Kilimanjaro
October 2007
Machame
Gate to Machame Hut (Monday, 22-Oct)
Machame
Hut to Shira Camp (Tuesday, 23-Oct)
Shira
Camp to Barranco (Wednesday, 24-Oct)
Barranco
to Karanga Valley (Thursday, 25-Oct)
Karanga
Valley to Barrafu (Friday, 26-Oct)
Barrafu
to Summit and Descent to Mweka Hut (Saturday, 27-Oct)
Descent
to Mweka Gate (Sunday, 28-Oct)
The Mountain
Much has been written about
- At
5,895m it is the highest point of the African continent.
Hence it is one of the “Seven Summits”. - It
is the world’s highest free-standing mountain,
towering 5000m above the Tanzanian plains. - It
is one of the world’s largest volcanoes.
- It
can be reached without technical difficulties or mountaineering
experience.
- It
covers 4 climate zones – it is said you walk through four seasons in four
days; you literally walk “from the tropics to the poles”:
- Cultivated
zone and forest (800m – 2800m)
- Heath
and moorland (2800m – 4000m)
- Alpine
desert (4000m – 5000m)
- Ice
Cap (5000m – 5895m)
Kilimanjaro was first climbed in 1889 by
German Hans Meyer and Austrian Ludwig Purtscheller.
Back then it took 20 years for the next person to reach the summit; today there
are upwards of 200 people per day attempting the summit – success rate is
around 75%. On the Millennium New Year’s Eve in 2000 there were some 1300
people on the summit! So hiking up
Climbing
“It is your
attitude, not your aptitude, which determines your altitude.”
The Trip
We had booked a combined 2-week adventure
trip with www.iexplore.com which also
included other National Park visits and safari trips after the climb. IExplore in turn aggregates the services of several local
travel providers and subcontracts for guides, drivers, etc. – in our case of Akorn and Abercrombie & Kent travel services.
Preparation & Logistics
One really good source of information on
the mountain is Henry Stedman’s book “Kilimanjaro”
and its companion website www.climbmountkilimanjaro.com.
There you can learn almost anything about Kilimanjaro, about various routes,
what to expect, how to organize trips, where to stay, current weather
conditions, etc.
We had received a checklist for equipment
from IExplore, which can be found here.
We completed our equipment mostly by Internet shopping from the REI store at www.rei.com. Some really useful items include
the hiking poles (especially for the long descent) as well as the CamelBak integrated backpack (very useful as it is
important to drink frequently to stay hydrated). We also bought a new photo
camera (Olympus 560 UZ) and a new Camcorder (Sony DCR-SR82) from Amazon.
Finally we bought two new altimeter wrist watches – for one, to not travel with
a more expensive wrist watch, and of course to take advantage of the barometric
and altimeter readings available on these devices.
Then there are the Visa for
- Flight
with Excel Air from Serengeti airstrip to Arusha
- Flight
with Regional Air from Arusha to Kilimanjaro
airport
- Flight
with Air
- Bus
transfer to Nairobi International airport – dinner at the Carnivores
- Flight
with British Airways from Nariobi to
- Flight
with British Airways from
Our only complaint here was that different
airlines have different restrictions on maximum baggage weight, so we had to
pay for some overweight flying to
Finally, we had to take care of certain
immunizations, some of them mandatory, others recommended. We contacted Passport Health and
decided on the following vaccinations: Hepatitis A and B, Yellow Fever, Typhoid
Fever, Tetanus (refresher) and Malaria (pills). Some of these have to be
started at least 1 month prior to the trip, so it really pays to start early
with the preparations.
The Expedition Crew
After arriving in
One of the big surprises for us was the
number of porters. We had been told to expect 4 porters per client, in our case
8 porters total for Jill and I. Abel, however, told us that he had 19 porters
for just the two of us – quite an army, actually! Abel is the 3rd
from the left in this group photo.
This comes from the fact that they carried
3 liters of bottled water per client per day and a lot of fresh food (fruit,
vegetables, meat, etc.). Each porter has a carrying weight limit of 20 kg plus
his personal belongings, so most porters carry about 25 kg on their backs,
shoulders and heads. The weight limit is enforced at the gates by weighing all
carried items, which creates a bit of a logistical challenge – good thing
you’re not in a hurry on any of these days (your body always needs the time to
acclimatize, so no need to hurry anywhere).
The large number of porters not
withstanding, this was a very efficiently run and organized crew. Every camp we
arrived at had the kitchen tent, dining tent and our personal client tent
already set up, typically with tea waiting in the dining tent. Later in the evening
we would have dinner, which was extraordinary by all standards, but especially
considering the circumstances and the fact that all ingredients had to be
carried along by the porters. As Abel told us, he sometimes has as many as 10
clients and upwards of 70 porters to coordinate on the mountain, so compared to
that our tour was a small undertaking for him.
The Climb
There are several routes up the mountain.
Perhaps the most popular one is the Marangu route
departing near the town of
We had decided for a slightly longer and
more scenic ascent along the Machame route (also
called the “
Henry Stedman provides a great
route map in PDF format on his website. The Machame
route on the ascent is the orange route, the Mweka
route on the descent the purple line.
The following account provides the
impressions and views of these 7 days.
Machame Gate to Machame Hut (Monday, 22-Oct)
We stay at the AMEG lodge in Moshi overnight. When we step out of our cabin in the
morning at 6:00am, we are greeted with a nice view of
We are picked up in the morning at 8:00am for
about a 1 hr drive to the beginning of the Machame
route. During this drive we get a feel for the scope of the mountain, which
seems to fill the entire horizon.
The road ascends the gentle slopes at the
bottom of the mountain. The road passes several villages with schools and
markets, so there’s lots of activity. Many small vans seem to operate as buses
and are stuffed with 10-15 people, often with some standing in open doors or
otherwise hanging on from the outside.
The road becomes a small dirt road for the
last couple of kms to the Machame
gate – at 1800m the start of our trek. Here it feels like a market place with
porters offering their services to guides who are organizing their teams.
Inside the gate it is a more organized scene with waiting areas for tourists
and staging areas for porters and jeeps unloading gear and provisions.
It takes a long time before Abel has all
the paperwork completed and we can start the actual hike at around 11:30am. For
the next week, we won’t see any roads or vehicles, and we won’t have
electricity or amenities like showers or water toilets.
Here we see Jill beginning the walk with
our guide Abel amidst several porters. We walk through a dense rain forest with
lush greens, moss on the tree branches and misty clouds creating a somewhat
mystical mood.
Many times we are passed by porters of our
or other groups. Some of them are singing, others are
carrying radios which blurt out music at more or less recognizable reception
quality – somewhat surreal. I can only marvel at their strength, carrying up to
25 kg on their backs, shoulders and/or heads, yet walking often twice as fast
as we do. They also often have poor quality equipment, tennis shoes or even
flip flops (for the camps), torn backpacks or even just plastic bags, or they
just simply wrap a string of packing cord around their load and then balance
the whole thing on their heads. If they had our equipment and just a daypack to
carry, they would probably go five times as fast…
After about 3 hrs of slow but steady hiking
we reach the upper end of the forest zone, which gives way fairly abruptly to
the moorland zone at around 3000m. Here you have smaller bushes and tall grasses.
At around 3000m we reach the Machame hut, the place where we (and all other teams) will
pitch our tents. The hut is actually not used for accommodating guests. There
are just some offices and facilities there. Here Abel motions me to come into the
hut to sign in to the books which are kept at all camps.
All clients and porters sleep in tents,
which are sprinkled throughout the surrounding area.
We are treated to our first evening meal in
the dining tent, which will set the tone for the next days to come: Lots of
fresh and delicious food served steaming hot!
Speaking of food: Unfortunately I develop a
severe form of Diarrhea this evening! This I believe can be traced back to a
dubious-looking egg from my lunch packet – the only thing Jill didn’t eat. That
turned out to be a very smart move, as this is the worst Diarrhea I’ve ever
had. So I have frequent and very unpleasant trips to the outhouse this evening
and next morning.
Jill gives me Imodium tablets and later
also antibiotics to fend off whatever got into my digestive system and doesn’t
sit well with me. Together with the CoQ10 and Diamox
both as preparation for better acclimatization as well as the Malaron against Malaria (required for us prior to and after
our mountain expedition) I feel like I’m swallowing more pills this week than
in the last 10 years combined.
We each get two thermos bottles with hot
water for our sleeping bags every night. Those thermos bottles keep us nice and
warm for many hours and are certainly a nice comfort for us. The air cools off
very quickly once the sun sets and so we reduce the time outside the tent to a
minimum. The first night on the mountain…
Machame Hut to Shira Camp (Tuesday, 23-Oct)
I need to get up early (for the above
stated reason). Outside there is a bit of frost on the tents. The temperature
is just around the freezing point.
One needs to keep moving in order to stay
warm until the first rays of sun come out. The sun usually warms up the place
quickly, as the radiation is quite intense at altitude. This will become even
more pronounced the next couple of days at higher altitudes; as a result, at
high altitudes it is almost always either too hot or too cold, something we
will experience plenty of over the next few days.
Once the sun is out and we have breakfast
in the dining tent the porters start breaking down the kitchen tent and the few
other tents they’re using to sleep in. This is the first morning on the
mountain and we can start to see their routine.
All we need to do is to pack our two big
duffel bags (which will be carried by the porters) and our own small day-packs
(with clothing, camera and the water in the Camelbak).
We then take off with our two guides Abel and Canali
– the porters take care of everything else. As they’re walking much faster than
we are, they will arrive at our next camp site well ahead of us and set
everything up for us – quite the luxury actually.
We set off under a clear sky and warming
sun. The view with the Machame hut just below reaches
down the slopes of Kilimanjaro and over to Mount Meru (4556m) in the distance.
Luckily my indigestion is getting a bit
better so I can enjoy the hike. Here Jill is following our guide Abel with Canali walking right behind.
Maybe one hour into the hike some clouds
are forming and start to shroud the mountain in mist. This seems to be fairly
typical as Mount Kilimanjaro is tall enough to create its own weather, reaching
almost 6 km up into the atmosphere and raising moist air streaming in from the
We continue our climb through these
somewhat mystical clouds, along boulders with lichens and moss on them.
After about 3 hrs of hiking we reach a
small plateau which will serve as a lunch spot.
Much to my surprise, our porters have set
up both their kitchen tent as well as our dining tent so we can eat a hot meal
for lunch in the comfort of our dining tent! This means that they have to set
up all these tents twice per day!
What a luxury – we didn’t expect this, but we
could get used to this… The scenery is really interesting, with dense clouds
rolling in and casting the boulders and few remaining trees in ghostly light
and shadows.
We finally reach the Shira
plateau at about 3900m and expect to see our tents set up there by our porters.
We don’t immediately find the tents, as this is a fairly large plateau and
distributed camp site with camping tents everywhere. Unfortunately it has
started to drizzle and rain slightly, which makes for a rather unfriendly time
to be searching for your tents…
Eventually we find them a bit lower down in
a nicely secluded area a bit away from the mainstream campers. The same routine
unfolds as yesterday, with hot tea after arrival and then hot dinner in the
evening and hot thermos for the night in the sleeping bags. In between meals we
take a few pictures in the rapidly cooling night air after the sky has cleared
off the local clouds and the sun sets around 6:30pm, here again with
The air cools off very quickly up here near
4000m and it is getting very cold. No time to linger, just getting dinner,
brushing teeth and rolling into the sleeping bag. During expeditions like this
bedtime is usually very soon after sundown…
Shira Camp to Barranco (Wednesday, 24-Oct)
The air is very crisp and there is a lot of
frost on the outside of the tent. Prior to sunrise everything is a bit cold and
stiff. On this picture you can see our tents below as well as those of other
expeditions a bit higher up on the Shira plateau.
As soon as the sun climbs over the mountain
to the East, it is warming up nicely. Here Jill is taking a picture of me with
Today will be the first “test” to see how
well our bodies are acclimatizing, as we will reach an altitude of 4500m during
lunch time. The path is easy to find, and as usual there are literally hundreds
of porters lined up along the way.
After about 2 hrs of hiking we are again
engulfed by forming clouds and continue to hike in the clouds – but so far we
feel very good and comfortable with the increasing altitude.
We continue until we reach an altitude of
about 4500m. Both Jill and I feel a slight headache due to the lack of oxygen
at this altitude, but nothing too worrisome.
Again we are treated to a hot meal for
lunch in our dining tent, which looks a bit out of place at this altitude, but
it certainly makes for a nice and warmer place to have lunch.
Soon after lunch we continue on directly
towards our next destination, the Barranco hut. We
take a shortcut to avoid having to climb any higher and bypass the lava tower.
Soon after lunch we reach the highest point of the day and then descend down to
Barranco hut, which has an elevation of ~3900m.
This descent is quite scenic, as the path
is dotted with the famous Senecio flowers. These
flowers are huge like trees and often grow to 5-6m or more. They are more like
trees than like flowers.
We arrive at our camp at about 4:30pm.
There is still some time to relax, lie in the tent, and drink some hot tea,
etc. before dinner is served. Even the view from the tent is quite spectacular,
as can be seen in this zoom picture of the sun-lit Senecio
plants right through the open tent door.
After tea we walk around trying to capture
some good shots with our new
One very attractive photo opportunity comes
up when the clouds of the day are lifting and clearing
The site of the summit still so much higher
makes us a bit apprehensive; how well will we be able to cope with the high
altitude? Will the Diamox we’re taking as a
precaution do it’s magic and help our bodies obtain enough oxygen in the next
few days? We have two more days on the mountain before attempting the summit –
so there is still additional acclimatization time available for our bodies to
adjust. Our resting heart rate is near normal, not the crazy 120 beats per
minute I had some 20 years ago in 1984 when sleeping high (3800m) on Mt. Blanc
(4807m) without any acclimatization period. At least today we climbed high, but
then descended again all the way down to 3900m to sleep relatively low. That
should help acclimatization.
I had been up near 6000m once before in
1993 in the Argentinean Andes in
2 years ago during Labor Day weekend in
2005 I tried climbing
Mount Whitney in
Barranco
to Karanga
Valley
We had a fairly good sleep but still wake
up early. Prior to the sun reaching the campsite it is cold, slightly below
freezing point. Hot tea and soup for breakfast is always good in the morning.
We also walk around the camp site to take in the views and take some pictures
as soon as the sun climbs above the ridge above the Barranco
camp site.
This morning we need to climb the Barranco wall. If you look closely at the next picture, you
can see the trail marked by hundreds of porters.
This looks quite steep and we certainly
need to watch our step. The guide book also recommends packing away the
trekking poles to have both hands free to hold on where necessary. Usually one
may encounter rock or ice fall in the mountains, but here there may be the
added danger of falling pieces of luggage. It is amazing how the porters climb
up the steep trail with their 20kg weights on their heads or shoulders, some of
them only in tennis shoes of even flip-flops!
Let’s hope that the movie section filmed
here with the new camcorder comes out nice! Jill is quite happy after having
negotiated this section – probably the most “technical” of the entire climb.
Our assistant guide Canali
takes a quick 5 min powernap at the next rest. I never figured out quite how
taxing this hike is for him; when asked he obviously always maintains that he’s
fine, but his resting pose makes me think that he may be somewhat tired after
all…
Today is a fairly short day with only about
3 hrs to hike and no substantial vertical gain. The next camp site is at the
Some people continue on towards the next
camp, Barrafu, at 4600m, but we have one extra day
and will do so tomorrow to allow for better acclimatization.
As a result we have plenty of time once at
camp. We rest in the afternoon, have some hot tea, and take plenty of pictures
in the warm light of the evening sun.
I actually hike up another 200m or so to
see tomorrow’s route to the Barrafu camp. I also
heard that going slightly higher than the camp helps your body adjust better to
altitude (climb high, sleep low). Upon coming back down I hear some singing and
dancing at the camp. One of the other tour groups celebrates coming into camp
by dancing with the porters – they say it helps relax the muscles, it’s a
unique experience I think you will only have in
Jill and I even see a small rainbow when
the evening sun shines upon a small shower of a cloud above us. After dinner I
then experiment with our new camera and its night shot feature. I take a 4 sec
shot with the camera mounted on our Gorilla Pod mini tripod. In the foreground
you can see the expedition tent of Summit Expeditions, which is owned by
Tanzanian marathon runner Simon Mtuy. (Simon also
holds the record of running up and down Mount Kilimanjaro from the Mweka Gate to
The last full night before we will start
the summit bid in about 24 hrs.
Karanga Valley
Again getting up early is rewarded with
brilliant light to take pictures. The sun warms a bit, but there is also a
chilling wind, which requires me to put on the GoreTex
wind-jacket.
The mountain presents itself in all its glory.
The last 2000m are waiting for us.
Again, today will be a relatively short
day, with only 700m vertical gain and about 3 hrs to go. But we will need all
the rest we can get in order for the next day…
We definitely ascend up into the climate
zone of the Alpine desert. Very few plants can live this high and dry.
Consequently, the landscape begins to look more and more like on the moon.
On a clear day there are no path finding
skills required, as the path hiked by hundreds if not thousands of porters a
day is clearly visible. As so often in the morning, there are clouds brewing in
the valleys below, but it stays mostly dry and sunny all morning up high.
We arrive at our camp site already at
12:00pm noon. The clear sky above makes us take many pictures. One can also for
the first time see
Luckily neither Jill nor I have any signs
of altitude sickness (headache, nausea, vomiting), so we’re hopeful for
tomorrow. Like the day before I also climb a bit higher to a secondary plateau
above the Barrafu camp site at about 4800m which is
used by some teams as an advanced camp (to lessen the vertical gain of summit
day). The view back down reveals the two green metal Barrafu
huts as well as the extent of the camping all around.
Everything looks quite close now, with the
glaciers of Kilimanjaro seemingly close enough to reach out and touch. I return
to our camp site and Jill and I sit for about ½ hr in the entrance of our tent,
overlooking the clouds several hundred meters below. We have a rare moment of
temperature being just right, not too hot and not too cold. Then Jill notices
the clouds coming up and closing in on our lofty perch. Within minutes we’re in
clouds and it starts snowing. Coming back from the outhouse I’m getting
blanketed with wet snow and need to dress more warmly. The view from our dining
tent back to our sleeping tent reveals the snow shower. Everything here and
higher up on the mountain is blanketed with a thin layer of snow, which won’t
melt until we (hopefully) come back down from the summit tomorrow!
In the evening we prepare our backpack and
clothing for the summit bid starting at midnight tonight. There is not a lot of
sleep to be had between 8:00-11:00pm. We get up at 11:00pm and get dressed. 4-5
layers of clothing – pretty much everything we have brought with us. Then we
meet at 11:30pm in the dining tent for some hot tea and a few biscuits.
Then it is midnight and time to go – summit
day is here!
Barrafu to
Summit
When getting out of the tent I notice that
the air isn’t extremely cold – maybe -10C, cold, yes, but not
We start our ascent. Everything feels a bit
surreal. The snow and ice cover makes the rock a bit slippery and we need to be
careful in the dark. Thanks to the full moon and bits of snow we don’t need our
head lamps – there is enough ambient light to show the way.
We start going very slowly. The 200m to the
advanced camp take us about 1 hr 15 mins. Yesterday I
walked the same distance in less than half the time, with warm dry rock,
sunshine and no carrying bag. But as long as we keep going steadily and stay
warm, but don’t sweat, we’re good. In fact, it is very important to find a good
rhythm. Better going a bit too slow than too fast! At the advanced camp I take
the time to setup another night shot – very tedious and cold, but I know the
result is worth it: Mawenzi in the background, the
kitchen tent on the left and some clients getting ready in the big expedition
tent at 1:30am.
This is as much an extreme expedition
environment as I had imagined. We are at 4800m – as high as you can go in
West-Europe (Mt. Blanc, 4807m) – and yet we have another 1100m vertical gain
ahead of us! Let’s hope we don’t suffer any problems of high altitude. In fact,
both Jill and I are somewhat expecting a major headache to set in anytime now…
The next 4 hrs or so are dark and lonely.
The major problem now is the wind, which had gained intensity at this altitude
and is blowing at 30-50km/h, with gusts up to an estimated 70km/h. The
wind-chill is definitely extreme, you could call it
For a while around 3:30am the wind is so
intense and the climbing so slow, hard and cold that I harbor serious doubts
about the success of our summit bid. If that wind continues to blow this hard
or gets even worse I don’t see how we can make it. And it gets very cold and it
is tiring. Perhaps there is some adrenaline that pushes us forward, or perhaps
it’s the thought about how far we have come, and that giving up or turning
around now should really only be a very last resort. The slow but steady pace
of our guide provides the reassuring calm we need at this moment. The famous
Swahili expression “Pole Pole” means “slowly, slowly”, and so we continue, Pole
Pole.
I study the altimeter of my wrist watch. At
the current rate of ascent (200m / hr) I figure we will get to the crater rim
(at Stella’s point, 5725m) about ½ hr past sunrise. In fact, above 5400m the
sky turns grey and later pink.
One can see the crater rim already very
close, maybe another 15 mins of ascending ahead. Some
other clients can be seen up on the ridge already, where the Marangu route converges with our ascent route.
Within minutes there is enough light to see
colors. Now we can turn our head lamps off for good. Full of excitement I run
ahead a few meters, stop, unload my backpack, finger out my new camcorder, and
try to capture the rest of the party ascending against the pink morning sky –
what a scenery, what a shot! But oh, the camera display shows that the hard
disk is not operational and the camcorder is turning off! It is too cold for my
camcorder to work L
That’s disappointing given the grandiose views, but
then we still have the photo cameras. We are now almost 5 km higher than the
plains below – a view only very few mountains have to offer.
At 6:10am we reach the crater rim at 5725m.
The view extends to the crater plateau and suddenly we all feel like we have
made it. Well, not quite, as the highest point is still 150m higher and about
45 min along the ridge line. Jill takes a brilliant zoom photo from Stella’s
point towards
Of course we still want to reach the
highest point at
Descending clients tell us that it isn’t
far anymore. Among others I chat with Peter, an Austrian who I met yesterday at
the advanced camp. He was already at the top and encourages us to keep going.
Soon we have the
I walk right next to Jill, and we are
holding hands for those last final steps towards the summit. Then a big bear
hug – WE MADE IT. At 7:20am Jill and I pose next to the summit sign on top of
Kilimanjaro, at the highest point of the African Continent.
But it is definitely not time to linger.
The still strong wind makes it very cold just to take the gloves off for a few
pictures. Only 10 mins at the summit, at 7:30am I
take another shot back down to Stella’s point right in front of Mawenzi, which is now 700m below us.
The blowing snow in the picture gives an
idea about the wind and cold at the summit! We start the descent. I take a
picture of Abel waiting for me against the glacier with a 5000m view towards
the plains to the South.
This glacier will not be there anymore in
20-30 yrs, if current trends continue. The ice apparently sublimates due to the
intense radiation of the sun here near the equator, and there isn’t enough
fresh snow accumulating to compensate for the loss. If you too want to see the
glaciers of Kilimanjaro, you have to come here soon, before 2030 or so…
The descent is somewhat anti-climactic. We
are very tired, but we know that the sooner we get down, the better. Higher
temperatures and more oxygen await down below. So we
trudge along. Luckily the now soft snow and rubble makes it easy to descend, as
you slide another foot or two with every step you take. Almost like the
glissade I experienced when climbing
the volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest back in 1999, including
One can actually recognize a group of three
just ahead of me in this picture. Two porters are helping down a client who is
suffering from altitude sickness. We can see a few more such cases, but nothing
too severe. We are now extremely tired, something I have often experienced at
high altitude. I have to stop every now and then just to sit for a few minutes
or support myself with my trekking poles. The huge slope takes us quite some
time to descend, and I can only think of lying down in our tent to catch some
much needed sleep.
I can vividly imagine the perils of extreme
high altitude climbing. You put so much effort into getting up that you are
very tired and exhausted. Then the desire of just sitting down and resting may
become overwhelming. Add to this the extreme cold and possibly worsening
weather conditions, and I can clearly see how high altitude climbing can become
very dangerous, especially on the way down. As they say: “If you don’t push
hard enough, you don’t get up. But if you push too hard, you don’t get down!”
And it is hard to imagine that
At 10:15am we’re back at Barrafu camp – 7 hrs to climb, 3 hrs to get down. Jill and
I collapse into our tent. The snow is just now about to melt off our tent at
this altitude. Without the tent doors open it is unbearably hot inside the
tent, like a microwave oven. With the tent door open the wind is still chilly…
Another expedition group has set up camp
very close to our tents and they actually seem to wait until we leave in the
early afternoon. Outside the tent there is mayhem, it feels like porter
central. So not much quiet, but still some rest and sleep. After 2 hrs of
snoozing we’re getting ready to continue our descent. We still need to go down
for another 3 hrs and descend another 1600m to the Mweka
hut camp at 3000m.
Even though we don’t feel like walking
again, we get ready around 2:30pm. The 2 hr nap and some more tea has refreshed
us sufficiently to continue our descent. At no other time is it so apparent
that you’re dealing with so many different climate zones on this mountain than
when you descend some 3000m in one day. We are now coming back from the ice cap
and walking through the alpine desert, and we’re slowly seeing vegetation come
back.
The tree line below marks our goal for the
day. This will be at the lower end of the moorland region and just at the
beginning of the forest region. We enjoy the green plants coming back and
signaling life and warmth.
Jill takes a short rest at this overlook
and enjoys the view.
Soon we’re back down in the forest region.
The clouds come in and actually give us a bit of rain for the last 15 minutes
of our descent. This creates a bit of a damp and cold evening, with not much to
do other than to have dinner and again get the hot thermos for one more night
in the sleeping bag on the mountain. It is, however, already much milder than
at Barrafu last night and certainly than the very
cold ascent in the pre-dawn hours of this morning.
Descent to Mweka Gate (Sunday, 28-Oct)
We need to get up early due to the schedule
and the porters all want to get down the mountain. Early morning tea and
breakfast – by now a nice routine for us! After that the kitchen tent and
dining tent are brought down, and we pack our bags so the porters can also put
down our tent.
Everything is still cold and wet, but the
morning sun brings warmth and starts drying the tents. One more look back up to
the top of the mountain with a zoom lens reveals the ice cap in all its morning
glory.
We start descending the final leg of our
journey, back through the lush greens of the forest. At the beginning, bright
sunlight marks our way.
There are endless photo opportunities here,
especially if you like plants and flowers. Occasionally there is a gap in the
forest canopy which reveals a view, such as in this example to neighboring
There are huge trees here. It is a stark
contrast to the alpine desert landscape we come from just yesterday. We see
monkeys in the trees and marvel at all the abundance of flowers and plants,
trees and ferns, mosses and lichens.
Soon we’re back in the clouds and the light
changes to a mix of green and grey. Again fantastic light effects for photos,
which makes me stop frequently to capture this otherworldly environment in
images.
Several other clients come down this route,
as well as many other porters. It may sound strange, but even though we are
tired of hiking and especially of descending, we still don’t really want this
hike to be over. So we really enjoy those last couple of hours down to the
gate.
Before we know it we are back down at the
road at the Mweka gate. Both Jill and I sign out the
books provided by the rangers. We also receive our official certificates here –
as a formal sign that we were successful at the summit. We also tip our guide
and his porters, as most of them will part ways here and we will not see them
again. Tipping guidelines vary widely and sometimes even contradict each other,
so Jill and I spent quite some time during the last days figuring out the right
amount and how to distribute it. While this is by no means a cheap trip, it is
very important to the porters, who really deserve this tip well. They contributed
in a huge way to making this a successful and enjoyable experience!
Our two guides Abel and Canali
join us in the Toyota Landcruiser vehicle for our
return trip back to civilization, i.e. a 2 hr drive to Arusha.
(Our local operator, Akorn, has about 200 of these
sturdy vehicles, and we will get to appreciate it’s
features and sturdiness much over the next week during our Safari trip to
We have a room in the Arusha
hotel and will stay there for the night prior to going on to the Safari part of
our
In fact, as I finish writing these lines at
the