Day 8: Climb to Summit Uhuru Peak
MOUNTAIN ROUTE OVERVIEW
Summit is an 11 to 16 hour day. Climbers go to sleep after an early dinner the night before and are woken up around midnight to being their summit attempt. After a light snack, they ascent into darkness, cold, and wind. Temperatures usually range from -4° to 5° fahrenheit. This is where climbers feel the altitude, so they’ll carry as little as possible, hike slowly, and take many rests to ease the symptoms. They’ll make their way up a trail that is flanked by the Ratzel and Rebman Glaciers. After climbing for around six hours, they’ll reach the edge of Kilimanjaro’s crater between Stella and Hans Meyer Points. They’re just an hour from the summit when they get here! After a hot cup of tea and rest, they’ll begin climbing on a rocky and icy trail to the summit, Uhuru Peak, at 19,344 feet which is the highest point on the continent of Africa. Once they reach the summit, they’ll spend a few minutes making sure they touch the sign, celebrating with the group, and taking pictures before descending to Kosovo Camp. Once they reach camp, they’ll eat lunch and take a short nap before continuing their descent to Mweka Camp. Once they arrive at camp, they’ll have dinner and go to bed early after a 13 to 19 hour day of hiking!
MOUNTAIN ROUTE STATS
ASCENT
Starting elevation 15,400 feet
Ending elevation 19,344 feet
Elevation gain 3,944 feet
Distance hiked 4 miles
Average hiking time 8 to 10 hours
DESCENT
Starting elevation 19,344 feet
Ending elevation 10,200 feet
Elevation loss 9,144 feet
Distance hiked 8 miles
Average hiking time 7 to 9 hours
JOURNAL ENTRY
The reason we came on the trip because it was titled “ The Younglife Kilimanjaro trip” Today was the longest day of our trip, while I am writting this in the afternoon at 2PM local time my watch already recorded 7.75 miles and an elevation change of 3275 feet from base camp to the top of the mountain and back to base. As I am sittting here we still have another 3 hour decend to 12000 feet for our last overnight camp!
Back to today, waking up at midnight, breakfast at 12:30 and ready to leave kosovo camp at 16000 feet, shortly after midnight! Our track takes up at a pretty steep path to the top of Kilimanjaro, like a stream of headlights under a perfect sky filled with stars, Kevin even saw a falling star. It was cold in the evening and thruout the night, but no rain and no SNOW as we all feared as we we set out on this journey! It was a tough over 3000 feet climb with steep parts and cold wind wipping in our faces. About the time we reach the first top the sky turned red and the sun broke through giving us a beautiful sky the lord make just for us!
We hit the first plato at stella point at 18885, where it was extremely cold and windy, still another hour to the actual highest point in Africa! So we kept on walking for another hour to finally reach Uhuru Peak at 19341 !! We took pictures and all these will be posted on both the beyond and the dgl websites, as well as social media soon! Our day however just started because we had to decent back to cosovo camp at 16000 feet, and after a short rest and delicious pizza our journey continued to camp Millinium at 12000 feet our last night in the tent before returning to base camp for goodbys tomorrow. During our decent we really learned how steep some parts were and being me, my porter and myself were going way to fast, resulting in me flying by 8 other people descending on my back ( just a few scraps and scratches) most of us returned to our camp before 10AM! We left our camp around 2:30 - 3:00 to arrive ar our last camp Milliniumon our trip.
I can say for myself, but 100% believe our whole team has been super impressed with our guides, leadership, porters, kitchen ( it was truly unbelieveable what they cooked for us). and the overall setup and logistics provided by Beyond, and special thanks to Kevin Edelbrock from DGL for putting this trip together. During dinner we all discovered that reaching the top of Kilimanjaro was important, but the journey, brothership, and friendships are just as or even more important during our time together these past seven days!
It was a trip of a livetime!
~ Roel Harsta