August 22 – On the hunt for Eland

Hello, it’s August 22 and we’re reporting from Camp IV, the Moi Camp.

We arrived at the Moi Camp today and boy, all I can say is that we have been very lucky the last four days. We have only seen one other group on our trek into the mountain. It’s been absolutely wonderful.

We left the beauty and the flowers of the moorland today and entered the stark arctic high desert environment. The dropping temperature is just one of the signs that we are getting higher on the mountain.

We saw several signs of elands, which are an antelope kind of animal, and we are hoping that at some point we’ll actually get to see one.

After another wonderful lunch from Chef Merema, Keith, Cameron, Liz and Sam did some exploring and found a skeleton of an éland that couldn’t have been more than one week old. That was pretty exciting.

At dinner, Stacey modeled her “Queen of the Mountain” t-shirt, which everybody got a good laugh out of. She asked me to please let everybody know that she hasn’t fallen off the mountain. In the words of Liz, “the day was adventurous and exciting.”

Everybody is healthy and feeling good. And ready to make the big jump from 12,300 to 15,100 tomorrow. It’s really windy up here! I’ll report in again soon.