Hello this is the 8/22 Kilimanjaro climb for Alpine Ascents. It’s turned into a bit of a cold early night from what was a lovely warm day. We headed off from our Machame Camp early this morning, you go along sort of a long rocky ridge for quite a ways, leave the forest behind and start to get into some of these beautiful giant senecio and lobelia, which are a plant that are only found at a certain elevational band in East Africa. So we had beautiful views out over towards Arusha, back the way we’ve come from, seeing Mount Meru over there and sticking out above the clouds. This time of year (late winter here) usually there’s sort of a cloud layer down low on the plains and then Mount Meru sticks above it, and as do we on Kilimanjaro.
Folks climbed on through the day, we got to our little lunch spot, we had it all to ourselves today so that was sort of nice. It was such a lovely day we didn’t even put up the dining tent, we just ate out in the open and enjoyed the views. Got into camp pretty early, I think maybe about 2:00 or so, signed in at the ranger station and came on over to our camp. Some folks went hiking over on the Shira Plateau, which is this big flat plain that was formed when Shira (which is sort of one of the three vents, if you will, on Kilimanjaro) blew up, I don’t know, 100,000 or some years ago, filled in the area between it and the main summit. In the afternoon there was some resting, some reading, a fierce game of cards in the dining tent, and then we’ve just enjoyed a lovely evening.
Everybody is doing well so far. I think tomorrow a couple of folks are going to get in a new elevation high and looking forward to that, so we’ll give a call tomorrow. Tomorrow is the first day on the route in which we do both an ascent and a descent, so we go up about 800 meters or so from our current altitude which is right in somewhere close to 3900, and then we’ll come back to approximately the same elevation for the night. It’s a good long day but I’m sure folks are going to do just fine. And then by the next day, Karanga Camp, people are usually their bodies are catching up with the altitude and acclimatization is kicking in, and folks are feeling pretty grand.
Greetings to everyone at home and I’ll give you a call from our next camp.
