Kilimanjaro: Day 4

June 6th, Saturday!

I woke up feeling fine; headache gone and blood oxygen level back up too after dropping into the 80s yesterday. Here's Godfrey washing up before breakfast, and my tent with FROST all over it.


I took a walk around and snapped a few early morning photos. Moshi is somewhere down there below the clouds:

... and here's the giant breach wall that we're about to climb:

Here it is from another angle with Kibo in the background:
Of course, this can't be climbed without an excessive breakfast:

...and for Godfrey, LOTS of chocolate and sugar in his porridge.

After all that, we had a plate of fruit and then I filtered and zapped my water with my steripen and headed off with Godfrey to climb over the breach wall at Barranco. For some reason, they call the wall "breakfast". It was crazy to see porters scaling right along side us with giant loads perched atop their heads.

The scenery along the way was spectacular, and the temperature was just right.

Once we got over the wall, it was still quite a ways to the lunch spot. The landscape changed quite a bit, and we even saw some ice along the way. Meru is getting further and further away....
...and a few rocks had to be pushed out of the way.
... but Kibo was getting closer and here's that ice I mentioned:
Here's the high point for the day, and soon we reached the lunch spot.
...but not before a few photo ops with the giant groundsels:
Abus and Willie was waiting to provide us with a hot lunch of french fries, fried chicken, warm shredded cabbage/carrot salad, and fruit. I think this was my favorite meal of the whole week! I was actually really hungry that afternoon.Of course, the ravens were in full force. There were some cute pigeons too with colorful feathers I've never seen before.
The walk beyond the lunch spot to Barafu was beautiful. We dropped into the Karanga Valley and got more pictures of the giant groundsels and other plants. We also saw more waterfalls (still freezing cold) and interesting rock formations. The last leg of the hike was a long climb up to Barafu which means "ice" in Swahili.
That should tell you what the temperature is like up there. My tent was all set up and ready to go as usual, this time on top of a rock that was ironically in the perfect place for a pillow. I usually set up my bed before hanging out with the crew for dinner, but Babu was blowing up my sleeping mat, so I decided to come back later.

It was nearly 5pm, and we were going to be heading out at midnight to attempt the summit. All I wanted to do was sleep, but dinner was required even though I'd completely lost my appetite at such a high elevation. At least I had no headache, but it took me forever to choke down the required food. By the time I actually set up my bed and went to sleep, it was probably close to 8pm. I had to pee, but just went outside the tent over gravel because the pit toilet was hard to get to.