After the incredible difficulty of day 8, when we climbed from Barfu (15,000 feet) to the summit (19,000 feet) before descending to Mweka (10,000 feet), day 9 promised to be a figurative walk in the park. Sure, we were exhausted and sore and dirty, but we were starting out at a mere 10,000 feet, [...]
Today’s installment really begins at 11pm on the previous day. That’s when we woke up to start getting ready for our summit attempt. Getting ready, in this case, basically entailed trying to wriggle into almost every bit of clothing I had brought with me: several stacked sets of thermal underwear, two pairs of [...]
After spending the night at Barranco camp, we had the almost 1,000 foot tall Barranco wall to look forward to. If we could manage that, we’d spend the next night at Karranga valley, another camp that some people skip in favor of getting right to Barfu camp, which is the base camp most people [...]
Waking up at Moir hut, both Luke and I were feeling pretty refreshed. This altitude thing, we thought, isn’t so bad after all. After all, we had spent the night at 13,500 feet, and while it was certainly a bit chilly, it wasn’t all that bad. And the view was just [...]
After getting a good night’s rest at Mti Mkubwa, we were ready for our first real day of hiking. Our route for day two would take us from Mti Mkubwa to Shira Camp, and our schedule called for a 5-6 hour, 7-mile hike that would take us to 11,500 feet. The hike [...]
Well, that was certainly an experience. I have just returned from climbing Kilimanjaro with my friend Luke. I’m going to try to control my natural verboseness in writing about the trip, but if you want the no-words-at-all version, the pictures are available here: Brooks’ Kilimanjaro pics. Or, if you want the full [...]
For all that driving the truck was pretty exhausting, the next few days were far, far worse. With driving, at least you have adrenaline and urgency. After handing the truck over to Jim and Doug, though, the adrenaline was gone and it was time to keep moving to support the truck on its [...]
After all of the confusion and delays, my turn to drive had finally come. As I climbed into the truck and got the air and comm lines plugged into my helmet, I was definitely suffering from some jitters. There’s always a bit of adrenaline in any kind of race situation, but this [...]
You know how sometimes the simplest things turn out to be way more complicated and difficult than they have any right to be? Such was the case in getting from pit #4 to pit #5, a mere 35 course miles and maybe 50 miles on road (this was one of the cases where the [...]
We got started bright and early Tuesday morning, with all of the usual pre-race confusion and mayhem. We had a few helmets that needed last minute tech inspection, the chase cars needed to grab water and snacks, that sort of thing. The truck was lined up in its starting place, the GPS course [...]