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I awoke to the sound of the ever present ravens, they are beautiful birds but man are they noisy! And do they love the campsites!!! The ravens here look very similar to ours with the exception of a collar of white feathers.
We are not rushing again today as we have a short 3 hour trek up to Barafu Hut at 4600m. We left at 8:45am and went ever so slowly (pole, pole) up, up and more up to Barafu. We stopped for a couple of breaks and finally arrived intact at 12:30pm, just in time for one of Antonio’s fabulous lunches served by sweet Ema!
After lunch the next order of the day was to climb a little higher to help with the acclimatization. The rule of thumb is that you must climb higher than your sleeping altitude, otherwise you will end up with a terrible headache and possible altitude sickness.
Winston and John take us up the summit trail to Kosovo Point at 4700m. No matter the altitude gain, it always is challenging when getting your body to a new altitude. We rested for about 20 minutes and then headed back to camp. We were back in a couple of hours and when we returned Ema was waiting to serve us popcorn and tea – lord, this will be the first time I have gained weight at altitude!
After tea we rested for a couple of hours, along with our mice buddies. Yup this camp has mice everywhere so we had to close our tents up tight with the zippers up at the top! I had one scurry along the bottom of the tent and although it looked like it was in my tent, thankfully it was on the outside.
Around 6:00pm we were called back for an early dinner as we would be waking up at 4:00am for our summit attempt. Before 8:00pm we were all tucked into bed for a long winter’s nap – oh sorry that is ’twas the night before Christmas!’
It was so good to crawl back into our tents as just existing at a new altitude is exhausting.
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