(all pictures are High res, for low res click here)
The 6th day of the climb was summit
day! We got up at 11 am to begin our trek at 1. Joe
and I
are looking awake as we begin
our climb under a full moon.
At around 17,000 ft (6 am)
the sun began to rise over Mawenzi
,
and with 15 minutes it got better
and better
.
Finally we could see the sun (and warm up!)
.
In no time we were at the crater
and by 10:08 am we were on
the summit! (19,380 ft)
(Armand, my tent-mate) . While I was up there, I got some awesome videos of the
crater and the
glaciers (Videos are large and will take a long time to download - be
patient! If they don't play in Windows Media Player, try playing them in a
QuickTime Player.) After I got a summit picture with Vern,
I tried to take a fun picture of Vern. After a number of attempts it finally
worked, but was a little blurry.
Pete Townsend, eat your
heart out!
After a few departing shots
of the disappearing
glaciers
,
we headed back down to Barafu Camp for some lunch. After a quick bite to eat we
were trekking again all the way down to the Mweka alternate camp at 11,000
ft. After 17+ hours of climbing, it was dark, so we all ate a little food and
went to bed. The next morning was beautiful again
, and we were all in good
spirits as we ate breakfast
and soaked in our last unobstructed view of Kilimanjaro
.
We laughed with the porters
, clowned around with each other
and got our
final views (video) of Mweka camp. At last
we said goodbye to the huge ravens
and began our trek down
to Mweka gate, oblivious to the muddy hell we were to face that day. If you
thought the first day's mud was bad, it was nothing compared to the slop
we had to deal with for 7 hours. We passed a
bee's nest along the way
but it barely distracted us from the knee deep mud
.
In fact, even our trusty guide fell in the mud one time
.
As we finally descended out of the rain forest, the life forms were taking on
different shapes. Here I am in front of some very large
banana trees
and
Army ants
which were not to
be reckoned with (video). Finally, we reached
Mweka Gate where we got to say goodbye to our African porters and guides. Here's
one last picture of Vern and
Tobias (our head
African guide)
. Lastly, I was searching for
my porter so that I could personally tip him, but apparently a lot of the
porters had to catch a bus back to
Moshi. So out of the woods, behind our vans, a little boy walks up to me
asking for money. I didn't really want to give him money as I was already
getting hounded by all the people trying to sell me stuff at the gate, but he
looked like he could use a little something. So I took off my
Microsoft fleece jacket and gave it to
him. He was so happy that he went to tell his buddies about it and they all came
over and joked with me.
Bill went over to explain to
the kid how
evil Microsoft was, but he felt like the kid just wasn't understanding
anti-trust law.
All joking aside, it felt really good to do something other than give money to
random people - and it was a great way to end a magnificent climb. The next day
we began our safaris!