Climbing Kili: Day 6 - Uhuru Peak to Karanga Camp to Mweka Camp

Elevation (m): 5895m to 3100m
Elevation (ft): 19,300ft to 10,200ft
Distance: 23km
Habitat: Stone scree, ice-capped summit and alpine desert

I have absolutely nothing positive to say about our descent.

You mentally prepare yourself to go up, but no one ever tells you how hard it is to come down. My knees ached, my toes jammed to the front of my boots and no matter how many layers I stripped off I couldn't stop sweating profusely beneath the beating sun. Other descenders flew by us, skiing down the scree like they were born and raised on the stuff. We couldn't go faster than one plunk at a time. We were exhausted. We were hungry. We fell over. We considered faking injuries so we could get taken down on one of the wheelie carts. It was hard to wrap our heads around the fact that we were going down what we had just come up. Then we realized that we weren't. Robert had run down with all of our heavy layers, and the rest of us had somehow veered off of Machame Route and gotten ourselves on Mweka. There was no sign of human life. There was also no sign of our camp, which we had been able to see when we first started down. My faith in Gilbert waned. I told him as much. Kaylan yelled at me. Four hours later (it's supposed to take 3), we finally made it back to Karanga, barely awake enough to take off our boots. We collapsed into the tent and fell immediately into slumber.

I wish I could say that's where the day ended, but no. Ohhhh no. Six hours up followed immediately by four hours down wasn't enough for the day. They woke us up 2 hours later, fed us lunch, and off we went. Again.

The sleep and food had revived us to the point of being able to carry on coherent conversation. Plans for the next phase of our trip, who's who in Kampala, news on the homefront. The terrain was different but just as frustrating...now there were rocks to bash your toes into.

We celebrated a couple hours in when we made it to Mweka Camp. Until we told it was not Mweka Camp. We were, in fact, only halfway to Mweka Camp.

That was my breaking point. While Kay and Matt played Ghost and jumped from stone to stone, I ached with every step. This is definitely not me in the picture below. I was sitting down in a huge huff in the middle of the path somewhere after loudly declaring, "That's it. I'm stopping right here." I may or may not have cried. Silent, fat tears of toe pain and tiredness. I also may or may not have slammed my poles into the ground as hard as I could. A few times. Decades later, we made it to Mweka Camp. I gingerly removed my boots and hobbled into the tent, leaving Kay and Matt to have the tea and conversation.

That they did. I rejoined them for dinner, still limping but a touch less agitated. They bought a round of Kilimanjaros/Cokes for our team - illicit luxuries smuggled up by the entrepreneurial sorts. Everyone was thrilled for the treat, as were we. Our first sign of civilization. Even I'll cheers to that.

Invisibly.