Kilimanjaro Climb Day 4: Summit Day

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Unfortunately the journal got behind and this is my first entry in 5 days. A lot has happened. For starters, we hiked for almost 24 hours in a 27 hour period. Some of that time was eating, or breaking, but it was all on the go. I know it sounds hard to believe, and it was a lot harder to do.

On summit day we started with a long hike very early in the morning, about 8 hours up to the Baranco Wall. This was supposed to be the most difficult part. It certainly was the most technical, though not very technical at all by mountaineering terms, it was for us. There was scrambling and climbing, and the wall is pretty much a cliff with a trail zig-zagging up it. There were a lot of hairpin turns and cliffs where if you tripped or fell backwards from the weight of your pack, that was it. Mind you we had 3 feet of space to operate, it wasn't a high-wire act, but trust me, 3' was still hairy enough.

Everyone is in good spirits today because we leave for the summit tonight at midnight.

We got into camp late and got to bed at 8:30pm. We are to awake at 11pm and will depart at 12am.

The time has arrived, we are awoken relatively easily, either because we have not been asleep long, are not sleeping well at 15,000', or we are excited to get to the top! A combination of all three I'm sure.

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