Monday, February 25, 2013

Kilimanjaro: Day 4 - Barranco to Barafu

Feb. 8th, 2013         5:15 pm
Barafu Camp (4600 m)

We're at base camp after a solid day of hiking 16 km uphill, downhill, and back up again. We woke up at 6, had our standard breakfast, then hit the road around 8. Climbing the Barranco Wall was...crazy.



I started out absolutely freezing and in no time I had warmed up. Parts of the wall required us to put away our poles and scramble up and across rocks. It was fun so long as you didn't look down.


(that's me with the yellow backpack)

Once we got up we went back down into a small valley, then back up out of it, and then back down into an even bigger valley and then up out of it! At the top we could see the tents at Karanga camp where we were having lunch.


(Looking ahead at the path we'd be following - this was only the small valley)


This lunch...we all cheered when it came in and we finally asked to meet the chef (Hans) to thank him. We had chicken, french fries, and coleslaw after potato ginger soup and bread. After lunch we walked another 3 hours to Barafu. The clouds came in overtop of us so in the span of about 30 minutes we went from hot and sunny weather to misty rain, to sleet and ice pellets. When we got to our tents we were cold and wet but now it's beautiful and sunny again. From Karanga to Barafu the landscape changed from alpine desert to... there's no name for it but it was all shale. It looked like someone had built stone houses then smashed them to bits.

(John capturing a photo opportunity and me capturing a photo of that photo)

I had a bit of a headache but I popped an ibuprofen and it's starting to go down. We're eating dinner now (leek soup with french toast, and spaghetti with vegetable sauce), then we sleep til 12, get woken up and push for the summit at 1 am!


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