January 15th 2007

Walking Time 3:15 hours / Altitude Difference 3965 - 4200 - 3950 m / Temperature morning 0° C, noon 20° C, afternoon 9° C  / No Rain, 6 hours Fog

Today would be the day to say good-bye. Our English friends had booked the tour in 6 days and would be doing our next 2 days in one. Great effort – but I was glad not to be in such of a hurry.

We woke up at 6 am – fully recovered and ready to go – without any signs of altitude. The sun was shining, we were above the clouds and it was getting warm. Moshi was lying at our feet covered with clouds – still fast asleep…

And the Kili was there – the mountain which could not be seen yesterday evening – showed itself – coming nearer and nearer. Seeing it a great feeling rose inside of me. Just for being able to be here. And because I knew that I would never forget this adventure no matter how high we would be able to ascend. At the beginning I wanted nothing more than to reach its peak and now all of a sudden I knew that the journey was to be my destination. The journey which I took side by side with Tina. All the hardships couldn’t interfere or destroy our good mood because we were there for one another.

So we left at 8:45 am (somehow we managed to do that everyday) and up it went – very very steep. The Barranco Wall (Breakfast Wall) had to be climbed! This is the part where you have to do a little bit more than just „hike“!

300 meters straight upwards. Climbing on all four. There was an overhang which I won’t forget because I was scared to cross it. My backpack wanted to pull me down to the valley - I was able to prevent that – thank you for that – while Tina climbed like a mountain lion ahead of me...

And so we finally made it to the Overview. We had a short break and ate muesli bars – no lunch box today! Everybody was doing fine and we walked on through the clouds which had caught up with us. I spoke a lot with Baz while walking – a very pleasant mate!

We arrived inKaranga Valley and had our "Last Supper" with Baz and Martin. Like I said before, I was glad to have one more day for the ascent. The two of them we already mentally prepared to do their ascent, which was to take place tonight and actually wanted to head onwards. We would meet them tomorrow morning after we ascended to the camp in Barafu while they would’ve already made their way back down from the summit.

And finally they left us behind – where would their path lead them to?

Irmela, Tina & Marco

We didn’t do anything in the afternoon – physically – only talking to Irmela and meeting Marco fromVancouver,Canada. It was his second time here. He had tried the ascent 10 years ago with his daughter who was ten years old at the time. They “only” made it up to 5400 meters and then had to turn around because his daughter had gotten sick. So he had come back with his daughter who was now 20 years old to try it again. He had made a promise to her back then.

The fog had swallowed the mountain and nothing was to be seen. And then, after dinner – we just wanted to take a little walk because it was getting dark quite quickly – there it was. The mountain came out, said good night and vanished again - awesome…

We were able to fall asleep quite happily – and the night turned out to be like it always was – only a little bit colder!

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