Before I Lose My Mind: Kilimanjaro Expedition 2012: Day 4 Scrambling Up and Down

Up the wall we go

The night before in the dining tent, I was sharing that it was "hump day", meaning it was the mid point of the trek, between the start of the trek and summit day. There was plenty of excitement leading up to the trip, but now that the trek had started, and 3 days down, the nerve were starting to really kick in, and Barranco Wall would be an interesting challenge. We'd seen photos of the Wall and also videos of climbers going up the wall, and it was certainly no trek. I mean, it's called "Wall" for a reason, so there'd be times when we'd have to use our hands as well to get up the wall.

The morning was the first of the minus 5 degrees ones, and we were amused that the water in the wash basins (that the porters leave out for us when we wake up to wash up) had frozen into solid discs. After breakfast, as we were getting our backpacks on, we could already see that some trekkers had started their way up the wall, and I tell you, I had to squint hard to see them clearly. No, my eyesight was perfectly fine. It was because they were quite far away and so small on a large wall.

Click to enlarge the vid, and try to locate the climbers

As I'd reckoned that my hands would be preoccupied with the scrambling, I decided to dispense with Kat's Panasonic GX-1 camera and strapped on the GoPro on my head. I was hoping that I would be able to get some nice video grabs of the scrambling up the wall from a first person point of view (yeah, Blair Witch camera motion that makes you nauseate from motion sickness). No luck with that. Seems like the freezing temperature had wreaked havoc with the GoPro, and it was flashing through all the modes. I'd previously brought it down to 60m depth underwater and it still performed well, so looks like temperature had finally defeated it, albeit temporarily. Oh well, no luck then.

The amazing porters. Nothing stops them

I must admit that although I was nervous as I approached the wall, when I started the first bit of scrambling, I started to realise why people told me that the scrambling would be fun! It was definitely a nice and refreshing change from the last 3 days of trudging along on our feet, hands on the trekking poles. For the scramble up Barranco Wall, I had to figure out the best places to put my foot on to push myself up, and also which hold would be best to push or pull myself. I'd done a little bit of sport climbing before, so the prior (albeit limited) experience was useful, and even made the whole experience fun. I'd read in some places that the if you're afraid of heights, going up Barranco Wall would be scary, and to be honest, I've yet to decide whether I'm actually afraid of heights. But when I was on the Wall and I looked back, seeing how much ground we've covered, seeing how small our camp seemed from up where we were, gave me a thrill.

After an hour and half, the whole team had made it up to the top of the wall, and the view from the top was breathtaking. From the top of the Wall, you have a commanding view of the Kibo volcanic cone, and the surrounding landscape. It was the perfect photo opportunity and Swee Chiow practically set up an outdoor photo studio and got each member of the team on top of a rock for photo shots. Unfortunately, I've yet to get a copy of mine, so I can't post it here. But I still managed to get a student to take a picture of me up there. For the first time since the trek started, the whole team was together on the trail, enjoying themselves. The sun was out, the weather was warm, everyone was happy. Half an hour later, it was time to move on.

Going over the top, the trail continued with many up and down sections across small streams and then up to the Karanga campsite. Now, keep in mind that the Barranco Wall is a 250metre near vertical rise, so the descent on the other side wasn't going to be a walk in the park. It was rather steep and with numerous patches of wet boulders, and also parts of the trail was broken rocks, so it was rather dangerous at times. We were advised to use just one trekking pole so that we have a hand free to do a bit of scrambling. One or two parts required us to stretch and lower ourselves down to the next boulder because some of the boulders were pretty darned big. At the bottom of the descent (as you can see, it's a valley), it's a bit of a river flowing through, and once we were over that, it was another climb. Well, same ol' same ol' again, up we climbed.

3.5 hours after we started, we'd reached Karanga Camp (4200metres), earlier than what we had anticipated, and everyone was delighted at the efficiency with time. After identifying my duffle bag and it was sent to my tent, I took the opportunity to catch a nap before lunch, and another one after lunch. As we'd gotten into camp just after noon, it meant that we had a lot of time. I was glad to see some of the students sitting with the guides and some of the porters, chatting with them and finding out about life and the culture in Tanzania. When I woke up from my nap, I also had a chat with a couple of the guides and found out much about Tanzania, the politics, the people, and its post-independence policies to foster nation building. Overall, it was a very good afternoon for me, getting to know a country that its people had welcomed us.