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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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Monday, July 3, 2023; Day 4

I didn’t feel quite as cold last night, and I got a solid amount of sleep. I had two mild-but-elaborate nightmares though, both featuring my ex. Ugh. I was a little congested, which is worrisome, but there’s so much dust in the air that blowing my nose leads to a gritty tissue stained dark brown, a common complaint from others.

I didn’t need the bathroom all night. I jotted in my journal while finishing up my morning coffee in the tent awaiting the call to breakfast. Today we’ll hike from camp to the Lava Tower at 15000 feet, lunch there, and then descend to camp at 13000 feet. Supposedly, today will be the second hardest hiking day of the trip, but I feel strong. At breakfast, my oxygen saturation measures at 92%.

We pack, huddle, chant/sing, and set off up the same trail we climbed yesterday afternoon.

While my thumb-shirt protects the base of my hands, I haven’t been applying sunblock to my knuckles regularly enough:

The hike to Lava Tower is a long uphill, but painless. I worried about my gurgling belly for a while, but had no problems.

The combination of a great adventure, close quarters, tents (which provide visual isolation but no sound dampening at all), sharing of meals, and hours-long walks has caused our group to develop a rapid, if uneven, intimacy. Never before have I known the state of so many adults’ bladders and bowels, and what they achieved the last time they went to the toilet tent. (Constipation is a real problem for some, while my fear is the opposite problem). The combination of our diet, altitude, exercise, and hiking in a line leads to a frequency of nearby flatulence unexperienced anywhere else. Some of us try to awkwardly ignore it, while our Air Force trekker gleefully calls out “Air Power!” after each fart. What else can you do?

We’ve mostly settled on nicknames — the Doctor is, predictably, “Doc“, Jason H has been dubbed “Gadget” (he’s got a fancy 360° camera, and a 2-way GPS that uploads our location to the internet over satellite), and I continue to answer to an occasional “REI.” An attempt to nickname Bob as “Casper” (for his heavy facial sunblock) doesn’t really take off, perhaps because it seems a little unkind. Respicius is now commonly called “Suspicious Respicius” (mostly by Liza) due to his minor and good-natured deceptions.

Our guides periodically pause beside the trail to cheer us on and ask how we’re doing as we pass. I’ve gotten in the habit of replying “All is bliss,” a line I’ve cribbed from The Great, and which has delighted me since it was first mentioned.

While we wait for lunch, we survey the Lava Tower, Kili (which feels close enough to touch), and the trail that led us here:

Our dining tent is set up at the foot of the tower, perhaps 50 feet away from a sign warning about not getting too close to the rocks. 😬

Lunch is a tasty chicken noodle soup and spaghetti.

While I felt great, my Ox has declined to 84%, a figure that would lead to a race to the hospital under normal circumstances. After lunch and a trip to the bathroom, it was time to get our packs back on.

Our “easy” post-lunch downhill to Barranco proves more challenging than our morning’s hike. Leaving the camp involved climbing down a steep set of rocks, and later the trail was slippery in spots; three of us fell. Norm fell less than a foot in front of me and I felt guilty that I didn’t catch him, as my hands were wrapped in fists around my poles. He’s incredibly tough, however, and pops back up in seconds. Minutes later, Robert slipped and hurt his knee and ended up spending the evening in his tent after the Doctor gave him something from her bag.

As we approach Barranco, we see some of the most interesting landscape and flora of the trip so far.

We’re all excited when the camp finally comes into sight, again next to a sea of clouds, with the famous Barranco Wall close by.

I have a headache coming into Barranco at 13K, but attribute it not to altitude but instead to being tired from carrying my pack, which felt heavier than usual. I decided that I’d probably leave my camera behind for the summit day.

The mountain feels really close now, even if I can’t fathom how we’ll get up it.

Dinner is chicken over rice with a delicious fried/breaded banana dessert.

Our after-dinner briefing reveals that tomorrow’s trek sounds short but perhaps hairy — thousands of people (the vast majority of them porters) will take a long, narrow, and winding cliffside path up the mountain to the Karanga camp. But we’re slated to arrive by lunch, and will have the afternoon to relax, at around the same altitude as here in Barranco.

I cross my fingers for a good sleep tonight; we’ll have an extra early wakeup at 5am tomorrow in the hopes of getting up the famous Barranco Wall before the crowds arrive. I’m excited!

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Sunday, July 2, 2023; Day 3

I slept somewhat more comfortably in the night — my sleeping pad, inflated by our porters before we got to Shira 1, was not overfilled and provided a bit more comfort than it had before. I also learned the trick of zipping my puffy coat down into a small pillow which worked better than struggling with the awkward one built into the sleeping pad. As I sipped my morning coffee, I jotted down a short note in my journal:

Today’s slated to be an easy day – a 4 hour hike to Shira 2 before lunch, then a short acclimatization walk in the afternoon. My breathing still feels good, and my only real worry is the consistent gurgle in my belly. Fingers crossed.

We got to enjoy a beautiful sunrise while getting ready for breakfast.

Unlike our prior mornings, our path now seemed pretty simple — “walk that way.”

After breakfast, brushing our teeth, and repacking our duffels, we form our morning huddle and sing our little chant before heading out:

The day’s hike isn’t quite as flat as it looks, but it is much flatter than our prior days’ efforts. It’s mostly a series of small rolling hills, with a tiny river crossing just outside of camp.

An hour or so later, while sitting on a rock during a water/potty stop, I can more clearly observe the groups of porters flying by. Most are wearing boots from REI and the like, although a few are wearing surprising choices like Jordans and even boat shoes. I muse that many of the porters have surprisingly large feet, relative to their comparatively small stature. Later I blame mental haziness from the altitude and lack of sleep for how long it takes me to arrive at the obvious realization that they’re mostly wearing boots left behind by past hikers, and while you can’t wear a boot that’s too small, you can wear one that’s too big.

I took the opportunity to apply sunblock to my face and hands, and then wandered off a few hundred feet to find a rock large enough to pee behind. As was the case from here on out (where the flatness of the terrain meant there weren’t as many concealed places to relieve oneself), there were gross piles of toilet paper on the far side of the rocks, left behind by hikers who weren’t following the rules (and probably weren’t blessed with toilet tents). Yuck.

In the late morning, we stop for a snack break on a rocky hillside overlooking some interesting trees:

Speaking of snacks, our guides supply us with two before we set out each morning: usually one is a packet of dried fruit which I enjoy, and a dense ball or bar made from nuts, chocolate, and seeds. While the latter are tasty, I usually don’t eat them in favor of the peanut/chocolate protein bars I’ve brought from home, whose flavor I prefer and which are a weight in my bag that I’d like to reduce. :)

After an easy morning’s hike, we arrive at Shira 2 around lunchtime and sign in at the ranger station. The camp is on a ridge line with incredible views of Mount Meru poking out over the clouds below.

It’s easily the prettiest camp so far, and I suspect that it might end up being the best one of the trip – it’s sunny and cool but not cold. From here, Kili is cloudless and looms much larger in our field of view than it did from Shira 1.

But as impressive as Kili is, I think the sea of clouds below us from here to Meru is even more beautiful.

I take the opportunity to wander around camp, taking pictures of the mountains and some of the flora that manages to live at this high elevation:

We notice that the porters have congregated on some giant boulders at the bottom of the camp and many of them are chatting on cell phones, so several of our trekmates head there to try to make calls and investigate their still-missing luggage:

We’re at real altitude now, just under 13000 feet, but after lunch we’ll take a short hike up over 13000 feet to help our bodies adjust to the elevation we’ll be crossing through tomorrow. The primary reason that hikers fail to summit Kili is altitude sickness, and our tour’s combination of going slow and “hike high, sleep low” is meant to ensure that we acclimatize as much as we can.

The acclimatization hike up to over 13000 feet took under an hour and wasn’t difficult. It felt great to not have my backpack on for the acclimatization hike. While the pack’s bladder is more convenient than carrying a water bottle, by now I’d concluded that dragging my big camera (and its bag) everywhere was probably a mistake. I can only hope that when I finally get to see its pictures on a big screen I’ll decide it was worth it after all.

We ended our ascent at a patch of giant boulders with cairns delicately perched atop them.

Looking back toward camp, the view was even more impressive:

There was a bit of grumbling about having to descend– losing hard-won steps upward seemed like a waste. Had I followed the guidance to leave my poles behind, I would’ve likely fallen at least three times on the scree (“loose gravel”) on the way back down.

I changed into my thermals before dinner, resolved not to repeat the prior night’s panic.

Tomorrow, we’ll hike to the Lava tower, our highest altitude yet (~15K feet!), before descending to a camp at around the same altitude we’re at now.

Exciting times!

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Friday, June 30, 2023; Day 1

Ndarakwai provided the best night’s sleep of the trip yet, with the combination of the cool breeze through the hut pairing beautifully with the cozy blanket on the comfy bunk. After sleeping at 9p, I woke at 11:30p, already feeling rested. I laid awake comfortably for an hour or so and fell back asleep until 6:10a when the birds got started with their morning songs.

Jason mentioned that he’d heard some “Irish piano music” around 5am and suspected that it was the alarm from the Doctor, who’d vowed to wake up at that time at dinner the night before.

By 7am, we were both up and chatting, waiting to walk down to the common hut where last night coffee was promised to be prepared “at 7:15 or 7:30, or 7:45 maybe“, in the “Hakuna Matata” fashion that the Tanzanians seem to express schedules.

When it’s finally time, breakfast was coffee, scrambled eggs, potato hash browns, bread, and little donut-like treat. While we fill up our bellies, our various devices all fill their batteries:

After breakfast, I finalize my choices for the gear that I’m leaving behind in two collapsible backpacks, and we bring our duffels back to our initial common lodge to fill up our water bottles, and weigh the duffels to ensure that they’re below the 15 kg weight limit. I managed to give away two bandanas, a Nalgene bottle, and a pack of wipes to folks whose bags are yet to arrive. Thankfully, I’ve ended up at exactly 15 kilos.

After tipping the staff at the ranch, I’ve got $1399 in cash left in my camera bag where it will hopefully remain for the next 9 days as we hike the trail.

The crew loads our duffels into the two Land Rovers and we all pile in for the drive to the trailhead, around an hour away. When we finally arrive at the parking lot for the trailhead, we all eagerly climb out with our packs and eye the many dozens of porters waiting nearby.

We spend over an hour futzing with poles and gaiters, meeting personal porters, and being introduced to our crew. Our final party numbers 67: 10 guests, 1 head guide, 3 assistant guides, a chef, chef’s assistant/waiter, 6 personal porters, and the enormous crew of camp porters who carry the tents, food, and everything else that will be in camps. We truly will become a village on the move.

I take two trips to the bathroom, our last indoor opportunity for over a week.

We have lunch together in a pavilion next to the trailhead. The meal seems unnecessary– we hadn’t done more than sit since breakfast not long ago– and I eat little, eager both to get started and avoid anything that might upset my belly before we even begin.

Finally, we embark.

We’re bathed in DEET to repel mosquitos, although we don’t see too many and I end up with no bites. The forest around us is pretty, but mostly reminds me of other hikes I’ve been on — there’s still no sight of Kili’s peak. The grade of the trail is more varied than I expected — it was much more ups and downs than a gradual uphill.

My poles helped a ton and I had my first inkling that I’d be using them much more than predicted.

Perhaps fifteen minutes after leaving the trailhead, we arrived at the the formal “Gate.” It wasn’t really much of a gate, more of a sign to pose for pictures with the team.

I wore my gaiters, but I took them off halfway through the day’s hike after realizing that, given my high boots, their only real function was to hold in my sweat. My pant-legs ended up drenched at the bottom. It was chilly– just over 60F, but I still ended up working up a pretty good sweat between my long-sleeve shirt and my pack. We stop to drink and eat snacks every half hour or so.

It’s easy to get lost in conversations or thoughts, but we all still have to pay attention — beyond the sometimes uneven ground, every few minutes, a handful of porters stream by at high-speed, giant bags balanced across their heads. Sometimes those bags are full of metal (frames for tents or chairs) and it seems almost certain that one of us is going to get clipped sooner or later. Calls of “Porter on the right!” and “Lots of porters on the left!” ring out from the back to the front of our line.

Overall, everything felt basically good, and my heart rate stayed just over 100 for the entire hike.

At our final water break around our expected arrival time, Respicius announces that we’ve got about “forty five minutes” left to go for the day. We’re all in good spirits though, and nobody complains that we seem to be behind schedule. When we arrive at our first camp mere minutes later (around 3:40pm), Respicius insists with a twinkle in his eye that he’d said “Four to five minutes.” We all know he’s lying, but this becomes a pattern– an pleasant surprise just before finishing each day’s hike.

The Forest camp (aka “Mti Mkubwa“/”Big tree”) is buzzing with activity, there seem to be at least two other groups of similar size. After signing the Ranger’s guestbook, we head to our group’s red and grey tents in a small clearing near the back of the area.

We have a welcome ceremony with songs and dancing, but I hang back to watch and avoid getting pulled in.

After the welcome ceremony, we meet our crew’s two “toilet engineers”, who teach those of us who’ve never before used one before how to use our chemical toilets.

While it doesn’t seem too dire (“lift lid. use. pump blue handle. pull white handle.”) I’m happy that I don’t need it yet — we boys end up peeing in the trees a dozen yards away.

Shortly after arrival, we have our first tea-time with popcorn, small cookies, and tea (ginger, peppermint, and black tea). As will become customary, Respicius passes around the meter to see how we’re doing. My PulseOx/HR were 95%/72bpm, and I’m silently proud to have the best numbers in our party.

Jason and I unpack our sleeping gear from our duffels and inflate our own mattress pads– non-trivial, but I warn myself that it’s only going to get harder as the altitude increases. (It turns out that this is the last time we’ll do this– despite our protestations, porters will do this for us at all subsequent camps).

Jason seemed worried that I’d been quiet (not lingering with others at tea), but I’m mostly lost in my thoughts, listening to my trekmates’ stories, and writing in my journal: “At camp @9300 feet, waiting for dinner service at 6pm, my portable solar panels are recharging my Fitbit watch, and I’m listening to the others telling stories in the dining tent next door. It’s supposed to rain tonight, but the tent looks pretty sturdy and watertight — fingers crossed!“

Dinner ended up consisting of a delicious pumpkin soup, vegetables, and a shockingly ambitious (and yummy) lasagna. Dinner discussion ranged from amazement at the food (“Lasagna?? On a mountain?“) to lamentation about delayed luggage, and optimism of it perhaps arriving the tomorrow (as a high mountain road runs near our next night’s camp).

Our final surprise of the day was a 20th Anniversary cake for Jason H and Sherry.

Dinner ends with another verification of everyone’s PulseOx and our first nightly briefing about what to expect for the next day. We’ll wake at 6am, breakfast at 7, and depart by 8.

I’m unprepared for how chilly and dark it gets in camp, and have to learn how to effectively brush my teeth in the dark and otherwise get ready for bed with limited lighting. I’m excited for tomorrow, and despite the chatter from our trek-mates and adjacent camps, I snuggle down in my sleeping bag early. I end up going to water the trees an hour or two later and can still hear our neighbors awake.

Despite the tent’s thick rubber flooring and my sleeping pad (which it turns out I’ve over-inflated), my bed is quite uncomfortable and I have a very restless night.

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