The following
pictures and videos document our trek to our next camp, Mawenzi Tarn.
Again, early morning, our bags all packed and ready to head out of Kikelelwa Camp and trek to our next camp site, Mawenzi Tarn, elevation 4,315 metres or 13,937 Feet.
As we’re hiking towards the
higher elevations vegetation is becoming more sparse, lush plants of the lower
elevation disappear to be replaced by brown shrubs and rocky terrain.
Climbing became
more difficult as you can see in the picture and you can sense the difficulty
in the following video. The wind is becoming more intense adding to the increasing
cold temperature as we continue to climb.
The guides and
their porters were fantastic, trekking up the mountain as if it was a walk in
the park while us foreigners were “Polepole” (slow hike in Swahili). Some of
them even ran past us to set up camp before we arrived.
Salim and Elias, our senior guide at the Mawenzi Tarn sign plus Spencer and Safiya at the signage. Do you notice anyone missing? You sure have sharp eyes if you’d noticed I was missing from these pictures. That’s because, at this point, I was totally exhausted and had crawled into my tent and fell asleep.
We had reached Mawenzi Tarn after approximately 5 hrs of hiking arriving at camp about 2pm in the afternoon. Lunch was a hot lunch in the mess tent and the plan was for us to climb to a higher elevation after lunch to acclimatize at a higher elevation. Then come back down to camp to spend the night. Unfortunately, I was so exhausted that I’d slept through the higher elevation climb. The following pictures and videos show the smaller group’s (Salim, Safiya, Spencer and Elias, senior guide) climb.
Spencer trekking and looking out at the mountain view.
Another mountain view from higher elevation en route to view point.
A higher elevation view of our campsite. You can see the expansiveness of the camp area from this vantage point.
The climb team looking at the mountain view from a different vantage point.
The climb team had reached their
high elevation destination point. Thumbs Up!
This video has a phenomenal 360 view of the entire mountain range at a higher vantage point.
The climb team heading back to the campsite. You can see the desert like terrain. Again, the wind was relentless adding to the cold temperature in spite of the sunny weather.
We had chosen to climb Kilimanjaro from Sep. 10-18 due to the appearance of a full moon. We had wanted to time our summit with a full moon lighting our pathway up to the summit and, in this picture the full moon was beginning to form as the sun was setting down on Mawenzi Tarn.
Follow us next as we trek to Kibo Hut, the last
camp before we ascend to the Rooftop of Africa!
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