Kilimanjaro Expedition Dispatch

June 26, 2008 – We Made it up Barranco Wall!

Hi this is John Bank checking in from Kilimanjaro. It’s Thursday the 26th. We are at Karanga Camp and we just finished lunch. We got here about 1:00 after leaving Barranco. It was a short day and one of the highlights was climbing the Great Barranco Wall, a rock scramble at 13,000 feet, which is challenging for most people but for Ellyn it was quite easy. There was a lot of up and down today and a lot of vertical even though we are at the same elevation as we were at Barranco. Now we are just relaxing after our festive lunch. The weather is great, it’s sunny, a little chilly though but the sun is keeping everyone warm. We are resting before moving on tomorrow up to high camp for the summit attempt tomorrow night. All is well.

Hi this is Ellyn. Climbing Barranco Wall (transmission interrupted) biblical stories and the covenants between God and man that occur at the top of the mountain. From the bottom you wonder, “I’m going to do that? How can it be?” You can see and you find your way along the natural steps of the rock face and squeezing through crevasses. It’s really fun and far more manageable then it appears.

As you ascend upward, climbing, climbing towards the magnificent views at the top and it was a really pretty view today. At the top, at eye level, there is a sea of clouds on one side and the glacier called the Heim Glacier on the other side. It’s absolutely beautiful.