OTHERWORLDLY This page, from left: The landscape on day three conjured Mars; approaching the summit; the pinnacle view from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
104 | WALTER
and come back down to 13,000 feet. No dramatic effect was noted, apart from a few headaches. Day Four, introduction to mountain climbing: Day four included a 5-hour morning hike and a climb to Karanga Camp, at 13,000 feet. We went down and up the valley sides. It was a difficult hike that included high knee lifts, loose rocks, and an uphill trail. We crossed streams and enjoyed the mountain vegetation, the African sun, and the brisk wind. Day Five, balanced cairns: This was the day we reached a 15,800-foot-elevation plateau overlooking Barafu Camp. It was the last resting place before the “big one.” As I had hoped, the African sun was shining on my back. A Sapphire-gin-blue sky introduced us to the beauty of the mountain landscape. This was an emotional hike for us all, as the end was in sight. Previous hikers had created cairns, or balanced stacks of stones, in homage to the mountain. We arrived at our final base camp at lunchtime. We were now prepared and ready for the final 30-hour summit climb. The Final 30-Hour Day, round trip to the summit: We established a base higher
than expected to give us a leg up on the grueling 6-hour nighttime climb to get us up the southwest side of the mountain. After a high-carbohydrate dinner of pasta and bread, at 6 p.m. we retired to our tents for rest and hopefully some deep sleep. I dozed off to the sound of gale force winds and the flapping of the canvas of the partially zipped tented “toilet” doors. The wind was fierce. Even from our sleeping bags, temperatures were noticeably dropping. We were, after all, nearly three-and-a-half miles up. We were woken at 11 p.m. for a breakfast of porridge, toast, and raspberry jam. We dressed in our sub-zero degree Gore-Tex clothing, and at 12:30 a.m., all 11 hikers, the head guide, and four assistant guides started the final uphill hike. It was a clear, cloudless night with a Bible-black sky and brilliant stars, one of those nights that made you wish you had majored in astronomy. The moon had a piercing white center and five concentric rings. We could see the Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our solar system, and 100 billion stars. Its dust lanes, nebulas, and star clusters arched across the night sky from the northeast to the
