From the itinerary:
Day 5: KARANGA CAMP to BARAFU CAMP
15,300’ ~ 4663m ? 2.2 mi~3.5 km ? 4-5 hrs
Today we take a slow pace to Barafu Camp from Barafu you will have excellent views of Kibo and Mawenzi peaks. Barufu Camp is situated on an exposed ridge, so it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the terrain before dark. We continue to acclimatize, rest, relax and make necessary preparation for the summit day ahead.
Tofday is the day before we summit! Which means when we go to bed tonight, we’ll getting up just a few hours later so we can make the ascent in time for sunrise at the top. So today is a relatively easy day, really.
It’s also a really rocky day. Going through my photos, there are tons of photos just of rocks. And more rocks. And then the sky and clouds and stuff, but then also of rocks. That’s accurate though- I definitely remember the rocks. Seems like valley after valley we walked through, each one… rocky. I’ve got nothing to say.
Handmade checkerboard.
Eventually we get to Barafu camp, where we sign in. We elect to go stay at a camp another hour up the mountain in order to make the next day as easy as possible. Because it’s not going to be easy. At all. But today is. Even with the extra hike to the further camp, we get in in time for lunch. So we eat it. Then we lounge around- it’s a warm day, thankfully- and get psyched for that night.
Eventually night comes and with it dinner. The original plan was for us to be woken up around midnight or 1 to start our night time hike. Unfortunately, our guide decided that that wasn’t a great idea. Basically, over the previous days we had proven to be a really fantastic, fun, affable, charming, attractive, patriotic, magnanimous, elegant, beatific, and regal group. BUT we had not proven to be a fast group. Nor a quick group. Nor a speedy group. In fact, along with all the great things that our group *was*, we were also a SLOOOOOOOOOW group. That’s fine- pole pole after all- but apparently we took it a little too seriously.
The point is that our guide thought that even if we left at midnight, and even with the hour we saved by hiking to the Barafu high camp rather than staying low, we still didn’t have much of a chance of making it to the summit for sunrise. As a result, he thought it would be best for us to leave around 4 (still plenty early), but that way we’d get extra sleep and would spend less time walking in the cold cold, dark dark.
It was a little disappointing, frankly, but the guide was surely right, and it would have been pretty annoying to wake up that early and hike that coldly and darkly and then have sunrise happen when we were in the worst part of the slog to the summit. So, you know, no big deal. We go to bed around 9 or so and dream, briefly. Tomorrow we’ll be on the roof of Africa, and that will be amazing, regardless of the relative position of the sun.
