Hello everyone, this is Ben calling in with Team Hot Tang and the Blue Band here on Kilimanjaro. We are at the Barranco Camp (which is about 12,700 feet) tonight. Everybody’s doing great here.
We had a nice long hike today; it was just a little bit over 8 hours to get from Shira Camp here to Barranco Camp. We ascended up to about 14,700 feet and had lunch. It was a beautiful morning for the most part and then some clouds came in the mid-morning, which made it a little bit cooler but it was a beautiful morning to start out. Then we had lunch and continued on up to the base of the Lava Tower (15,000 feet).
We broke some altitude records for a lot of people on the trip here and a few of us decided to continue on up and scramble up to the top of Lava Tower (just a couple more hundred feet up to the top). Then we all headed down to Barranco Camp. We went up pretty high up to 15,000 feet today and then we dropped it back down here to Barranco Camp (at 12,700 feet) with the idea of stressing our bodies a little bit and trying to acclimatize a little bit here around 12-13,000 feet, before we head up on our summit bid here in the next couple days.
We’re all feeling great with the altitude and been eating a lot of good food here on the mountain that our Tanzanian staff has been making for us. We just had pork chops tonight, and we had some dinner conversation, had some dessert, and we’re all heading off to bed here now.
And we’re looking forward to another nice day tomorrow. We’ll head up the Barranco Wall here, which we’re just camped at the base of; which is kind of a fun little bit of scrambling involved to get up the wall/to get on top of the wall. And then we’ll head on over to our Karanga Camp tomorrow (it’s just over 15,000 feet, about 15,3). And then we’ll head to our High Camp after that, the day following.
So, we’re moving on up the mountain. We’re having a great time and we’re all excited to continue to move up tomorrow. We’ll talk to you soon.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
