We are safe and sound back in Arusha! We had an excellent, and successful trip! We have just finished up our celebratory dinner here in Arusha and are heading off to bed for our first night with beds and showers.
Our hike today was pleasant, through the jungle back down to Mweka gate where we had lunch and were transferred back to Arusha.
We have had a very successful season here on Kilimanjaro and hope to see you next season on a climb with us to the “Roof of Africa”!
Thanks for following along! Enjoy the pictures below.
Hello everyone, this is Ben calling in for Hot Tang and the Blue Band here on Kilimanjaro. We are down at our Mweke Camp (at about 10,000 feet now).
We had a very successful day today. When I called earlier today we were just heading out to head up to the summit and we had a beautiful summit night. We left at just after midnight and arrived on the summit at about 6:15am, just as the sun was rising. It was a beautiful morning up there. Everybody did fantastic! We had 100% success on the summit today; everybody made it to the top in good style, in good form, and made it back down very safely and fast/quickly as well.
We came back down to our High Camp at Camp Kosovo (which is close to 16,000 feet) and we packed up and had time for a little bit of a nap actually this morning because we got down so quickly and had some lunch and then we headed down here. We had about/took us about three and a half hours to get from our High Camp down to Mweke Camp, which is where we’re at right now. So we’ve dropped over 9,000 feet today. Our legs are tired; we’re all exhausted and ready to go to sleep. We just finished up dinner, and it’s about 7 o’clock, just after 7 o’clock right now and we’re all in our tents and heading off to bed.
Tomorrow we’ve got a pretty short hike, three to four hours, just down to the jungle, where we’ll finish at the gate. We’ll have a celebratory buffet lunch down at the gate, Mweke Gate, and then we’ll head back to Arusha tomorrow afternoon.
Everybody’s doing great, we’re tired, but we’ve had a great trip, fantastic trip, successful trip. And everybody wants to say “hello” to everyone following along back home. We’ll talk to you soon.
Hello everyone, this is Ben calling in here on Kilimanjaro with Team Hot Tang and the Blue Band. We are up at High Camp and we got up here earlier this afternoon and made good time getting up here, just four and a half hours or so, or maybe closer to five hours to get up here. We’re at about 15,800 feet here at Kosovo. We’re a little bit higher than the normal High Camp that most people spend the night at; it’s a much nicer camp and we get up above the crowds and everything.
We had lunch. We talked about the summit: what to prepare, what to pack, and what it’s going to look like, how long it’s going to take, and answered all the summit questions. And we got a bunch of rest this afternoon up here; everybody’s feeling really good (at close to 16,000 feet). For most everybody it’s the highest they’ve been, a couple people have been a little bit higher, and everybody’s feeling fantastic actually so far.
We just had dinner and then we went to sleep for a little bit and we just woke up, just about an hour ago. And then we had breakfast; we’ve had a couple/three meals here pretty quick and close together, but everybody’s doing good with that and eating a little bit at a time here to help sustain our energy up here. We just finished up breakfast and we’re heading to the summit right now.
It’s just after midnight Tanzanian time and we’re just heading out right now. So I suspect we’ll get up to the summit right at sunrise 6-6:30, maybe even 7am and I’ll give you a call once we get back down and get to our camp tonight. We’ll summit, we’ll come back down, and we’ll pack up; and we’ll actually head down a couple more hours to a lower camp, where we’ll all sleep a lot better tonight once we summit.
So looking forward to getting to the summit and heading back down and everybody says “hello” and “hi” to family and loved ones following along back home. We’ll talk to you soon.
Hi everyone, this is Ben calling in with the Team Hot Tang and the Blue Band here on Kilimanjaro. Once again we’re doing excellent today; everybody’s doing very well with the altitude and taking care of themselves here.
We’ve made it up to Karanga Camp (which is at 13,300 feet here). We’ve had some a little bit of cloud cover, kind of in and out most of the day today. It was a beautiful view once we woke up this morning, looking up at the Barranco Wall up towards Kilimanjaro; we had a beautiful view then had some clouds. Everybody did an excellent job today of getting up the Barranco Wall. There’re some tricky sections there where you need both hands and some minor rock climbing that everybody did great there. We moved through there quite efficiently. We’re a nice small group on this team here so we’re moving pretty efficiently through most of the hike so far.
We got here to the Karanga Camp at about 12:30 or so, our shortest hiking day today, kinda resting up a bit before the big summit push here coming up real soon. So we’ve just kind of been relaxing today, drinking lots of hot water, having some tea, an some coffee, and hot drinks and things, and chatting, and reading, and listening to music. And everybody’s doing great.
Tomorrow we will wake up and we’ll head up to our High Camp, which is called Kosovo Camp. It’s a little bit higher than the normal High Camp that most people on the mountain use here. Alpine Ascents is one of the only ones who uses the Kosovo Camp up high. It gives us a little bit of an advantage to be ahead of everyone once we start for the summit bid. And also there’s a tricky section just below it that is a nice dip when we start out for the summit in the dark. So hopefully we’ll make it up there tomorrow, get the okay to go to the Kosovo Camp (and that’s at about 15,800 feet or so), so quite high moving up tomorrow. We’ll spend the afternoon there; we’ll have lunch and kind of get prepared for the summit push later that night. We’ll just get a little bit of rest before we wake up around 11pm tomorrow night to get up and get ready to go to the summit.
Once again everybody says “hello” to everyone following along back home. Everybody’s doing a fantastic job here, and doing great. Spirits are high; we’re having a great time. We’ll update you tomorrow as far as what’s happening, but we should be at High Camp tomorrow and getting prepared to go to the summit tomorrow. We’ll talk to you soon.
Hello everyone, this is Ben calling in with Team Hot Tang and the Blue Band here on Kilimanjaro. We are at the Barranco Camp (which is about 12,700 feet) tonight. Everybody’s doing great here.
We had a nice long hike today; it was just a little bit over 8 hours to get from Shira Camp here to Barranco Camp. We ascended up to about 14,700 feet and had lunch. It was a beautiful morning for the most part and then some clouds came in the mid-morning, which made it a little bit cooler but it was a beautiful morning to start out. Then we had lunch and continued on up to the base of the Lava Tower (15,000 feet).
We broke some altitude records for a lot of people on the trip here and a few of us decided to continue on up and scramble up to the top of Lava Tower (just a couple more hundred feet up to the top). Then we all headed down to Barranco Camp. We went up pretty high up to 15,000 feet today and then we dropped it back down here to Barranco Camp (at 12,700 feet) with the idea of stressing our bodies a little bit and trying to acclimatize a little bit here around 12-13,000 feet, before we head up on our summit bid here in the next couple days.
We’re all feeling great with the altitude and been eating a lot of good food here on the mountain that our Tanzanian staff has been making for us. We just had pork chops tonight, and we had some dinner conversation, had some dessert, and we’re all heading off to bed here now.
And we’re looking forward to another nice day tomorrow. We’ll head up the Barranco Wall here, which we’re just camped at the base of; which is kind of a fun little bit of scrambling involved to get up the wall/to get on top of the wall. And then we’ll head on over to our Karanga Camp tomorrow (it’s just over 15,000 feet, about 15,3). And then we’ll head to our High Camp after that, the day following.
So, we’re moving on up the mountain. We’re having a great time and we’re all excited to continue to move up tomorrow. We’ll talk to you soon.
Hello everyone, this is Ben calling in with Team Hot Tang and the Blue Band. We’re doing great; we’re here at Camp Shira up on the Shira Plateau (at just over 12,000 feet, around 12,300 feet). And everyone’s doing great today, feeling really well up here.
We got in nice and early today, about 2 o’clock this afternoon, so we had lots of time to get moved into our tents here at Shira and just relax and enjoy each other’s company and drink lots of water and hot drinks throughout the day to keep ourselves hydrated.
Our hike was pretty beautiful today. We had clear skies when we woke up this morning and later in the afternoon the clouds started to come in a little bit and made it a little bit cooler, which is kind of nice and brought just some small rain showers in the afternoon. But that was once we were at camp here and under cover in the tents, so not a big deal; it cleared off this evening, as it usually does.
Just before dinner here we got some great views of Shira and Mount Meru down below here. Mount Meru is about/just over 15,000 feet and it’s situated just at the base of where the town of Arusha is. And another beautiful volcano that’s off in the distance. It’s been quite a nice evening here.
Again, everybody’s doing excellent here with the altitude so far. And I’m really stressing drinking a lot of water and taking care of our bodies as we bring them to around 15,000 feet tomorrow. So we’ll be breaking some records, I think, some altitude records for a lot of people here tomorrow, if not everyone.
And then actually we’ll head back down to our Camp 3 at Camp Barranco, which is slightly higher than here (at about 12,800 feet). So we’ll go up to 15 then down to 12,800. Tomorrow’s our longest hiking day; it’ll be upwards of eight hours or so to get to camp tomorrow, another beautiful hike tomorrow.
And we’ll let you know how that goes tomorrow. But everybody says “hello” to everyone following along. Talk to you soon.
Hello everyone, this is Ben calling in here with Team 8 on Kilimanjaro, Team name: Hot Tang and the Blue Band. Not sure if you got that there, seems like it might’ve cut out. Our team name is Hot Tang and the Blue Band. Our team name comes from the sugary Tang drink here that we had this evening, it’s part of our hot drinks. And Blue Band is the margarine spread that we have here, the name brand of that. So Team Hot Tang and the Blue Band, here we are.
We’re doing great here (at just 10,000 feet) here at our first camp. We had a beautiful hike in today, about six hours in total up to Machame Camp here; we started at Machame Gate (at about 5,800 feet) this morning.
And we had a couple hour drive from the hotel this morning and got to the gate, got checked in with the National Park Service here and met some of our Tanzanian crew, that was heading up with us today, some of the guides and also some of the porters.
And it was a beautiful day on the way to the mountain. We actually got one of the best views I’ve ever seen of the mountain. It was very clear today, hardly a cloud in the sky this morning as we were approaching the mountain in the vehicles. And it was nice to be able to see the objective before we got here.
Nice and warm as we were hiking up today, and then the clouds started to build and we had just a very quick rain shower, but not enough for us to even need to put on rain jackets or umbrellas or anything. So we stayed dry and stayed a little cooler with the cloud cover and made it up here to camp in good time.
Everybody’s feeling good. We just finished up a delicious pepper steak dinner for the meat eaters and had a vegetable plate along with potatoes for the vegetarians here.
Tomorrow we’re going to hike up to the Shira Plateau that will be our next camp (and that’s at about 12,300 feet) so we’ll be getting up into the higher altitudes tomorrow.
Again, everybody’s doing great, says “hello” and “hi” back to everyone following along at home, family and loved ones. Talk to you soon, talk to you tomorrow.
