Hi everyone, this is Todd. It's Wednesday night (10am PST) and we're at Shira Plateau at 12,500. We just had a great hike up today with a lot of good weather; beautiful hike up a ridge through some moor lands, a variety of bushes, and flowers, it was just a wonderful hike up to the rocks.

We woke up this morning at 6am and had bed tea and got up at 7 for breakfast and were on the road by 8. It was a beautiful hike up through the heath forests and tall grass. We were above the clouds all day long and we could look down and see them covering the plains of Africa.

It's about six or seven hours up, and about three-quarters of the way up we had lunch. All of the porters and African guides do a great job. They throw tables out in the middle of nowhere and put the napkins and the tablecloths and the dishes out, and we had oranges and bananas, avocadoes, tomatoes, sandwiches.

Then we slowly walked, very, very slowly the rest of the way into camp. We've been moving very, very slowly, making good time but just so that we acclimatize well for the next days to come. Everyone is acclimatizing very well.

We had a great dinner tonight, fried chicken and greens and sandwiches, potatoes and coleslaw. Then we celebrated Ruth and Susan's birthdays with back massages and a birthday cake for the two of them. I'm going to let Ruth come on and say hi.

'Hi, this is Ruth cybercasting from Africa. I just wanted to let you know a little bit about today's events. We went through several different climate zones with different types of plants the whole way up. It's probably the most beautiful trek I think I've ever been on.

'Everybody seems very happy and quite excited. We had a bit of a sprinkle tonight when we got into camp but we also had a beautiful sunset and a rainbow. Everybody seems in good spirits. Harris still has all his teeth so we're really happy about that; however, he did find the tooth he lost in Nepal somewhere in his gear. Billy's doing well now that he's learning how to blow up his Therm-A-Rest. So far, the only nickname that we know of is Jennifer who has now become Jumbo Mama.

'So this is Ruth signing off, we're all having a great time and I hope you'll keep following along with us. Bye-bye.'

We're just settled into bed; everything is good, everyone's healthy and the climb is going well. So we'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye-bye.

— Todd Burleson, Alpine Ascents International Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent