Kilimanjaro Expedition Dispatch
August 9, 2014 – Team Moved to Karanga Camp – All Doing Great and Clear Skies!
Saturday August 9th, we awoke this morning in our camp at 15,200ft. above sea level at Lava Tower to find it quite cold, not surprizing at this altitude. We packed pretty quickly. We had a 6:30 wakeup call with bed tea and coffee; breakfast was 7:30 and we were moving by ten minutes after eight.
We descended first all the way down to the big valley that’s called the Great Barranco or Barranco Valley. The Barranco was formed when the western breach collapsed in a mass of land slide ages ago and it is one of the predominant features of all Kilimanjaro, Kibo, the central volcano of Kilimanjaro that we are traversing around right now.
The team is really great, they are a strong team walking, we moved very well in our descent, we passed the Barranco camp and in the late morning we began to ascend the Barranco wall.
It is a rather steep section on ledges, fun to climb, you’ve got to watch your footing, use your hands just a bit and when we reached the top of the Barranco wall we took some photographs, descended a bit further for lunch and then in mid-afternoon we crossed the Karanga River. Karanga is the Swahili word for peanut, but there is no peanut here by the way, just the name of the river, because I guess there are peanuts down lower.
We crossed the small river and we got to Karanga camp at 13,100 ft. above sea level in the clouds when we arrived. Now it is just passed our tea time and I am calling you looking up at the glaciers shining above us on Kibo and we’ve got a very inspiring view this evening. This camp is the last water we have as we climb towards the crater of Kilimanjaro.
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Team climbing Barranco Wall
Left: Amanda; Right: Edward
Left: Hugo; Right: Jon
Left: Jordan; Right: Rick
Team at the top of Barranco Wall
The porters will carry large 20 liters containers tomorrow to take water up at 16,000 foot level where we will have our camp tomorrow night. It is going to be exciting to be that high and as you know this is our anticipated view of the true supermoon night, when we are at full moon and moon is actually closest to us; don’t know what the clouds will do in terms of our cooperation for our view of the supermoon but it is going to be great to be that high at any rate.
So, we are settling down now in Karanga, we do get a resupply here, so we had a lot of fresh food come in and it smells great in the kitchen, so I think we are going to have a big dinner tonight and celebrate being back at relatively lower elevations, back down at just over 13 rather than above 15.
But this team is acclimatizing well, the strategy of moving across the mountain slowly and enjoying Kilimanjaro as well as allowing our body to adapt seems to be paying off so far. We are having a great time and we keep post as we move higher towards the summit of Kibo.
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Team is greeted by our staff at Karanga Camp today.
Amanda and Rick arrive at Karanga Ca.
It was cloudy most of the day today bat At about 5:30 this evening, after we had tea, we stepped out of the tent to see this view.