs) and my nose is incredibly chapped. I have a bunch of tiny cuts on my fingers, and some roughness on the insole side of my feet. But overall, I’m returning to the US remarkably unscathed after this adventure.

I watched a bunch of movies (Sin City, Shotgun Wedding) and TV as we crossed the Atlantic. With just under 2 hours to go, we are informed that we’ll need to land in Philadelphia to refuel due to bad weather around Dulles. An hour’s ground delay in Philly further annoys me. We finally touch down at Dulles at 19:12, almost 4 hours behind schedule.

I warn myself that clearing immigration and baggage claim are likely to take ages, but my Global Entry card gets me in pretty quick, and even without one, Jason is only 15 minutes behind. Dad picks us up and we stop at a tasty restaurant on the way back for a long-awaited burger.

I get home, hug the kids, and we all go to bed. I figure I’ll end up sleeping most of the day Monday, but instead wake up somewhere around 8am. By 10am, I’m out shopping for comfortable shoes, as I’ve got a week’s vacation left in Maryland, and as much as I love my boots, I’m not going to wear them for a while.

💗 Thanks so much for reading!! 💗

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Friday, July 7, 2023; Day 8

Last night’s sleep was the best to date, even with high winds and noisy groups traipsing by after 1am. Exhaustion is the best sleep aid, I suppose. :)

The tent is again just under 40F, but I’m cozy in my wool hat. I slept from 7p-1a, 1a-3a, and 3a-5:30a. The wind overnight was so extreme that I worried at times that the tent might rip apart but it seems to have held up. I’m very happy to get my coffee at 6a.

There’s another pretty sunrise beside Mawenzi Peak:

At breakfast, my oxygen saturation is back up to 88%. While billed on our itinerary as a “celebratory breakfast”, it was essentially the same as all of the others, except now we had no worries about summit day.

After breakfast, we break camp and retrace our steps downward, down the rock wall and past Baranfu camp. Going down the rock wall was much easier than going up.

After passing by Barafu, we make a turn and have a long and easy descent over the Alpine desert. We arrive at the “High Camp” and take a short break there before continuing through the Moorland.

The trail was rockier and more uneven, with large portions a set of rough concrete stairs. We were descending through a cloud at this point, and it made some of the sections a bit treacherous. There was a very light drizzle at points, but not enough for me to bother pulling out my rain shell or pack cover.

The hike passes quickly, the first half as I listened to Sherri and Matt talk about management and global threats. Matt was slated to take on a big new role at an air base in Europe, and Sherri asked him how he would manage that. Matt laid it out super simply, and I wrote it down because I loved how he framed it, and I knew I was about to take over a new team when I got back to work.

It’s straightforward and the same thing a pilot does every time they call into the tower. You start by answering three questions: Who am I? Where are we? and Where are we going?”

Matt’s Wisdom

For the second half of the day’s hike, I was on the lookout for cool photos to take, from mist-coated flowers to foggy tree tunnels, all while trying not to slip on wet rocks.

After two more hours, we reached camp at noon, a bit damp but in good spirits.

Now we are hanging out in the tent, waiting for the lunch “washy washy.” I’m an odd sight — thick hiking socks, hiking shorts (I took off my soaked pants), and no shirt, exposing my set of custom dog tags made a decade ago reading Esse Sequitur Operare. From the voices outside, it sounds like the slower half of our party have arrived. It’s a comparatively balmy 55F with little wind. I’m not too stinky, but my fingernails are black and I shudder to think about how nasty my hair must be– I’ve been wearing a hat every time I leave the tent for the last 8 days. I peek using my small camp mirror and because I cut my hair so short just before the trip, it’s not too bad actually.

The Doc and others get to camp a bit later than the early group, and at lunch we talk about how she’d helped out with the guy we’d passed on the trail who was being carted down on a one-wheeled stretcher. (Pulmonary edema, if I remember right.) They’d planned to fly him out, but the weather wasn’t cooperating, so he taking the much rougher way down with a team of porters pushing/carrying the stretcher. We all could imagine how lucky he must’ve felt to randomly come across an American doctor on the side of the mountain.

After lunch, I photograph each page of my journal thus far, just in case anything happens to it.

At 5pm, we have the tipping ceremony, which features singing, dancing, including a waiter dressed as a lion, and some heartfelt “thank you” speeches from both the trekkers and Respicius. The porters collected $77.60 apiece, a solid figure (based on $56 suggested), so the mood was upbeat despite a dreary late-afternoon mist.

Dinner was butternut squash stew, rosemary beef, and a Nutella banana crepe. My Oxygen saturation is spiked to 97% now that we’re down to 10100 feet.

We’ll wake tomorrow at 5am to hit the trail at 6am just before dawn. We should reach the exit gate by 9am. I’m excited at the prospect of getting a shower and a beer.

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Thursday, July 6, 2023; Day 7

It’s been noisy throughout the night as teams of hikers from Barafu pass through after midnight. They seem to make no effort toward keeping quiet, and there’s singing and shouts as they pass.

Our 3am wakeup call arrives quickly, and most of us are up at 2:45am, eager to get started. Looking toward the mountain, we can see the lights of those groups who passed by hours ago as they reach the crater’s rim at Stella Point.

Fortunately, it’s not too cold, hovering at 40F in our tent.

Since we’ll be returning back to this camp tonight, we don’t need to pack up our tents. I spend my time savings re-finalizing my ascent outfit. I end up picking my thickest Smart Wool socks, removing the boot insoles I’d tried out yesterday (because they won’t fit with the socks). I put on my convertible hiking pants with my rain/shell pants over the top. On top, I wear my midweight wool base layer under my Craft/Decker Half Marathon tech shirt — its 5th or 6th wearing this trip — remarkably, it still smells of laundry detergent, not sweat. Over the shirt, I wear my Patagonia light puffer jacket, and the North Face rain shell. I wear my wool hat and my headlamp, the first time I’ve hiked with it and one of the few times I’ve used it at all (since my small red flashlight was usually fine for getting around in camp).

At the last moment, I decide not to wear my heavy snow gloves and instead just keep the thin gloves I’ve been wearing for most of the trip. This decision turned out to be a mistake — sunrise was hours away and my hands got super cold holding my poles. Combined with the tingle of a full dose of Diamox, my hands were uncomfortable from our 4:06am departure until the sun was high enough to raise the temperature around 7am.

Today’s hike is a very long, very very slow slog uphill with a huge number of winding switchbacks. The pace was glacial, perhaps 1/3 as fast as a slow walk. For most of the hike I was worried about my belly — there was no place to poop this morning that would not be horrifically awkward.

Around an hour in, I notice a painful level of pressure in the back right part of my head. I assume it is an altitude effect and as it worsens, my worry builds that I’ll soon have to turn back. After a few minutes of increasing pain and worry, I tentatively take both of my poles into my left hand and use my right hand to check whether rubbing my skull will have any impact on the pain. My hands meet the large solid plastic buckle of my headlamp that I’ve long forgotten that I’m wearing. I shift the buckle and the pain vanishes. I’m so relieved that I laugh out loud. My confidence soars. Nothing’s going to stop me.

The sun starts to come up and dramatically lights up Mawenzi Peak. We take short water breaks every hour or so.

When we look back at how little distance we’ve covered, it seems almost like a joke. In this photo, our camp is 6 hours’ hike behind us, and Barafu Camp an hour behind that.

We pass by a number of small groups coming down from the summit and applaud their success. We see one guy being hustled down the mountain just before Stella Point, clearly in bad shape.

Finally, we crest the crater rim at Stella Point at 11:01 am, perhaps an hour behind schedule.

While relieved to have reached the rim, I still feel bloated and uncomfortable at Stella, and my self-measured oxygen saturation is an absurdly low 72%. My pulse has been at ~120 all morning. We can see the sign at Uhuru Peak from Stella, and Jason uses his Galaxy S23 camera’s insane zoom to read the sign from where we stand, an impressive feat. “So, does that mean we don’t even need to go over there?” I joke.

We were offered a small picnic lunch, of which I forced myself to eat around half, although I was not hungry.

After forty-five minutes or so, lunch is over and we embark on the hike around the crater rim to Uhuru Peak. It looks so close, but it’s around a mile away and another 500 feet up. We’re still walking super slowly and I worry about my belly most of the way. We take some nice pictures of the depressingly vanishing glaciers along the path.

Shortly afterward, Jason drops his phone and it begins to slide down the scree beside the trail. Fortunately, he manages to grab it before it’s gone forever. I bend down to pick up a piece of volcanic rock and my camera tumbles out of the top of my pack, hitting the ground hard. Oops. It doesn’t seem to take much damage, thankfully.

At one point I realize that my belly is literally bulging and that’s going to be visible in my all important pictures at Uhuru Peak. Ugh.

Finally, around 12:56pm, we reach the sign at Uhuru Peak and picture taking begins. We’re lucky as it’s only our group — all of the morning crowds are gone, and we only saw a few small parties of threes and fours on the rim at all. A cloud rolling in seems to be waiting patiently for us to depart.

We take many combinations of photos in front of the sign. There’s not a ton else to see, alas, as the cloud cover again precludes seeing the ground. We snap some photos of the glacier inside the crater and a faded plaque adjacent to the sign.

Robert sits on a rock and reads a letter his wife wrote him to open at the top and seems moved by it. I hop up on a small boulder rock behind the sign, as I decide I should make really sure that I hit the highest point on the continent. Although, to be honest, it kinda looks like we might’ve been a few feet higher than this on a hill we crossed on the way here. It’s hard to say.

After ten minutes of wandering around, I finally fart (so so much flatulence on this trip, OMG) and feel much better, although I still worry that I’m not going to make it through the 2.5-3 hour descent back to Kosovo. After 5 more minutes of milling about, half of the party (including my brother who has a headache) decide to start the descent. I’m feeling pretty good now, with my oxygen saturation having improved to 82%, but I figure that I’ve achieved what I’ve come to achieve and heading back is the smart move.

My porter, one of the dozen that made the ascent with us, grabs my daypack as I’m putting it on and brings it back to camp, a huge and unexpected treat even though it’s probably under 10 pounds at this point.

Pausing back at Stella, our half of the group further splits into a “fast” and “slow” set, with the older folks bringing up the rear. Seeing the wind drive up the dust, I put on my balaclava for the first time.

Our trip back started out rough — downhills are hard, especially over the loose scree, and we’re not doing as many switchbacks as we did on the way up. Liza has a porter on each arm hustling her down the mountain and we joke that she really is the Princess of the tribes. At one point, the cloud cover perfectly frames Mawenzi:

Before long, we’ve finished the treacherous parts and we get to the best part of the day and one of the most fun parts of the trip– “skiing” down through the dust and scree with my poles. It was fun and fast — our 8 hour ascent is reversed with just a 90 minute descent back into camp.

As we climb a small hill back into camp, I tease my brother about some shortcut he takes and joke “Hey, that’s cheating!” He smirks and points at the porter carrying my pack a few feet in front of us. I blush. “Fair enough.“

When we reach camp, porters have pulled out the chairs from the dining tent for us to sit in outside of our tents. They serve us cups of fruit juice while swatting the dust off our boots and pants. I never did put on the gaiters I was told to carry, but it didn’t matter– I still had no rocks in my tall Quest 4D boots, and my pants dusted off pretty cleanly as well.

Within a few hours, all of our hikers have made it back to camp. There’s a birthday celebration for Robert, who’s just turned 70, and we all share a cake brought up for the occasion.

I don’t write any more in my journal today. Tired and happy, I expect we’ll all sleep well tonight. I fall asleep around 7pm.

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Wednesday, July 5, 2023; Day 6

I slept okay last night with long periods awake, turning a story over in my mind, the details of which I’ve since forgotten. At 5:50am I sat up when I heard the coffee crew preparing their hot water, and Jason broke the night’s silence with a joke: “You’re like a dog waiting for his treat.” I laughed out loud.

It’s cold out. The thermometer says the tent is around 35F, but my bathroom trip at midnight wasn’t too bad. I should’ve worn my glasses to better see the constellations, but the bright full moon would’ve spoiled it somewhat anyway. It was so bright I didn’t even need my flashlight for the walk to the toilet tent.

Respicius left early to hike ahead and find out if anything can be done about our unsuccessful reservation at the Kosovo/Respicius camp. I assume that some sort of bribe is involved. If we can’t stay at Kosovo, we’ll have to base camp at Barafu instead. The advantage of continuing past Barafu to Kosovo that base camping at the latter results in an easier summit day with 700 feet less climb. Kosovo is a smaller specialty camp; in our initial briefing, Respicius told us that he’d helped establish the site in the 90s. It was apparently contentious among the different factions of tour companies on the mountain and was nicknamed “Kosovo” in light of the ongoing Kosovo war in Europe. Now, more than 20 years later, that conflict is long over and Respicius said he’d petitioned that they rename the camp after him. As with many of his stories, we can’t really tell if he’s pulling our leg. I’m resigned to either and not getting my hopes up for a last minute save… we’ve come this far, and we can handle either.

Sunrise at Karanga is beautiful, and my brother is fixated on a strange visual phenomenon where there’s a giant triangle in the sky. I’m convinced that it’s somehow a shadow of the mountain, although I can’t really figure out the mechanics of it.

Breakfast was uneventful and the first two hours of slow and steep hiking passed in a blink as I zoned out and just let the rhythm guide me. One step after another, pole pole. “Pole Pole” is perhaps the most common mantra on Kili, meaning “slowly, slowly”, and while our pace has always been slow, it’s getting slower, and our pace tomorrow to the summit will be so slow as to seem like a parody of movement.

At hour three, on a mostly featureless uphill plain, a radio call reveals that not only have we been cleared all the way to Kosovo, but also the last three of our trekmate’s luggage had arrived and was on its way up the mountain. There was much rejoicing.

Along the way, we watched two helicopters fly by — one for a medical evac and one allegedly for the son of some government minister or something, who’d summitted but didn’t want to hike out.

We arrive at Barafu just after 11 and are led in a song at the sign:

After a short water break in the Barafu camp (where I peed in the outhouse/pit latrine, tl;dr: pretty gross), we continued on up a steep rock wall where our hands were as important as our poles. This would’ve been a brutal climb to try to do in the dark at 3am had we been forced to base camp at Barafu.

Along the way, we encountered our first two finishers (Canadians) who were on their way back down to their base camp at Barafu, looking tired but happy after a 12 hour day.

The lunchtime hike was a relatively short one (around an hour) and we soon arrived at our makeshift camp just outside the official Kosovo camp entrance. Our position along the trail lets us watch as other groups pass by.

As I write in my journal, the sing-song call of “Washy washy” summons us trekkers to lunch. It has long annoyed me (when entering the dining room on cruise ships) as it seems vaguely racist, but that’s probably mostly due to one of my dumb floormates in my freshman year of college.

Lunch is a pair of yummy corn fritters with guacamole, pineapple slices, and salad. We exchange real-world contact information (emails, addresses, and Instagram handles) so we can share pictures after we land back home.

Kosovo Camp is just shy of 16000 feet, and my lunchtime check of my oxygen saturation measures at 88%.

The Doc was curious to see what medical gear the team carried, so they pulled it all out and inflated the pressure bag.

I send a text or two before a solo pre-dinner walking photoshoot.

From here, we’re finally close enough to see how we might get up the mountain.

It gets cold fast when the sun moves behind Kili, which casts a long shadow over our tents and a rough helipad. Mawenzi Peak is visible from one side of the camp

…while Mount Meru is visible from the other.

The pre-dinner excitement is the arrival of our trekmates’ luggage; Sherri and Jason H are very excited that they’ll have their carefully selected (and warmer) gear for the summit.

I’m bundled up for dinner at 6 and I think my daypack is all set for the ascent.

We have our final briefing before summit day and now it’s time to repack my day pack, removing everything I don’t need to carry to the summit. I decide to bring my big camera, but leave its bag and the long lens behind at camp. We’ll be returning here, so we don’t need to pack up our tents before the hike, as the vast majority of our porters will remain behind with our camp. Our briefing says there will be no tent coffee service tomorrow, a 3am wakeup for a 4am departure. With two hours of hiking in the dark before sunup, it’s expected to be super cold. I ask whether we should pack our YakTrax for walking on ice; Respicius suggests we should “just in case”, but his three assistants shake their heads and overrule him. They’re wise– we ultimately won’t come within 50 feet of anything frozen on the ascent, and even those are just tiny patches of water frozen in shade.

I’m excited, but eager to get to sleep. 3am is really early, and tomorrow will be a very long day.

At dinner, Jason H mentioned that our best chance of great views of the stars will be not long after sundown, but I figure I’ll see them if I wake to go to the bathroom. An expert at stellar photography, he captures some insanely amazing images, but I won’t see them until weeks after returning to the US. I’m a bit sad that I didn’t see anything nearly as amazing as this with my own eyes, but I’m delighted to have them anyway.

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Tuesday, July 4, 2023; Day 5

I slept okay last night, with no real nasal congestion unlike the night before, and the camp quieted down eventually. I had a few 1+ hour stretches of sleep. I jotted in my journal while enjoying my 5am coffee and wondering just how freezing my post-coffee bathroom trip will be. The thermometer on my pack indicates that it’s 40F in our tent. Ox has settled at 92%. After breakfast, we’ll be departing at 6:45am.

While waiting for the camp to pack up after breakfast, I wander around and take more photos of both the exotic plants and the morning clouds.

From here, it’s hard to see how exactly we’re going to get up this wall.

Our easy path out of camp and down from the plateau doesn’t reveal much about what’s to come:

Minutes after leaving camp, we cross a little bridge over a small valley and a tiny half-frozen river fed by a small waterfall:

We get to the base of the wall and, while the path is steep, it’s nowhere near the “straight up” it looked like yesterday. We can’t use our poles because we need both hands for the climbs. Respicius doesn’t like how my pack was holding my poles so he attaches them to his pack instead.

The scramble up Barranco Wall turns out to easily be my favorite part of the trip so far. It reminds me of easy climbs as a kid with my parents near where I grew up.

We’ve managed to leave early enough that there aren’t too many porters passing us with giant bags balanced atop their heads, but there are enough darting around to make it clear how easy we’ve got it.

A bit over halfway up, we encounter the “kissing rock”, so named because you have to hug it to get by, and, well, if you’re already hugging a boulder, why not give it a kiss while you’re at it? Before the trip, I’d idly pondered whether I’d actually put my mouth on some random rock in Tanzania, but when I actually get there, I’m so exhilarated that I plant a great big smooch.

We climbed for another half hour or so, pausing to doff our outer layers and take some epic mountainside photos.

Not long after, we make it to the top, drop our bags, take some photos, and eat some snacks.

After hanging out at the top of the wall for fifteen or twenty minutes, we began our descent on the other side. We cross a series of wide plains following trains of porters ahead of us.

After crossing the sandy plains, we eventually reach areas more interesting vegetation and a steeper ascents and descents. The final descent proves slightly easier than yesterday’s down from Lava Tower, but I felt a knee twinge at the end of the downhill that worries me… knees definitely seem like my weak point.

There was one final steep ascent into camp, an intimidating climb, but I was excited that we were almost there. As we caught our breath and grabbed a drink at the bottom, our porters unexpectedly appeared (“Look, the Easter Bunnies!” joked the Doc) and relieved us of our packs for the climb.

Karanga camp looks much like our prior two, with our tents overlooking the sea of clouds below:

The views from the camp are amazing and I text a few of them to some new friends from Austin who’d wished me well on the trip.

Mount Meru remains the only ground feature visible through the thick bed of white clouds below. A few large birds circle lazily on the gusts of wind.

It’s bright and sunny and the thermometer in my pack reports it’s just under 60F. The camp is covered in scree, making my use of Crocs as camp shoes a bit treacherous. The dust isn’t as overwhelming as it has been in places on the trail. The summit feels close, and we’ve reached our first explicit warning sign.

I jot in my journal in my tent waiting for lunch at 1PM.

After lunch and wandering around taking pictures, I’m back in the tent jotting in my journal at 3:54pm, killing the last few minutes before “afternoon tea”, the highlight of which remains not the tea (which I’ve tired of) but instead the bowls of plain popcorn.

I muse that while there’s so much to see, my eyes are not to be trusted. What looks like a trail that goes up vertically is a manageable slope when you get closer or change your perspective. Between the bright sun and the polarized lenses of my sunglasses, and the red-orange light of the sleeping tent (all red items appear orange) to the green hue inside the toilet tent, half of the day looks like a miscalibrated TV set.

At dinner, Robert leads a toast for the 4th of July and we cheer our active and former service members. After dinner, Respicius reveals some news: apparently, our reservation for our planned pre-summit camp didn’t go through — if we can’t stay at our planned Kosovo/Respicius camp, our summit day will be a lot more difficult, with an extra 700 foot climb several hours before dawn. Respicius will hike ahead of the group in the morning to meet the rangers at the camp to try to resolve the problem. I am at peace… what will be will be.

Wherever we end up by tomorrow night, we’ll be sleeping at our final camp before our summit bid.

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