"Day 5 of Speedy’s charity challenge. To donate, please click here: https://my.wfpaltruist.org/pfp/SpeedygoesKilimanjaro “It now all becomes a blur. Days, camps, dinners, walks now seem to fade into each other. It’s a cold hike. Everyone is feeling the strain and can’t wait to reach camp. After a few hours, we reach Barafu camp. Barafu means “ice” in Swahili and it feels it. We continue on an “acclimatization hike” to explore the first part of our hike for summit night. There is a fair bit of scrambling on all fours, but two hours later we reach the turning point and head back to camp. That’s easy, we think. In hindsight, this was not even the doorstep of what was ahead of us. After a good meal and some extra layers to keep warm we think it’s time to sleep. We are expecting to leave for the summit at around 2-4 am, but our guide decides to get ahead of the crowds and leave at 10.30pm! No sleep!! We can’t believe it. We gear up with all we’ve got – layers of trousers, tops and jackets, hand warmers, foot warmers, two pairs of gloves, and so on. A very rushed “breakfast” and off we go in the middle of the night with our head torches leading the way. All we can see are our fellow hikers’ torches - a line of little lights going up the mountain. Like little ducks one after another. The CamelBak freezes after the third sip and is rendered useless. ‘Forward’, that is all that counts now. Every now and then we look up into the darkness at the endless line of little lights ahead and wonder: how much further? Our guide wouldn’t tell us. It starts snowing. And then the rafikis start to sing for us. In the middle of the night. How nice are they? At what must have been about 7 hours hike through darkness, the sun starts to come up. Hope.” Start height: 3865m, Day distance: 3.3km, Height gain: 743m, Total distance: 39.4km, End height: 4608m, 5 hours of trekking #speedy #audi #sport #instagood #photooftheday #africa #kilimanjaro #adventure #toys #follow #like"
Via @AudiMiddleEast
Via @AudiMiddleEast