Kilimanjaro - Day 6

After our normal wake up routine, (left- Justin in the morning) we had a relatively short hike (3.5 hours) today from Karanga Camp to Barafu Camp (4600m, 15180ft). We felt pretty good today even after arriving at the camp. No headache and no stomach issues! Yeah! So Barafu Camp is the place were we will set off from for the summit later tonight. As we arrived at our tents, we saw some people that had summitted earlier that day. It was 3 guys and I said, "How was it? Easy?" with a smile. They looked at me like I had just slapped them or something. One guy looks at me and says, "I definitely can't tell you that it was easy..." Crap!

After a hot lunch, we again had a couple hours siesta. In the afternoon we did another short hike, 1.5 hours up and back to the camp. On the way down, Ralph who is 64 and has been climbing like an absolute champ, was having a lot of trouble with his knees. Jamaica and another porter Rama had to help him down. Because of his troubles with the descent on this and other days, Jamaica had to make the call that Ralph shouldn't climb tomorrow. He would just not be able to make it down with his knees in the state that they are in. Ralph is a super classy guys and he took the news in stride! Congratulations to him for making to 15,200ft!!! I hope I can do that when I'm 64! For my parents, who are thinking about climbing Kili, Steven in our group was 54 and he took to the summit with us, not one step behind (if anything one step ahead).

We had a very light dinner and then went to bed at around 7pm. We would be woken up later that night at 11pm to start our ascent up Mt. Kilimanjaro!!!!