Today was yet another amazing experience; we got to do a Class 4 scramble up the Barranco Wall. On most of our past trips, a good portion of the trip was monotonous, with sections being interesting & new. With this trip however, every day has brought new & exciting experiences & environments. We are continuously amazed at what Kilimanjaro has in store for us. Just yesterday were talking to one of the Tusker climbers(Tusker is the huge group with the yellow tents & geodesic domes), who made it sound like he was doing something crazy by scaling the Barranco Wall. he called it a 4.13 scramble, but we have no way of verifying this rating. At any rate, yesterday we thought we’d be taking a regular trail, since we’re carrying packs. We were wrong. It turns out everyone climbs this wall, and it was actually extremely fun. It got a bit technical at times but since both of us have rock climbing experience, it was a lot of fun. The climb took us about 1.5 hours.
Once at the top of the wall, it was mostly level until just before Karanga Camp, where we had to descend into a valley, and climb back up all the way to get to the camp. The great part abuot this was that we could actually see the camp before the descent into the valley. The valley was actually hidden until the last moment so we thought it’d be a nice easy traverse to the camp. Again, we were wrong. Both the descent & the subsequent ascent were short but brutal, and ended up taking another 45 minutes to navigate.
Once at camp it was tea again(but no popcorn!). At one point we were debating going on an acclimatization hike since it started raining on us. It soon stopped however, and we got to do our hike which as usual, which was thoroughly enjoyable. The alien feel of yesterday was back, but with a twist. We were once more in the clouds so visibility was next to nothing, and the environment consisted entirely of barren rocks & cairns that other travellers had set up. This time however, we had a bright sun illuminating the cloud layer so everything was covered in diffused sunlight. The effect was very bizarre, and was unlike anything either of us had previously experienced.
Back at camp it was more 13-card Rummy, dinner, and then off to bed. Tomorrow is either a short, or a very long day depending on how you look at it. We ascend from 12,795 ft(3899 m) to Barafu Camp at 15,000 ft(4572 m) in 3 hours, then sleep from noon until midnight when we begin our summit attempt. After summiting we descend back to Barafu, pack up camp, and then descend down to Mweka camp, ascending 4300 ft(1310 m), and descending over 9000 ft(2743 m) in one day. The summit is getting close, and it feels like the night before an epic Final Battle.
The Journey Continues: Day 7 – Karanga to Barafu Camp
IMPORTANT! Click on any of the pictures below to go to the full photo/video album for Day 6. We highly recommend clicking on the “show info” button at the top right of the album page if you’d like to see our description of each picture. Also when videos play, be sure that the HD box on the bottom right is lit, or the video will look terrible!
(Note: If you are clicking through the pictures manually, be aware that there is a Flickr bug that causes a video to play if you’re looking at the picture preceding the video). We apologize for the inconvenience, but you can mute the audio if it gets annoying.
Planetary Muffin Expeditions 