Tanzania - Day 4 of Kili Hike

Barranco Huts (13,077 ft) to Karanga Valley Camp (13,235 ft) Distance: ~3 miles

If we had to do another part of the hike over (other than the thrill of summit night), both Matt and I would climb the Barranco Wall again and again.  We needed our hands and feet to navigate part of the wall, but since we both like rock climbing, it made the hike that much more fun.  The craziest part of it all was seeing the line of hikers, porter, and guides making their way up the wall.

We had all hands on deck of this part of the hike for the simple fact they needed to direct traffic!  Issa and Patrick were acting like traffic cops while Iddy, Nass, and Abdulla made sure our group stayed together.  The porters always walk faster than the hikers so they can get to camp first and set everything up, so if we didn't have our traffic cops, the line of porters (not just ours, everyone who camped that morning) would have lasted forever.  Issa and Patrick would stop the porters and let us hikers break in so we could get moving too.

There are parts of the wall where you are slipping between rocks or pulling yourself up to the next rock.  I'm not sure how the porters do that with 30 pounds of gear on their shoulders!  They really are the hardest working people on the mountain.

It took us about an hour and a half to get to the top of the wall.  That includes about 10-15 minutes of just waiting while everyone made their way through the bottleneck portions.  It was such a great view from the top - sunny and clear so you could see the farm fields at the base of Kili.

The rest of the hike was pretty uneventful.  Although, it was determined that the Karanga Valley Camp is misnamed.  It's not in the valley.  It's on the other side of the valley so you have to go down one side and up the other to get to the camp.

This was the first time we had a short enough hike that we got to have a warm lunch in the mess tent (as opposed to a box lunch on the trail).  The cook made fried chicken (a staple - we had that almost every meal) and french fries.  We haven't commented much on food, but we destroyed the french fries.  Finally, a taste that was familiar!!  Overall, we had no complaints about the food.  Well, Matt wasn't a fan of the porridge in the morning, but if that's the biggest complaint, we'll call the food a success.

After lunch, we had time to just hang out, nap, write in journals, chat with the guides/porters, etc.  After a few hours, Nass and Patrick took us on a acclimatization hike.  We went about 500 feet up the next day's trail.  Once there, we took 15 minutes to build a structure out of the rocks (sort of like a cairn).  We named ours Corner Tower after Nas.  If you ever asked Nas how far it was to the next camp, he'd say something about it being just around the corner.  But we never knew what corner he was talking about - there are a lot of corners, we didn't know which was THE corner.  This is how we learned that guides lie (in a funny way, not a dishonest way).  They don't want to discourage you, so their estimates of how far something is can be pretty far off to the actual distance.  It became a running joke the entire hike.

This is Issa and Corner Tower