Kilimanjaro - selfish, beautiful and magnificant

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Last Saturday, I left Karama lodge around 9:00am to pick up a couple at the Moshi international airport, before starting the 3 hours hike to our first camp. After meeting the wonderful couple from Texas, Jennifer, Chad and myself started to climb Kilimanjaro mountain around 2:oopm.

I read everything about Kili and spoke with friends that had reached the Uruhu peak (5985 m), but it was not until I started facing her face to face that I realized that this mountain might not liked to be explored by strangers that rap her outer beauty like a snake raps a tree.

Kili hides most of the time above clouds to not be seen. She stands strong and proud above the clouds enjoying the sun that at times only she can. I searched for days trying to see her from the town of Arusha, but the cloudy days would only allow me to imagine, what Kili was all about.

After reaching the first camp, and meeting all nine porters, assistant guide, cook and guide, we washed up for dinner and said good night (lala salaama). While sleeping, Kili decided to let go of her surrounding clouds and allowed us to see her naked beauty for the first time.

There she was, tall, strong, confident and proud. She had no reasons to envy anything around her. She is the tallest, most popular and richest mountain in Africa. Kili will fight each of its visitors if you plan to reach her highest peak. She definetly challenged me until I finally crowled to the summit. But I won't get ahead of myself.....

On our first day we hiked 10 km to our first camp where I saw Kili for the first time. It was about 7:30am when she had not yet covered herself with clouds to hide her beauty from many of us. Our second day started around 8:30am with a tough vertical hike of 7km before reaching our second camp.

Once again we were welcomed (Karibu) for dinner by our wonderful crew that accompanied the three of us until the very last day. "6:30am wake-up call, 7:00am breakfast and 8:00am departure", were the last words of our guide before we went to bed. I was tired, sored, cold, muddy and wanting a hot shower. But as I entered my tent and crowled into my sleeping bag with my dirty clothes, it finally hit me that this was going to be a looooooooonnnng week.

From Machame Huts at 3032m (9948 ft) we started a steep and skinny path that was going to guide us to New Shira Camp (3847 m). But beside observing the change of scenary, giant heathers and how much of the vegetation diminishes in size at this altitude, I was impressed and still impressed by the line of porters that passed me day after day. These porters carried everything you will be needing during the 7 day hike. Water, food, tents, gas stove, utensils, etc..., you name it, they had it. They also had to divide the weight and bags amount themselves to carry all this junk from camp to camp by foot.

New Shira Camp was probably one of my favorite days. I got to see Kili all day long. She could no longer hide from me. We were almost above the clouds. She was beautiful, solid, proud and selfish. I say selfish, because if you wanted to see her beautiful landscape, you had to push and hike above 12,000 ft. I took a nap and Kili was there. I went on 45 minute hike by myself and she was there. Kili stood proud of her beauty all day long and throughout the night. She had allowed us be with her. We were now "karibu" into her surroundings.

The next day we went from New Shira Camp to Barranco Huts. Due to the altitude that we were reaching of about 4530 m, I started to feel a bit funny. A light headache that according to my guide I had to ignore and numbness in my arms and legs. I completely lost my appetite when we stopped for lunch near the Lava Tower. Noticed that we started at 3847 m and climbed to a respectable 4530m (14858 ft), to realize that our efforts were only for acclimatization purposes. We started decending to our next camp that was situated only 138 m in height, from the New Shira Camp. Thanks a lot....

Not much successful vegetation or green can cling to life up there. Lots of rocks and dusty path covered this area completely, and like I mentioned before, the porters kept me going everyday. They don't need to be acclimatized, why do they have to take these steep paths with 25kg on their heads or backs? Made no sense to me, yet I was very greatful for their efforts. Along the way we got to see the path to Arrow Glacier campsite and the Breach Wall path, another route to reach the summit. I was originally scheduled to take the Breach Wall route, when I was planning to climb alone. After walking 1 hr 30 min downhill we finally reached the delightful Barranco Valley. A huge gouge in the southern face of Kibo to the south-west of Uhuru Peak (highest peak), and they said that it was formed about 100,000 years ago by a huge landslide that came from down from the summit. Kili could no longer hide from me. I was getting used to seeing her, she was becoming part of my daily surroundings.

Once again we started our early climb from Barranco Huts to Barafu Huts. This is a long stage, that we decided to break it into two separate days. The hardest part of this day started with a vertical scramble up the Great Barranco Wall. No poles for this walk. After reaching several false summits, we were finally above the clouds and the sun was shinning beautifully. One more camp before facing the final ascend. At Karanga Valley we went to bed around 6:45pm. We needed to have 3 layers on the bottom and five layers on top. We went to sleep dressed up, because at 10:30pm we were going to have a wake up call.....And this is how it started...come climb with me the last 10 km as we make it to the highest peak....

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