Our luck held. Yesterday afternoon’s clouds went away by evening and we had a clear and perfectly calm night for climbing. The team got going out of Barafu Camp at 12:09 AM. It was a big night for climbing Kili and so there were plenty of other teams leaving at the same time. Even so, Naiman led the group with minimal traffic jams. He and Thomas, Gaudence and Omari… our dream team of local guides kept finding open stretches of trail while other teams stopped to rest or trouble shoot problems. It wasn’t so cold -at first- but it got that way as we got higher and closer to daybreak. Ultimately we had everything on when we hit the crater rim. We had a magical walk along the crater rim as the sun rose. There was quite a crowd at Uhuru, the true summit, when we arrived at 6:55 AM.

We dutifully waited our turn for photos with the sign, but we also enjoyed the summit with handshakes and hugs.  After 30 min we got started on the descent, which put us back at Barafu at 10:15.  Tosha -our chef extraordinaire, prepared a deluxe brunch to power our continued descent to Mweka Camp way down at 10k.  We were in camp just after 4PM, having beat the light rains that began to patter on the tent walls. We’ll sleep well tonight.

RMI Guide Dave Hahn