We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.
The Ladder of St. Augustine – Longfellow
A wonderfully sunny start to the day, in complete contrast with last night, lets hope it lasts. Jennifer and I give ourselves a wet wipe bath and its lovely, we feel really clean despite not using the morning “washy washy” water our porters bring us. We do use this water, but only for rubbing over our face and hair to wake us up properly and to brush our teeth.
The other morning ritual is “bed tea”, which is the morning cuppa. This is the first wake up call of the day but we are usually washing ourselves at this point so we ask them to leave it in the porch area.
We had breakfast with the sun breaking over Kili, it was lovely, lots of cloud up on the summit though, hopefully it wont be there when we summit.
We started off across the Shira Plateau again this morning at around 8.30am, again I found the going difficult so I’d dropped behind by the time it started raining at 10.00am. This time it was a combination of rain and low cloud, so just as wet, but not heavy rain.
I’m finding it really hard to breath at this altitude. Luckily the plateau starts to climb towards its south eastern edge and this slowed the pace down a bit and by keeping a steady pace I was able to catch them up by about 11.00am.
By the time we got up to the Shira Cathedral, a large promontory, I was starting to feel really good, we dropped our packs at the bottom of the cathedral and, after a short rest, we climbed up to the top (3,800m) by around 12 noon. I felt really strong for once and was bouncing back along the rocks, but maybe I was being too cocky!
We had another short rest next to where we left our packs and then headed north towards our next camp, Shira Hut (3,840m). It was only about 2 hours at a slow pace, but towards the end I was struggling again. There was a steepish rise leading to the camp which I found hard going and I kept stopping to rest. Matthew, our head guide asked if he could take my pack, but I wanted to do this one my own without too much help, I didn’t want to be carried (ok, I was ignoring the fact that we had 47 porters, guides and a cook helping us, but that wasn’t my point).
The rain was getting heavier and as I finally made it up the hill to our camp, about 15 minutes after everyone else, I found my beloved Jennifer waiting for me in the rain.
The camp site was on a flood plain and it was really rocky and the tents weren’t best pitched, but I threw my pack in and we went to join the others for lunch.
We have been walking in the rain for four and a half hours and everything is wet, we hope the weather will be better by tomorrow as we need to get our clothes dry. Hopefully we can get above the clouds tomorrow.
Our tent is starting to look like a Chinese laundry. We have clothes hanging up in each porch and in the inner tent, just trying to get it dry. If we don’t get a couple of rain free days then we’ll be trying to summit in wet clothes and they will freeze on us. We are keeping a set of clothes unused and dry for summit night, just in case it doesn’t stop raining, but our outerwear is just wetted out, as are our gloves.
The porters sound in much better mood tonight, they are laughing and joking really loudly, we’ll have to use ear plugs tonight. They are coping with the same weather we are but their waterproof clothing is a bit makeshift, some of them use plastic bin-liners, whilst others just get wet, but they seem very happy despite the weather.
The loo is a bucket under a wooden seat in a separate tent, and it really stinks. Everyone is trying to hold out as long as they can before visiting it, or just going behind the rocks or bushes. Getting up to go the toilet in the night is turning into a major exercise, not only do you have to get dressed, with both wet and warm clothing, you also have to steel yourself against what you will find there…
Decided to take a diamox to help with my acclimatisation as I seem to be the only one struggling. I’ve also got a constant cough, but I can hear others coughing at night in their tents, so maybe its just a reaction to the cold and rain, rather than the altitude.
Jennifer is also suffering with a cough, but she seems to be coping really well with cold and the rain and has shown little or no sign of altitude sickness yet. In the mess tent tonight, virtually everyone has complained of bad headaches, except me and Jennifer, so maybe we’re all just feeling the altitude in different ways.
Tags: Kilimanjaro
