Leaving for Kilimanjaro summit in 9 hours!

Barafu Camp, discount 15020 feet; the last camp before the summit. The team pulled into camp in good style around 1:00.

During a lunch of watermelon, oranges, grilled cheese sandwiches and soup; Eben reviewed the summit plan. We will wake up and have ‘breakfast’ and then have two groups leaving an hour apart with the latest at midnight.

The temps are fairly mild as I write this in mid afternoon; around 60F, so hopefully the temps will be in the mid 30’s as we start. We will pack all our layers and be prepared to add as we go to the summit which will be much colder.

This morning we awoke to clear skies revealing the (and only) view of Kilimanjaro thus far. We touched our first bit of snow scattered on her slopes.

You can feel the excitement, or more accurately, anxiety amongst the team with this being the highest climb ever for most of the team.

For me this one is a bit more personal as September is World Alzheimer’s Month. I am carrying our message of need, urgency and hope to send from the Roof of Africa.

As usual, I will have the GPS tracker running from the time we leave camp until we are back in a much lower camp at 10,000′.

We should summit between 7 and 8AM local time Monday, September 19. It will take another 4 hours to descend back to Barafu and about the same to reach 10,000′. Maybe a bit longer. So it will be a very long and tiring day.

OK, #6 of 7! I’m very excitied and ready to go but first a few hours of sleep.

Climb On!
Alan
Memories are Everything

Team with Kili behind at 14,000′

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