January 16th 2007

Walking Time 2:30 hours / Altitude Difference 3950 - 4600 m / Temperature morning 0° C, noon 20° C, afternoon 3° C / 3 hours Snowfall and Sleet  / Altitude Sickness: Tina had a very bad and I had a bad headache

We woke up as usual in a good mood – dressed ourselves  and got out of the frozen tent. Same procedure as every day.

All of a sudden we could see the VALLEY – yesterday there were no signs of one being there whatsoever.

We started off to the Camp Barafu thinking about Baz and Martin - Did they reach the summit? This day would be our worst one of the journey. The path was steep and the landscape barren – a deadly wasteland surrounded by clouds…

Just before arriving at the Barafu Camp we looked at each other and immediately knew that we both weren’t in a good shape. We both had bad headaches, Tina’s worse than mine. The landscape, the altitude sickness and thinking about doing tonight’s ascent feeling the way we felt, made us feel unsure – well, actually scared us. Why did we have to feel like this today after spending an extra day acclimatizing? We had come so far – would the altitude sickness force us to stop?

And what now?

Hey Martin & Baz, it was nice meeting you and having you on the trip with us! When we saw you at that moment, we were really proud of you -  a fantastic effort - Hail to England!!! I hope we'll meet sometime somewhere...

And there they were our friends Baz and Martin they had made it to the summit – congratulations. We had lunch together and spoke about their ascent. Baz had gotten difficulty in breathing and Martin a headache, but they made it – all the way to the top. After lunch we quickly said our good-byes – we had to find some sleep – fast, because we had to get rid of our headaches. We drank  a lot of water before finally sleeping – I almost had to force Tina to drink but in the end she did on her own!

Well, to top it off we had sleet and it started to snow afterwards. What the f*ck was going on anyway! Our tent wasn’t leveled out and it was pretty hard to sleep - I always fell off my foam mattress. Tina couldn’t sleep at all. I dozed a little bit. And then we talked to each other! I told her that we would start off this night and go as far as we could – that we just had to try!

Really just great...

Mawenzi 5148 m

In the evening all precipitation had stopped and we were almost in a good shape. We had a very tasty vegetable stew – no more meat left… Deusi spoke with us and was glad to see that we had recovered. We went back into our tent, prepared our clothing for the ascent and tried to sleep. After me screaming out loud – we actually did.

Well, guess I’m leaving here...

Mount Meru 4566 m

We woke up on our own at 10:30 pm – had we slept? But it didn’t matter because we had recovered – the water and the rest had done their job. We had some tea and cookies and filled our thermos flask with hot water.

We were ready – as ready as ever – and we would fight until the end with all our courage – finding out during the next couple of hours what that actually meant…  

Moshi by Night

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