Email No. 6: July 8, 2003

Mt Kilimanjaro Climb, July 2-7th 2003

Hey there!

So, I just got off the mountain yesterday afternoon. I think that I can honestly say that climbing that was one of the toughest things I have ever done. I made it though! All seven of us did, and I ended up being only about ten minutes behind the six guys I went with. I definitely could have been in better shape before hand though. The whole experience was really neat though, and made me want to do a whole bunch more hiking, camping and backpacking.

The scenery throughout the entire hike was amazing. The first day we walked 18 km through the rain forest and then camped. The second day reminded me a bit of parts of the mid-california coast with the shrubbery and mist and camped at 3,800 meters. The third day we hiked up to 4,900 meters through lava rock, and did a little rock climbing before descending to 3,900 meters to sleep. The fourth day we hiked around 4,500 meters all day long, and then slept at 4,700 meters. Well, we didn't really sleep... we went to bed at 7 pm and woke up at 11pm to get dressed and ready to start our final ascent. We left at midnight and hiked for 6 hours to reach what is called Stella Point, which is 5,650 meters or so... The last hour of that, after sleeping for less than four hours was what nearly killed me. I made it though, only to discover that there was another hour and a half to the absolutely highest point... 5,785 meters... Uhuru peak. I rested for a little bit and made my way up there, the whole time getting the most awesome view of the sun rising over Gilman's point.... honestly, the entire experience was absolutely breath taking. I didn't get any pictures of the sunrise, as I was concentrating on making it up that last 150 meters, but took lots of pictures of other stuff and views after the sunrise. It's funny to think that I paid 700 dollars just to see how far I could stretch my body, but it was a lot of fun. I'm definitely looking forward to doing a lot more hiking when I come home to the states.

So, I"m back in Dar for a few days. I'm going to see about my plane ticket to England for Xmas tommorrow. I'll email you again to let you know about that once it's done. I love and miss you guys.

Jess