Kilimanjaro Day 3 – Monday August 18
Not a great night’s sleep – which again is a symptom of altitude sickness – but nothing to worry about. I often didn’t sleep well and it had nothing to do with altitude. Our home of Hong Kong may be a city of high-rises but they ain’t that high. (And we lived on only the second floor.) Camp life – morning. Coffee in bed. Washy-washy. Faff. Breakfast. Go.
One thing Terry Garry didn’t take into account when he did his planning was that the new season of the Premier League kicked off this weekend, with the mighty Newcastle United at home to the reigning champions Manchester City. Thankfully football and in particular the English Premier League is as popular in Tanzania as it is everywhere else in the world, and the guides were listening fervently to all the radio commentaries.
Newcastle lost 2-0.
Morning coffee was accompanied by some chat with the guides which, it soon became clear, was not simply idle chatter, but part of their process of checking that you were okay. Not sleeping well has a major impact on your energy levels and can seriously drain you for a day or more. They were constantly looking for signs of headaches, exhaustion, loss of appetite, low moods, disorientation – and not simply relying on you to report problems to them. Which was of course reassuring. Our lives were in their hands so it was good to know they were paying attention.
The morning walk was a steady but reasonably easy climb from the moorland of Shira Plateau and up onto the broad upland desert beneath the Lent Hills. We were at the campsite at Moir Hut (4,200 metres, 13,800 feet), below the Northern Icefields, in time for a hot lunch. The camp was already set up, six tents lined up cheek-by-jowl and, out on its own some twenty yards away, Callum’s and Cormac’s. The porters had been asked to make sure the snorers were kept away from everyone else and while it was meant at least partly in jest, they had delivered, much to our amusement.
We were also the only people at Moir Camp which made it an altogether more pleasurable experience than being at the more populated camps. We could have noisy parties and stuff. If we weren’t in bed by eight o’clock that is.
Kibo was getting closer and closer, and seemingly bigger and bigger.
Then there was another acclimatising walk up to an outcrop on the Lent Hills (4,700 metres, 15,420 feet), a cracking scramble/climb, across slabs, wedges and chunks of slate which made a metallic clanking noise against one another. The peak afforded spectacular views over the valleys and plateau. Looking down on the Shira Plateau, the clouds on either side were curling up over the edges, and creeping across the plain towards each other like two armies moving into battle.
The peak was made to look even more other-worldly by the fact that people have collected up various lumps of slate and built mini-cairns all over the place. There are hundreds of them. But why? Who does this? You didn’t see our guides looking remotely interested in them, and you didn’t see any of our group building a new one. We’re far too cool for that.
Whether it was part of the acclimatisation process or whether they just wanted to get back to the camp and have another spliff, the guides never wanted to hang about these scenic spots for long. There were a few photos, even an attempt from Callum to get a phone connection and send a message to his wife, but then we were on our way back down again.
The valley in which the Moir Camp nestles is a classic example of a glacial valley, a broad, flat bottomed, U-shaped valley originally carved out by a glacier which has long since receded. There is still a trickle of a stream running through the valley which, later in the afternoon, afforded the opportunity for an extended washy-washy, and in some cases, some washing of clothes – neither of which struck me as necessary at this particular juncture. I gave me feet a dunking in the refreshingly cool water then headed back to the mess tent to play cards.
Overhead, the lammergeyer, or bearded vultures, circled, no doubt looking for any scraps we may have discarded. And you couldn’t blame them as you had to wonder what they feed on up there as we’d seen no other wildlife save for the odd pigeon. The poor buggers must have been starving.
Aussie Matt, incidentally, appeared a lot better today, which I guess meant any potential altitude sickness had abated having been appropriately managed by the ascending and descending.
Camp life – evening version. Much the same routine as usual. They say that loss of appetite is a symptom of altitude sickness and I’m sure the guides were watching what leftovers came back out of the tent. In which case they must have been pretty happy as there was nary a scrap left over from any of our meals. We’d already run out of sweet chili sauce and were running low on coffee so if it was not already in their plan, they’d be sending out for more supplies before long.
Although we played cards for a while after dinner each night nobody really wanted to stay up for long. Whether it was the altitude or the cold, everyone was keen to get into their sleeping bags and get off to sleep. I read a few pages of Paul Auster each evening but it was a matter of minutes before I’d be nodding off, which was no reflection on the book incidentally – which is very good – just the tiredness that altitude brings.
Go to Chapter 8: A sorry looking glacier