Tuesday, July 4, 2023; Day 5

I slept okay last night, with no real nasal congestion unlike the night before, and the camp quieted down eventually. I had a few 1+ hour stretches of sleep. I jotted in my journal while enjoying my 5am coffee and wondering just how freezing my post-coffee bathroom trip will be. The thermometer on my pack indicates that it’s 40F in our tent. Ox has settled at 92%. After breakfast, we’ll be departing at 6:45am.

While waiting for the camp to pack up after breakfast, I wander around and take more photos of both the exotic plants and the morning clouds.

From here, it’s hard to see how exactly we’re going to get up this wall.

Our easy path out of camp and down from the plateau doesn’t reveal much about what’s to come:

Minutes after leaving camp, we cross a little bridge over a small valley and a tiny half-frozen river fed by a small waterfall:

We get to the base of the wall and, while the path is steep, it’s nowhere near the “straight up” it looked like yesterday. We can’t use our poles because we need both hands for the climbs. Respicius doesn’t like how my pack was holding my poles so he attaches them to his pack instead.

The scramble up Barranco Wall turns out to easily be my favorite part of the trip so far. It reminds me of easy climbs as a kid with my dad near where I grew up.

We’ve managed to leave early enough that there aren’t too many porters passing us with giant bags balanced atop their heads, but there are enough darting around to make it clear how easy we’ve got it.

A bit over halfway up, we encounter the “kissing rock”, so named because you have to hug it to get by, and, well, if you’re already hugging a boulder, why not give it a kiss while you’re at it? Before the trip, I’d idly pondered whether I’d actually put my mouth on some random rock in Tanzania, but when I actually get there, I’m so exhilarated that I plant a great big smooch.

We climbed for another half hour or so, pausing to doff our outer layers and take some epic mountainside photos.

Not long after, we make it to the top, drop our bags, take some photos, and eat some snacks.

After hanging out at the top of the wall for fifteen or twenty minutes, we began our descent on the other side. We cross a series of wide plains following trains of porters ahead of us.

After crossing the sandy plains, we eventually reach areas more interesting vegetation and a steeper ascents and descents. The final descent proves slightly easier than yesterday’s down from Lava Tower, but I felt a knee twinge at the end of the downhill that worries me… knees definitely seem like my weak point.

There was one final steep ascent into camp, an intimidating climb, but I was excited that we were almost there. As we caught our breath and grabbed a drink at the bottom, our porters unexpectedly appeared (“Look, the Easter Bunnies!” joked the Doc) and relieved us of our packs for the climb.

Karanga camp looks much like our prior two, with our tents overlooking the sea of clouds below:

The views from the camp are amazing and I text a few of them to some new friends from Austin who’d wished me well on the trip.

Mount Meru remains the only ground feature visible through the thick bed of white clouds below. A few large birds circle lazily on the gusts of wind.

It’s bright and sunny and the thermometer in my pack reports it’s just under 60F. The camp is covered in scree, making my use of Crocs as camp shoes a bit treacherous. The dust isn’t as overwhelming as it has been in places on the trail. The summit feels close, and we’ve reached our first explicit warning sign.

I jot in my journal in my tent waiting for lunch at 1PM.

After lunch and wandering around taking pictures, I’m back in the tent jotting in my journal at 3:54pm, killing the last few minutes before “afternoon tea”, the highlight of which remains not the tea (which I’ve tired of) but instead the bowls of plain popcorn.

I muse that while there’s so much to see, my eyes are not to be trusted. What looks like a trail that goes up vertically is a manageable slope when you get closer or change your perspective. Between the bright sun and the polarized lenses of my sunglasses, and the red-orange light of the sleeping tent (all red items appear orange) to the green hue inside the toilet tent, half of the day looks like a miscalibrated TV set.

At dinner, Robert leads a toast for the 4th of July and we cheer our active and former service members. After dinner, Respicius reveals some news: apparently, our reservation for our planned pre-summit camp didn’t go through — if we can’t stay at our planned Kosovo/Respicius camp, our summit day will be a lot more difficult, with an extra 700 foot climb several hours before dawn. Respicius will hike ahead of the group in the morning to meet the rangers at the camp to try to resolve the problem. I am at peace… what will be will be.

Wherever we end up by tomorrow night, we’ll be sleeping at our final camp before our summit bid.

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