Kilimanjaro Expedition Dispatch
March 6, 2008 – Team Heads Off to Karranga Camp
Approaching Barranco Wall
This is Tracy calling from the lunch stop today. We started at the Lava Tower Camp and woke up again to a frosty morning. Condensation on our sleeping bags made it all frosty but it was nice and warm as soon as the sun came around the top of Kilimanjaro.
A closer look of Barranco Wall shoes us
the magnitude of the scramble. Barranco
Wall is almost a 1,000 foot tall climb
After a fabulous breakfast we did our ritual which is a yoga stretch. The group then got together and got their backpacks on and then made our way down to the Barranco Valley. We had a quick snack to get ready to the great Barranco Wall.
We were all fitted with helmets and made our way in the scramble up the 200 metre wall. It doesn’t stop from there; you have some more scrambling to do. In total it took us about an hour and a half. We made our way back down into the valley again. We are descending a lot which is helping with our acclimatization. Tonight we are going to sleep at a lower elevation.
We are now just having a quick lunch stop. The clouds have just rolled in so it’s gotten a little chillier. We only have about an hour and a half to get to our next camp which is Karanga Camp.
Hopefully we will get some more views of Kilimanjaro and some views of Moshi tonight, which is a small town just below Kilimanjaro.
We look forward to this evening to another wonderful dinner. The meals here have been really good. We also have been filled with knowledge from our guide Julius. He is very informative along the trails and at dinner time we have many questions for him about the history of Africa.
Everyone is still doing really well. The appetites were fabulous at lunch today. I will report back to you once we get to Karanga Camp.