Besides summit day this was the day I had been waiting for…. The Barranco Wall. As today was a short day we were allowed a lie in, so instead of spending 10 hours in our tents, we got 12, whoopy doo. The reason, to let the other groups that were going onto base camp rather than stopping at the half way point, Karanga camp, as we were, get a head start. The initial 100m of the Barranca Wall is probably a grade I scramble ( the easiest scrambling grade) and deserves that grade purely for the exposure. The scrambling itself is fairly easy but a mistake in that first 100m could have serious consequences.

I enjoyed every single metre of it. The only thing that was testing was when you had to make a series of sustained moves and the altitude took your breath away, forcing a rest to recover. There was a further 185m of The Wall, but that was just a steep path, with no real difficulties. Once at the top the view was breathtaking, looking down the valley to the plains of Africa that was obscured by low cloud and a dusty haze.

The rest of the walk to Karanga camp was just a few up and downs and then the camp came into sight, wow that was easier than I thought. Was there a sting in the tail… you bloody well bet there was. What wasn’t apparent from where we stood was a valley that was a perfect ‘V’ in shape and steepness, between us and the camp. The way down was on the finest sieved dust I’ve ever come across, it made fine baking flour feel coarse. Treacherous to say the least, it could have been a very quick way down, I believe they call it Kilimanjaro Skiing! I tried very hard not to partake. At the bottom, to Colin my surprise two of the porters had scurried down to take our packs from us, as a near retired OAP I accepted their offer without any guilt, especially when we passed those poor Europeans/Americans struggling up with their own packs on. I can’t think of a better occasion for winding people up and I took the opportunity in both hands, it seems they were all too out of breath to make any snide comments back!

Summit day is calling. Tomorrow we move onto Barafu and prepare for the midnight start to the summit.

Day five, finished at 10:30am. A very easy walk up to Barafu @ 4,692m, so now it’s just a waiting game until Midnight. Sleep, eat and unwind for the next 12 hours… then upward bound.

All the people that summited early this morning are arriving down for brunch, rest, pack up and head on down to Mweka Camp @ 2,750m and at last a decent amount of ‘O’s. and then there are the people arriving, like us ready to make their once in a lifetime attempt on the summit of Kilimanjaro. Just to put that in perspective our guide, Imran, has summited 11 times, this season!