Day 2, 3, 4 - Umbwe Route to Umbwe camp, Barancco Camp, Karunga CampJul 31, 2011
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Kili!! Looked far away at that point.
| Sorry for the delay in our posting but its hard to find service on the mountain. We have made it to Day 4 and are going strong! It is unbelievable cold!! We knew it would be cold at night but neither of us expected to be wearing four layers of clothing to bed!! Day 1 on the mountain started out on the Umbwe route. This is a very challenging route and it had many vertical spots. It is amazing how hard it is to walk on such steep inclines. Our guide Paul let us go ahead and learn how tired we would get by trying to climb to fast! In Swahili they say "pole pole" pronounced pole-eh. It means slowly! That night at camp was our first experience with the cold. We were not expecting it. We also had to get up like 5 times each to pee since our altitude pills were starting in our system. The second day we treked out of the rain forest to a height of 4000m or 12,000 feet. Again it was a long hard day of walking. We made it to Barancco camp where we were completely exhausted! It was cool to walk through the rain forrest and come out above the clouds! That night again was very cold and we decided to try a sleeping pill to help us sleep! We managed to sleep but we had a terrible taste in our mouth the next morning. Day 3 was a rest day. We did a short hike and was amazing how tired we were after just 2hrs! The altitude really wears us down and the rest day was to help our bodies acclimatize. On day 4 we hiked to Karunga camp. This camp is essentially at the same altitude just on the other side of the mountain to give us access to the summit route. The hike today was wild! We had to essentially climb up hand over foot this portion called the Barancco wall! It literally felt like a verticle wall we were climbing. After the wall there was a steep downhill followed by a steep uphill to get us to Karunga camp. It is amazing how the strong the sun is up here. I had 60spf sunblock on my face and I applied it twice and still got too much sun! Tonight we rest up and hike to 4900m tomorrow to high camp. This leaves us about 700m to the top on summit day! If we can't post again wish us luck to the top! Cheers Warren and Laura |
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