The Mount Kilimanjaro Climb: Barafu Camp, Day 4

When we woke up on Day 4, we noticed that our tent was covered in ice; and upon stepping outside, we saw the entire ground looked like an ice sheet. With the clouds that hung over Barranco Camp the previous day now gone, we could clearly see Kibo in the "not so distant" distance, and it looked incredibly cold. And scary! We were definitely getting closer to the summit!

The first hour of Day 4's hike was one of my favorite parts of the entire climb, because it required lots of scrambling up the great Barranco Wall. We hoisted ourselves up large rocks, shimmied our way across the narrow ledge of Kissing Rock, and just kept pushing ourselves to the top of Barranco Wall, from which we enjoyed a beautiful view of Shira Ridge and Mount Meru. The sun shined on us, and we had sufficiently thawed out from the morning's brisk cold.

After a short break, we continued along the trail, which dipped down for a bit into the Karanga Valley. Since it had been so cold the night before, the trail was still quite icy in many sections. We carefully navigated our way down many sections of the path, most of which appeared to have previously been a waterfall. On our way to Karanga Camp for lunch, it again felt as if the trail would never end. The trail always seems to be never ending when we are hungry for lunch! But at about 1:30 PM that afternoon, almost 5 hours after departing Barranco Camp, we reached our lunch spot. It was cold, but our lunch was warm - and delicious!

We had about 400 more meters to climb after lunch, and did so very slowly. The route out of Karanga Camp towards Barafu Camp was pretty dismal. We navigated the trail through dense fog and many rocks, as we were now in the alpine desert zone of the mountain. The route was steep, and we noticed that even many porters were struggling to make it to Barafu Camp. It didn't help that Barafu Camp had no water source, so in addition to carrying luggage, the porters were also carrying enough water for the night and the following morning. We were grateful to learn that our tour company had a strong record for protecting porters, and that our team did not need additional assistance carrying the luggage and water up to camp.

We were incredibly tired upon reaching the camp a few hours later. But we didn't have much time to waste relaxing, as we would need to go to bed early in order to wake up that evening at 11PM to prepare for our summit attempt. So we changed into dry clothes and almost immediately began eating dinner. After a quick pep talk from Goodluck, we layered up - it is FREEZING at 4700 meters above sea level - and went to sleep! Next stop, Uhuru Peak!