August 29 – August's Birthday

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We are at 16,000 feet at the Arrow Glacier camp. Today is Berg Adventures chief guide August’s birthday, early this morning we sang him a Happy Birthday and little later on today Nicholas has promised me, he will show us, teach us how to sing Happy Birthday in Swahili to August.                 

It is August 29^th, we are at what is not quite our high camp but what is still a point from which we will do a summit attempt so the speak; I often say that on this route we have 2 summit days. At 3am tomorrow morning we will wake up and by 4am we will be climbing up the Arrow Glacier route in the Western Breach and we will be at the crater rim, hopefully in the very early morning and as you know, we will be establishing a camp, just past that, at about 18,700 feet  inside the crater.

So, it is time to get organized for a climb, enjoy this high, spectacular spot and enjoy the company of all the staff and one another. Everyone is acclimatized very well; Julie, Alex and Jim, all look great.

And just in case you are wondering, August and his staff still produced a great meal for us, not really high altitude fair, today’s lunch was chicken Kiev and fresh baby snow peas, we are eating a little bit less up high, but we are still eating well, we are excited about moving higher tomorrow and we certainly will report to you from inside the crater of Kilimanjaro tomorrow when we arrive.