Day 3, Breakfast in the forest
February 26, 2010
We woke up to the pitter patter of rain drops on our tents and an early morning mist that had enveloped Mti Mkubwa. I was thankful that our first night on Mt Kilimanjaro had passed without event. Given the first day’s incident at the airport, I had expected to be woken up half way through the night by the sound of sticks chasing away a snake or perhaps something bigger.
We quickly packed our sleeping bags and put on our jackets to head out for the day’s briefing. It was surprisingly cooler in the early morning hours than I’d remembered it being the previous night. Zed explained that our target for the day was a seven hour hike through the forests and moorlands up to Shira camp at 3,840 meters. The area was also known as Shira Two, since there was a stop along the route known as Shira One. The hike was going to take us over a kilometer higher up the mountain, but we were still far from the height at which the symptoms of altitude sickness were expected to kick in.
Our first breakfast on the mountain was a porridge that the porters had prepared while we were being briefed. We were going to spend the next three days on a diet rich in carbohydrates and plenty of fluids to keep our energy levels high and help us acclimatize. The porters began disassembling our tents soon after breakfast and within an hour we were off into the forest.
It had rained all morning and it continued to rain through the afternoon, but the coarser soil after Mti Mkubwa wasn’t as slippery as it had been the day before. Within an hour of our hike the trees of the Lemosho glades began to disappear, giving way to open heather moorlands and tiny streams of rainwater which had begun to carve their way through the mountainside. We had covered over 750 meters in the morning by the time we stopped for lunch at Shira One and had another 400 to go before we reached Shira Two.
Although it was high noon in the heart of Africa, it was humid and freezing on Mt Kilimanjaro. The route to Shira Two was more of a walk across the plateau than a climb, and we reached it comfortably on schedule at seven in the evening. We caught our first glimpse of the Western Breach with its stunning glaciers in the east just before the sun had begun to set. The porters quickly set up camp and prepared our dinner for the evening. The temperatures tonight were going to be even cooler than the previous night and Masoud wasn’t taking any chances when he went to sleep. He took off his hiking boots and zipped himself up in his sleeping bag right after dinner, leaving no chance to falling asleep outside his sleeping bag, as he had done the previous night.