Friday, July 7, 2023; Day 8
Last night’s sleep was the best to date, even with high winds and noisy groups traipsing by after 1am. Exhaustion is the best sleep aid, I suppose. :)
The tent is again just under 40F, but I’m cozy in my wool hat. I slept from 7p-1a, 1a-3a, and 3a-5:30a. The wind overnight was so extreme that I worried at times that the tent might rip apart but it seems to have held up. I’m very happy to get my coffee at 6a.
There’s another pretty sunrise beside Mawenzi Peak:
At breakfast, my oxygen saturation is back up to 88%. While billed on our itinerary as a “celebratory breakfast”, it was essentially the same as all of the others, except now we had no worries about summit day.
After breakfast, we break camp and retrace our steps downward, down the rock wall and past Baranfu camp. Going down the rock wall was much easier than going up.
After passing by Barafu, we make a turn and have a long and easy descent over the Alpine desert. We arrive at the “High Camp” and take a short break there before continuing through the Moorland.
The trail was rockier and more uneven, with large portions a set of rough concrete stairs. We were descending through a cloud at this point, and it made some of the sections a bit treacherous. There was a very light drizzle at points, but not enough for me to bother pulling out my rain shell or pack cover.
The hike passes quickly, the first half as I listened to Sherri and Matt talk about management and global threats. Matt was slated to take on a big new role at an air base in Europe, and Sherri asked him how he would manage that. Matt laid it out super simply, and I wrote it down because I loved how he framed it, and I knew I was about to take over a new team when I got back to work.
It’s straightforward and the same thing a pilot does every time they call into the tower. You start by answering three questions: Who am I? Where are we? and Where are we going?”
Matt’s Wisdom
For the second half of the day’s hike, I was on the lookout for cool photos to take, from mist-coated flowers to foggy tree tunnels, all while trying not to slip on wet rocks.
After two more hours, we reached camp at noon, a bit damp but in good spirits.
Now we are hanging out in the tent, waiting for the lunch “washy washy.” I’m an odd sight — thick hiking socks, hiking shorts (I took off my soaked pants), and no shirt, exposing my set of custom dog tags made a decade ago reading Esse Sequitur Operare. From the voices outside, it sounds like the slower half of our party have arrived. It’s a comparatively balmy 55F with little wind. I’m not too stinky, but my fingernails are black and I shudder to think about how nasty my hair must be– I’ve been wearing a hat every time I leave the tent for the last 8 days. I peek using my small camp mirror and because I cut my hair so short just before the trip, it’s not too bad actually.
After lunch, I photograph each page of my journal thus far, just in case anything happens to it.
At 5pm, we have the tipping ceremony, which features singing, dancing, including a waiter dressed as a lion, and some heartfelt “thank you” speeches from both the trekkers and Respicius. The porters collected $77.60 apiece, a solid figure (based on $56 suggested), so the mood was upbeat despite a dreary late-afternoon mist.
Dinner was butternut squash stew, rosemary beef, and a Nutella banana crepe. My Oxygen saturation is spiked to 97% now that we’re down to 10100 feet.
We’ll wake tomorrow at 5am to hit the trail at 6am just before dawn. We should reach the exit gate by 9am. I’m excited at the prospect of getting a shower and a beer.
Impatient optimist. Dad. Author/speaker. Created Fiddler & SlickRun. PM @ Microsoft 2001-2012, and 2018-, working on Office, IE, and Edge. Now a GPM for Microsoft Defender. My words are my own, I do not speak for any other entity. View more posts