Day 8 - Millennium Camp to Mwenka Gate

Day 8

I think I slept well, I can't really remember as I didn't write any notes for my blog.  I look refreshed in the pictures!  Millennium Camp was a lovely quiet camp, I really liked it and my tent was wedged between two trees which was perfect for me as I re-energise when I am amongst trees, plants and bushes and nature.

We had a good 5 hour walk ahead of us as we stopped at Millennium Camp instead of going on to Mwenka camp.  My knees hurt from the descent from Kili through the Lava sand and rock that was nearly impossible to stay up right on, we had 3 hours of walking through that!

Of course it's all downhill as we head to Mwenka Gate but there was no rush as we were heading to Mwenka gate for lunch and then we had a 3 hour car journey back to Arusha.

Apart from my knees hurting it was a fab journey to the gate with me and Lindsay chattering all the way back down, we are good at that, chattering!!!

Before we left the porters all sang to us, they bring a singer in to help keep things going.  I have had to split the video in three to keep within the 100MB limit on the blog.

Some amazing bum action from the Singer!!

Ash doesn't do speeches but don't worry Bullshit Suz is on standby!!!

Amazing Singing and Dancing from the Porters

Beautiful!

Day 8 phew!

if only I could fly, it would save my poor sore knees!!!

and thank you to the amazing Universe for keeping us safe.  

I look like a mad hippy in this pic but then I am one so that is ok!!!

What an amazing experience, I loved every minute of it and can't wait to do it all over again.  

Time to start planning the next Mountain.......

suzxxx

ps.  I will post more blogs about the rest of my trip and the animals I met so keep checking back.

Day 6 and 7 - Karanga Camp to Barufu Camp (Base Camp) then to the SUMMIT of Mount Kilimanjaro! to Millennium Camp

Day 6 and 7

Who knew that today was going to be such a monstrous day that all rolled into one with the summit and then the descent and then off to the next camp, thinking back now it all feels a bit like a dream.

It might be easier to let you all watch the videos than to talk about one of the toughest, longest but best days of my life as it does all feel like one of my weird dreams.

From leaving Karanga Camp on Day 6 to getting to Millennium Camp on Day 7 was about 26 hours, 18 of those was spent trekking with no sleep.  BONKERS!

I had the absolute time of my life and loved spending so much time with Lindsay and Ashley and of course sharing in our success of summiting together whilst raising money for different charities close to our hearts.

Setting off from Karanga Camp on Day 6

We saw our first bad weather in 6 days when we were half an hour from Base Camp, so not bad at all.

Arrived at Barafu Camp - Base Camp for Mt Kili

Now the bad weather is clear we can see the mountain.

Its only wee!

We climbed for 7 hours in the dark so there are no video's or photos during the hardest part of the climb.

Ash wasn't feeling well, not sure if it was altitude sickness or a bug but we had to take it easy to make sure she made it and had to keep stopping so it took us longer to summit than it should have.   What I remember is just the monotony of it, walking in the dark staring down at my guides feet and concentrating on where I was putting my feet.  I count when I am walking, it's like walking meditation, I count to 100 and then start again so I am only thinking about walking and my footsteps, when its tough going I count to a lower number to make it more achievable so I will count to may be 20 then start again and when it's really tough I will count to 4 and start again. I also do my 'I Am Present' meditation which involves me saying things like " I am fit, I am healthy, I am present" or "I am strong, I am fit, I am present" - its amazing how it soon pushes you through any tough bits and keeps you in the moment and not wishing the whole experience away, of course it was freezing (-12) so I also did my "I am hot!" meditation.  My feet were like ice blocks and I couldn't flex my foot arch so if I needed to lift my foot up onto a rock I had to put my hand under my thigh to help push myself up.  The Moon was out though as were the stars but you couldn't look up for long as you needed to look at where you were going.  The relief when the sun finally came up and you could feel it starting to warm you was amazing but it also meant you could look up and we eagerly looked up hoping to see the summit but all you could see was a vertical side of the mountain that just never seemed to end.  Of course it did eventually and we made it to Stella Point, I don't seem to have any pictures from that but the relieve to finally be on level ground even though it was incredibly windy.  The genius' guides had brought a flask of tea with sugar in it and that was AMAZING to warm everything.  Then we had a 40 minute walk to Uhuru Peak which you could see and was a wee bit up hill but considering what we had just done it was definitely achievable.  

Once we arrived at the summit and got our pics taken etc I went off and had a wee meditation.  A friend had given me a Tigers Eye crystal bracelet and mini Gnesh to give me strength and keep me safe so I wore the bracelet and carried Gnesh with me the whole trip but wanted to leave something of me on the mountain so I meditated with wee Gnesh and asked him and the mountain to always look down and over all of my friends and family and to keep us safe and protect us and to always help us over come any obstacles that present themselves.  I then dug a wee hole and set Gnesh in it and left him there with his mammoth task of keeping us lot on the straight and narrow.  It was an amazing moment in time to kneel on the worlds tallest freestanding mountain with the sun shining brightly and to think about Gnesh, the Universe and all my friends and family.  I felt very lucky and very blessed.  So if you need Gnesh he is watching out for you just ask for his help, he is specifically good at overcoming obstacles, no matter what that obstacle is!

and here are some pics

Look at the bad weather coming in?!!! Beautiful to look at though!

WOW!!!

suzxxx

Day Five - Barranco Camp to Karanga Camp

Day 5

We climbed the Barranco Wall which was no mean feat, actually what does 'mean feat' mean??

We had to climb all the way up and then we had to go all the way down then all the way back up to reach camp - someone should build a bridge.

I did change to my sturdier boots today because we are climbing the the wall so for the first time I had sore feet and my Mortons Neuroma played up properly but it was the first time it was really sore so that is not bad considering the distance we have come and how much uphill and downhill we have done.  Back to my Karrimores tomorrow, they are like wearing slippers as they are so worn in.

Today was great fun although at times tough.  We were climbing up and then down rocks and there was a bit of scrambling to be done and sometimes with a shear drop on one side, it was definitely the most interesting day and gave us a taste of climbing which I think we will pick up when we are home.  

Here we are at the top of the Barranco Wall. Flying high!

We walked for 4 hours today and arrived at Karanga, which means peanut apparently!, camp which is 3992m.

We arrived and signed in and saw the summit up close, it was a bit over overwhelming as it is so close and so HUGE.

We didn't have an acclimatisation walk today so we played cards - Lindsay taught us to play Cheat and I was rubbish at it, we played Scabby Queen and all got a turn at being the queen and then we played trumps.  It kept us out of mischief anyway and we did some stretches at the Camp sign.

The sky tonight was amazing once the cloud cleared and Kili was clear hard to believe that from Makao Farm I was looking at it and now I am here and tomorrow night at this time I will be getting ready to summit.

We had our oxygen levels taken again, I was a bit less than before at 92% and heart rate of 75bpm, we are back at 4000m so its weird its changed but at least my body is showing some change.  Lindsay was 90% and 100bpm heart rate which is better than she was, I can't remember what Ash's was but she was doing better than the first reading so its great everyone is adjusting.

12019 steps 

88 flights of stairs - really?  The app doesn't really work for trekking I think!!

8km

suzxxx

Day Four - Moir Camp to Barranco Camp

Day Four 

Last night after all the singing I was playing Robbies 'I Love My Life and then did it again this morning when delivering hot chocolate and tea to Lindsay and Ashers tent, which was so popular both Lindsay and Ashley begged me to wake them up with that song every day...... NOT!!  Anyway the Porters loved it and would sing I LOVE MY LIFE back to me while Lindsay and Ashley would roll their eyes, very funny!

I think our guides Gaston and Peter like us because we are always singing even if we don't know all the words to the songs and usually only know the chorus!!! and we are always laughing or taking the piss out of each other.

We had our oxygen levels taken this morning before we set off and at 4200m mine was 97% which is normal!  Thank you olive leaf extract, turmeric, beetroot, ginger shots and garlic tablets!!! and of course all my hard work in the gym paid off too - thank you Vince, my amazing Personal Trainer!

I was quite excited by my oxygen level as you can tell from the video!  The girls were 85% and 86% and Gaston, our guide, was 93%.  Hope my wee healthy body stays like this!  

At Lava Tower 4600m

We made it up to 4600m and had a hot lunch at Lava tower and then walked on for another 2 hours mostly down hill to Barranco camp which is 3800 I think.

Lindsay's solar charger isn't working so she can't listen to music so she is getting bored on the walks so we sang 10 green bottles, although with the altitude you end up quite out of breath whilst walking so we only made it to 7 green bottles!  To keep her brain going I had asked her to name the 7 dwarfs which took us a wee while to get all of them, why is it there is always one you can't remember!!! We then played Where Is my Button to much hilarity.

Some of the pretty plants we saw on the route

It was a really interesting landscape, and the clouds would just travel through

Don't jump Ash! 

We reached camp and got to lie down for an hour before dinner then we went to find phone signal and did some stretches.  I showed Lindsay how to do her hip stretches using a rock, and also showed her how to massage your glutes using a rock - where I learnt these things I have no idea but Lindsay took both tips on board and used them for the rest of the trek!

Steps 18327

Floors 108

11km

suzxxx

Day Three - Shira Camp to Moir Camp

Day Three

We left at 8am and headed off into the Shira Plateau.

The view from my tent at Shira Camp, that is the Worlds Tallest Freestanding Mountain 

in the background!!!

Day 3!

Hilariously Ash taught Gaston and Peter the lovely Scottish word 'minging'!

We were supposed to stop for a hot lunch on the way but our pace was good apparently so we went straight to Moir Camp and had lunch there.  It's great that we have a good pace on the flat!!

We did quite a bit of singing as we went along today and we did the Hokey Cokey!!  Day Three was definitely packed with funny moments!

We arrived at Moir Camp which is 4200m and had lunch and a wee rest and then headed off for our altitude acclimatisation or as it turned out took our guides to where there was phone signal!  We went up 200m to the phone signal spot so we were at 4400m.

Three Happy Adventurers at Moir Camp

Lunch was our favourite of cucumber soup and dinner was tomato soup and spaghetti with veggie sauce.  Its amazing how Coleman can produce such fab food on a mountain side.

When we came back from our acclimatisation walk the guides gave us a wee treat by singing to us and then when we arrived back at the camp all the porters sang to us and one of them got Lindsay up dancing, it was brilliant fun.  Moir Camp has been my favourite camp so far - it is so much quieter than the others as most people go to Shira II Camp.

The lovely and quiet Moir Camp the Barranco Wall in the distance.

Today didn't feel hard at all, I really enjoyed it and no sign of altitude bothering me except the lactic acid burn lasts a bit longer and I could not hold my video arm up for very long.

Lindsay and Ash had mild headaches at at one point but we all seemed happy and healthy when we headed off to bed.

It's a full moon tonight and the stars are amazing.

We climb the Barranco Wall tomorrow and head up to Lava Tower which is 4600m.

We did 16.4km and the equivalent of 42 flights of stairs today.

suzxxx

Mount Kilimanjaro Day One - Arusha to Londorossi Gate to Mkubwa

Day one!  Bloody hell it has been 18 months since we decided we were doing it and now we actually have to do it!  What on earth was I thinking!  

I didn't really sleep because I kept thinking, 'what am I doing'!!!  The stories of people failing to make it to the top filling my sleep deprived brain kept me tossing and turning all night and when I did eventually fall asleep I dreamt about Jonah Lomas making an advert to sell scones in an old haunted country house, totally bonkers so it was easier to just wake up and get up so was up at 5am and sorting my bag which weighed 19kgs and needed to weight 15kg!

I ended up dumping anything I had two of except pants and socks and not my thermals although I had three pairs of those so dumped one pair. 

I did manage to get my duffle bag down to 15kg but my rucksack weight 10kgs and it is only supposed to weight 5 or 6kgs as I have to carry it but most of it was my little bottles of ginger and beetroot juice and my snacks so there was no way I was leaving those behind.  In the end Gaston our guide said that he would give my snacks etc to the assistant guide to carry so poor Peter got mine, Lindsays and Ashleys snacks to carry every day but at least these got less as the days went on.

Once our bags were all sorted we loaded up and then had a 4 hour drive to check in at the first gate.  We got there and there seemed to be a delay in our paperwork and payment going through which meant we had lunch there and we were the last of the trekkers to leave and set off.

We used the time while we waited trying to figure out how my new go pro camera worked! Lindsay  managed to get it from French to English instructions so that helped!  Here is my first go pro pic!!  Three fresh faced and clean adventurers ready to get going.

Once we started walking it was pretty easy going and Peter our assistant guide walks so slow I apparently say "did you go to a special school to learn to walk that slowly?"!!!  Lindsay had to stop to right that down!  It was bizarre how slowly he was walking though but they get you training straight away to walk Pole Pole so you are totally in the rhythm of it for summit night when it really is tough and you can't do anything other than Pole Pole!!

We were in high spirits and full of energy now we had got over the anxiety of getting our bags sorted, I got over my Diamox Dilemma and we realised that the trekking was not as hard as we had thought it would be!  Ashley decided to teach Peter a scottish word and taught him jobbie - when she explained what it meant, he really laughed - for those that don't know what a jobbie is here is a link! https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jobbie.  We then started what became our thing of singing as we walk - we are not bad singers and as it turns out we know lots of choruses to songs but not many of the versus!!

As we set off our porters, we had a team of 15 looking after the three of us, would pass us with all of our stuff and the porters for the other walkers would pass too so we constantly were shouting "incoming" or one that became a favourite "coming up the rear"!!  

We had been encouraged to drink water constantly which with the diamox meant we were all peeing like racehorses, we established a 'poo bag' which was a plastic wallet that we all deposited our used toilet paper which was then emptied into the rubbish bag at the end of every day - Ashley did the amazing job of looking after the poo bag for us, well done Smashers. It was amazing how much toilet paper was discarded all the way up the side of the mountain, climbers should have more respect.

But in return for emptying the poo bag I have to remove an eight legged friend from the outside of Ash and Lindsays tent at the first camp - fairish swap I would say.

We arrived at our first camp after a two and a half hour easy walk  and settled in to our tents. 

Coleman our chef had made us popcorn which was fab but it was very quickly being eyed by a local monkey who sat on the tree next to our dining tent just waiting for us to not be paying attention.  He looked well fed so I am sure he was getting plenty of popcorn elsewhere so we didn't feel bad as we stuffed our faces with the whole tray of it.  

Popcorn and a Monkey!  

Coleman then made us a fab dinner of cucumber soup then we had boiled potatoes with veg sauce and avocado salad which was delish and it was served to us by the amazing Jonny our waiter.

Our tents next to our dining tent.

It was pretty cold already cold already and we were only at 2400m.  I put my thermals on to sleep in, so began to worry that I had dumped my third set of thermals as if night one was this cold what was it going to be like on summit night?!

We have a 5 hour trek to Shira camp the next day so after dinner we head off for some rest but the camp is like a mountain Piccadilly circus with loads of chatter and people moving around so none of us really slept - this pretty much continued through the trek, the best sleeps were the hour you got in the afternoon after walking when the camp was relatively quiet and warmish.

According to my iPhone app we walked 13km, 351 floors 19032 steps but that will have been recording all the running around I did in the morning getting my bag weighed and then unpacked then repacked and weighed 20 times!!  

suzxxx