Berg

Hear Wally's Call from Africa

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We arrived here a few moments ago, about a half-hour ago, and watched the sun glistening off the glaciers above—really spectacular view. Right now we're in the clouds again and as always we're constantly changing clothes and making adjustments up here. We've had a great trek to this point. Yesterday our walk over to the Great Barranco Camp was really enjoyable. This is a particularly strong group; They have no trouble with the altitude and we just had a great walk. We descended down through the clouds and spent the night at the base of the Barranco Wall.

Got a good view of the spectacular wall above us, just before dinner last night, and this morning it was back in the clouds. But we will be trekking now to the Karanga River and we'll call you again from there. This will be a real key stop for us. The Karanga River is where we'll have a big lunch — eat a lot of food. Tobias, Michael, John, and James, their key Chagga staff, and the porters will make the best use of that water before we move up to Barafu at 15,100ft. We'll carry 60 liters of water up there tonight and we'll stage our summit attempt tomorrow from there.

You'll be hearing a great deal more from us as we aim higher. Hopefully, I'll call you from the very summit of Kilimanjaro, Uhuru Peak, sometime tomorrow, maybe about 24 hours from now or less. But for the time being, everybody is doing really well. We have Jamie's poetic banter has been chronicling this trip and I'm not sure if I'll be able to relay some of his epic poem to you as it goes along, but we may do so. This first Alpine Ascents trip on Kilimanjaro is going very well to this point and the next 24 hours will be really key and we'll get some dispatches to you as we go along here.

—Alpine Ascents Guide Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent