Kilimanjaro Expedition Dispatch
Febuary 16, 2010 — Millions of Stars and Peaceful Beauty
Their trail today is steep, forested gorges and led them toward the high timberline of Kilimanjaro
Hello this is Steve and Lauren calling from Kilimanjaro.
Last night after we called you we enjoyed an excellent dinner of grilled steak and veggies at our first camp.
That camp was nice and quiet; we were the only ones there. We stayed out of the tents and looked at the stars; there were millions of them and they were very pretty.
Steve is happy to share his love of the
mountains with his daughter Lauren
That camp was nice and quiet; we were the only ones there. We stayed out of the tents and looked at the stars; there were millions of them and they were very pretty.
We just listened to sounds of Africa; it was a peaceful and beautiful experience.
You know you never do one of these adventures without discussing the toilets. Of course we have a first class Berg Adventures toilet. We actually had to get instruction on how to use it and that was pretty funny.
This morning our day started out with tea and Milo served in our tent. We are feeling good. Lauren had a bit of headache because she forgot her migraine tablets, but it’s gone away now and she is fine.
When we started hiking this morning we had only gone about 10 meters on the trail when we saw a straight up 50-meter steep section of trail in front of us. We knew that all day we would be climbing and we did. It took us about 5 hours and we climbed 1000 meters.
We got good natural history lessons from Julius today. He showed us about glaciers that have melted away and the ones you can still see. It is kind of interesting and kind of sad to think that in 10 to 15 years all the glaciers on Kili might be gone. Lauren’s kids may never have the experience of seeing that beautiful ice.
We walked out of the forest and into the moorland and we saw new snow above us on the mountain. We also had about 4 hours of rain after we arrived at camp today, but we just laid in our tents and relaxed.
Soon it will be dinner time and I am sure we will have another excellent Berg meal.
Tomorrow we are going to Lava Tower, so stay tuned and we will tell you how we are doing.