As planned, we were up and getting ready at 11:30 last night. It was a calm and clear night with just enough moon to see by but not so much that the stars were washed out. We set out at 12:40 AM. There were headlights well up the mountainside already, which was a pretty thing to see, but it also made clear just how far and high we had to go. We took hourly rest breaks, and sure enough, we put more clothing on at almost every pre-dawn break, until we basically had it all on. Those were cold hours, anticipating a 6:30 sunrise. It caught us at about 18,000 ft and instantly made life a whole lot easier. We pulled onto the crater rim at Stella Point after seven hours on the go. Another hour and ten minutes got us over to Uhuru, the true summit. It was magical walking along the crater rim and checking out the glaciers and the lay of the land on the roof of Africa. High fives and handshakes were in order on the top. There may have been a tear or two, and of course a bunch of pictures. We started down after thirty minutes. Our clear day was already going cloudy, but that kept some sun off of us for the descent, which was a good thing. At 12:10 PM we were back to Barafu. A great sit down lunch in our dining tent did wonders to restore our strength, we packed up and started down toward Mweka Camp just after 2 PM. When the rain and hail hit halfway through our 4 hour, 5,000' descent, it wasn’t totally unexpected. We couldn’t very well run down the tricky rock trail to escape the showers. Ultimately it meant that we had to watch every single slippery step on the way to camp at 10,000'. The rains quit as we got in at 6 PM but life was a little soggy and muddy for our final night on the mountain. We’re not complaining though... on the contrary, we’re feeling lucky that we got perfect weather exactly when we needed it for climbing. Best Regards RMI Guide Dave Hahn

On The Map