Andrew's Awesome Adventures

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Today was a day mostly in preparation for tomorrow. We hiked for a few hours to reach the Barafu Hut (4,673 meters, 15,331 feet) and then rested to prepare for our summit bid leaving near local midnight. Reports from those on the way down suggest a difficult day ahead. There is a good chance some of us won't make it. Hopefully we beat those chances!

On the way into camp, we happened to cross a long section of musical rocks. Here you can hear the sound of Kilimanjaro:

Previous entry.

The Barranco Wall: a massive cliff that stood on our path to the summit. That was our main challenge today.

Scrambling up the cliff took a couple of hours, both due to the sheer number of people climbing and the altitude contributing to the difficulty. The views on the way up were quite spectacular, although we entered a cloud at the top.

Previous entry.

Previous entry.

Today we walked across the Shira Plateau with Kilimanjaro standing tall by our side. It even had the decency to wear a stylish hat of clouds.

Just before leaving the plateau, we crossed the emergency road used for evacuations. Probably a much easier way up but almost certainly less fun.

Previous entry.

Today the climb began in earnest. ~8 km (5 miles) horizontal and ~700 meters (2000 feet) vertical took us out of the rainforest and onto the Shira Plateau (~3500 meters, 11,500 feet). Our team is still doing fine but the rigors of the climb are coming more in focus.

Today was a good beginning. Starting with a carb loaded breakfast, I met my group and we all piled into the van that took us to the mountain. Thus began the Kilicoaster: the van often encountered bumpy roads with plenty of ruts and other vehicles needing to share the limited space. At some points, the van seemed in danger of tipping...and yet resourceful porters managed to hang on to the back ladder for brief lifts.

I arrive at the airport and the kiosk tells me it can't find my ticket. So I get in line to talk to an agent and encounter the stupidest system ever seen: people that check in online get served at the counter before anyone else.

After a bit of waiting, I force my way in to find out I have to talk to a different counter. Would have been nice for the computer system to tell me that...and for the agent to not have said my ticket was "cancelled" (technically was, but only because I had a different ticket in the system to replace it).

So not long back, the owner of the dropzone I normally go to threw a 30/50 party, celebrating his 30th birthday and the 50 year anniversary of his first skydiving jump. Or something like that. And boy does he throw a party--pig roast, kegs of beer, ice luges, a live band, bonfire and even a professional fireworks show. Oh, and we even got some skydiving in. Quite a fun weekend, although probably best served by just looking at the pictures--enjoy!

So Brian and Olga, my wonderful cousins from Australia, came to the US for a few weeks recently. They ended that trip in New York City and I was lucky enough to meet up with them for their last weekend.

Now, because they had spent much of a week there already, they had managed to do most of the standard tourist stuff on Manhattan. This left me in the enviable position of showing them some of the less accessible parts of New York that many tourists end up skipping simply due to time constraints.

Sometimes things just don't work right. For example, I couldn't upload more than 141 images to part 1 of this post without causing funkiness. Not sure why, but seemed easier to just make a part 2 than to spend hours fixing it.

If you want to see all the pictures at once, I recommend the Image Gallery.