Thursday, September 10

Forest Camp —> Shira Ridge Camp 1 5.5 miles

9,150 ft. —> 11,450 ft. 2,300 ft. up

7:00am —> 2:00pm 7 hours

Our mornings all begin the same way…. with porters arriving to our tent with coffee (french press)! Milk and one sugar please! This morning, coffee call was at 5:15. Then we finish getting read for the day, packing up, and visiting the toilet tent (more on that later). Breakfast was at 6:00 (porridge, toast, fruit, eggs, bacon, more tea and coffee). Then hiking boots on and final visit to the toilet before hitting the trail at 7:00.

Frank & Christopher packing up our tent

The trail was dry and dusty and went “up” right away. And kept going up! At first it was forest, as it had been the day before, but then we moved into a transition and then in to the heath zone. There is more shrub and scrub and lava rocks - just rockier in general. And at times the dirt was near black.

We stopped for snacks as we were not going to have lunch until we got to camp. After a good long time of going up, we got to a vista where we looked out over the Shira Plateau and could see tents and buildings in the distance…our camp!

Here come the porters!

Protea

Kelli enjoying snack time!

Our camp in the distance!

We started down toward camp and were quickly met by our personal porters who had come up to carry our day packs for us! We learned that this is not something that our guides ask them to do, or that our travel company asks them to do. Rather it is just part of the hospitality of being a porter and serving the clients who come to climb Kili. What a gift to us as we went down a fairly steep and rocky stretch before it leveled out to a dirt path for the final stretch. We arrived at 2:00, quickly got out of our boots and went to the dining tent for lunch: carrot ginger soup, bacon (thick square slabs), salad, breads & biscuits.