Friday 12 March 2010

Kilimanjaro Diary - Day 6


This was my favourite day. We were climbing the Barranco Wall. We got up super early yet again to try and beat the crowds. Once we started climbing it was easy to see why that was a good idea. The bottlenecks happen pretty quickly. This was more like climbing and scrambling than trekking and I loved it! I'd have gladly done it again the next day and the next day. Don't ask me why, I guess it was just easier on some level than just trudging slowly up a hill.
And the views were just incredible!
But we had to head back down the valley afterwards and right back up on the other side for lunch. The whole up and down thing was getting rather depressing because you'd see the summit at an almost achieveable distance and then have to head AWAY from it for another hour or so. Lunch was more soup. With lashings of pepper. Yum. I got very emotional at lunch again (but not because of the soup) so Jo made me listen to his iPod for a bit... Razorlight - Before I fall To Pieces. Very apt. And it did cheer me up. The mood of the whole group was very up and down. We had a funny five minutes at our middle afternoon break which was fantastic. I tried to have a snooze at almost every stop and got told off repeatedly for it which I think was highly unfair.
It was a tough old day. About 10 hours of trekking in total and really steep towards the end. The camp we ended up at was perched on a ridge. A little precarious perhaps but well in reach of the summit. We arrive fairly early in the day by relative standards and by 7 we were all trying to get tucked up in the coldest camp so far to grab a couple of hours sleep before we set off for the summit attempt.




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