Climbing Kilimanjaro - Day 6 - Karanga -> Barafu

Hi everyone,

Here is day 6 of our Kilimanjaro climb which is from Karanga camp to Barafu.

Day 1 Linky
Day 2 Linky
Day 3 Linky
Day 4 Linky
Day 5 Linky
Video at bottom of post.

Day 6 Statistics

Total Distance 2.2 miles/ 3.5km
Total Time 3hrs
Altitude gain - 2085 ft /635m
Final altitude 15200 ft /4630 m

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After a good nights sleep, we woke to a surprise. The guys had set up our breakfast outside as opposed to inside the food tent. This was possibly the best place in the world to have an al-fresco breakfast.

Breakfast al-fresco

The slow trek up to Barafu

Today's trek would be quite a short one, only 3 hours in length so that we could get to Barafu camp rested and ready for our midnight attempt at the summit. The thought of the arduous 5-hour trek to the summit, the return down to Barafu and then on to Mweka camp was playing on our mind. 12 hours of hiking was not like anything we had ever done before, especially in this kind of terrain. However, the weather was great, the views were amazing so we just took it in as best as we could and tried not to get too worried about what was in front of us. We were now at way over 4000m and the altitude was beginning to play with us. We were completely unable to eat (much to the disdain of Paul, the chef) and the headaches were getting stronger. Even standing up was leaving me out of breath.

This is where we are headed

There were some amazing cloud formation at the top of Kili this morning. These were probably due to some quite strong winds at the summit. We were hoping that they would die down a little bit before our attempt in the evening, although the weather was probably going to be the least of our worries. We reached Barafu camp and it was really busy, probably more people that we had seen at any other point on the hike. However, the guys had managed to grab us a great spot on the edge of camp with a view of Mwenzi.

View from the tent with Mwenzi in the distance

Amazing cloud formations on the summit

There's not a lot more to say about this day other than we went to bed nice and early ready to be woken up at 00:00 to start our trek in the dark and cold to the summit. This was why we were here and it was about to get very real.

Thanks for reading, day 7, SUMMIT NIGHT coming soon...