Were we really only 2 days away from our summit push on Kibo? The summit push I'd been going over in my mind for about the last year? Things had been going smoothly so far, but the big test was closing in. By this point we'd seen Kibo many times on the trail, yet our rate of approaching the base camp seemed ever so slow. Pole Pole!
Acclimatization at Mawenzi (Oct 12)
The day trekking to Mawenzi camp was pretty mellow, and the day we spent there was even easier. We slept in for a while, then slowly got up and began our routine breakfast. After, we decided we'd go on an acclimatization hike, and it looked like we were on our own to figure out where to go. We started to trek towards Mawenzi peak following a different path than we'd taken in our hike the afternoon before. We got about 20 minutes in to our hike when Julius caught up with us and started leading us, much to the fascination of Pat.
Pat had slowly been developing an intense admiration for Julius's ability to carry a load of about 50 lbs on his head while traversing rocky terrain both uphill and downhill. Once Julius caught up, he lead us at a very Pole Pole pace, which was necessary since we were on a steep gradient and approaching more serious altitudes. He lead us to the Baranco Wall, and then a bit farther. We took a few pictures and enjoyed the beautiful rolling clouds as well as some waterfalls, then proceeded up even a bit higher. Our Swahili phrase for the day was "Uzuri Sana" or very beautiful. And these sites certainly were. After resting a bit at about 15,100 ft, we descended back to camp and enjoyed another hot lunch.
Our afternoon was pretty simple. It involved throwing a few rocks at targets, reading, and watching Pat and Calvin play Final Fantasy IV to pass the time. Dinner arrived pretty quickly and afterwards we had a talk with Yitzhak, again. He told us that we were looking just fine, and that the path up to Gilman's point (the ridge of the crater of Kibo) was not as steep as what we had just trekked. My thoughts were a very conservative "okay this is good" followed by a "PLEASE don't be lying!". But I did start to feel optimistic about our summit chances. It looked like a successful acclimatization day. We were quite a ways away from summiting yet, though. I took this glimmer of optimism along with feeling about 95% over my cold to be a good sign, and slept quite easily.
Crossing the Saddle to Kibo (Oct 13)
Time to head to base camp! We woke up a bit earlier for breakfast on this day, as we had a solid 5-6 mile trek in front of us, longer than anything we'd walked the past 2 days. I was looking forwards to this saddle hike, as apparently you could see views of both the Tanzania side and the Kenya side of Kili from the ridge. That is, on a clear day. Instead, the sky was saturated with mist! So we had very little visibility. We did manage to see the wreckage of a plane whose passengers did not meet a happy end. I figured it was bad karma to do anything but walk past the fuselage.
Julius guided us for about an hour on the trek, until Yitzhak came and took over. The trek ended up being quite uneventful and in my opinion a great base camp approach day. It was a reasonably long yet very gradual hike. Just enough to get the blood flowing in our legs but not enough to tire us out. And on a clear day the views would have been breathtaking. We arrived at Kibo in reasonably heavy weather. The weather ended up staying with us until dinner time. We caught up with the Canadian women who had all managed to summit and reach Uhuru Peak. One of them was feeling quite ill though. Afterwards, we took shelter in our tent and organized our gear for the summit push that was to take place just 5 hours after dinner! Try not to think too much Matt, just prepare! Preparing meant gathering all possible layers of clothes I would wear, removing anything from my day pack I would not need for the summit, having all 5L of water carrying capacity I owned filled with freshly boiled water, and putting together a bag of energy food for the push.
We ate our dinner and had our last briefing from Yitzhak. He told us we were still looking really good and he expected us to reach Uhuru Peak by sunrise. This delighted Pat who had already made that his goal, while Calvin and I were figuring we'd be happy to reach Uhuru at ANY time. We appreciated Yitzhak's faith, felt good, and had confidence, but we still had a 3800ft climb ahead of us. We did our best to sleep until the 11:30pm summit push awakening call.
Acclimatization at Mawenzi (Oct 12)
The day trekking to Mawenzi camp was pretty mellow, and the day we spent there was even easier. We slept in for a while, then slowly got up and began our routine breakfast. After, we decided we'd go on an acclimatization hike, and it looked like we were on our own to figure out where to go. We started to trek towards Mawenzi peak following a different path than we'd taken in our hike the afternoon before. We got about 20 minutes in to our hike when Julius caught up with us and started leading us, much to the fascination of Pat.
Pat had slowly been developing an intense admiration for Julius's ability to carry a load of about 50 lbs on his head while traversing rocky terrain both uphill and downhill. Once Julius caught up, he lead us at a very Pole Pole pace, which was necessary since we were on a steep gradient and approaching more serious altitudes. He lead us to the Baranco Wall, and then a bit farther. We took a few pictures and enjoyed the beautiful rolling clouds as well as some waterfalls, then proceeded up even a bit higher. Our Swahili phrase for the day was "Uzuri Sana" or very beautiful. And these sites certainly were. After resting a bit at about 15,100 ft, we descended back to camp and enjoyed another hot lunch.
 |
| Calvin, Julius and I |
Crossing the Saddle to Kibo (Oct 13)
Time to head to base camp! We woke up a bit earlier for breakfast on this day, as we had a solid 5-6 mile trek in front of us, longer than anything we'd walked the past 2 days. I was looking forwards to this saddle hike, as apparently you could see views of both the Tanzania side and the Kenya side of Kili from the ridge. That is, on a clear day. Instead, the sky was saturated with mist! So we had very little visibility. We did manage to see the wreckage of a plane whose passengers did not meet a happy end. I figured it was bad karma to do anything but walk past the fuselage. |
| Approaching Kibo Camp |
We ate our dinner and had our last briefing from Yitzhak. He told us we were still looking really good and he expected us to reach Uhuru Peak by sunrise. This delighted Pat who had already made that his goal, while Calvin and I were figuring we'd be happy to reach Uhuru at ANY time. We appreciated Yitzhak's faith, felt good, and had confidence, but we still had a 3800ft climb ahead of us. We did our best to sleep until the 11:30pm summit push awakening call.
No comments:
Post a Comment