Did not get a lot of sleep and needed to take some pain killers in the middle of the night, but still woke feeling like I hadn't had much sleep. Watching the sun come up over Shira camp at 12,500 ft, the wind whipping through the tent with stunning views in front was good. But nothing compared to turning round to properly see some more of the mountain and the challenge which lay ahead.
Soon there was an excited buzz around the camp as more people got up, also looking forward to starting another day of this challenge.
We had a long, hot day hiking up to the Lunar Tower where we had a leisurely sit down hot lunch. This was part of our acclimatisation of climbing high (The Lunar tower was 15,300ft) and then sleeping lower.
Today was the day when I first started to struggle, the last couple of hours to the Lunar Tower was a really hard slog, headache and nausea, really draining my energy.
I had a little power nap outside the lunch tent before being rudely woken by our guide Nelson with his foot. The feeling of a bad hangover (which is what altitude sickness feels like), was not good when you were sitting and trying to eat lunch. One of our group rushed out from lunch as she felt sick.
The headache slowly dispersed as we walked further around the mountain as the path took us lower.
We hiked for nine and a half hours, covering 6.5 miles and climbed 5577ft, arriving into Barranco Wall camp, at 13,000ft at 7pm, as it was starting to get cold and was nearly dark.
A little pick me up was getting to speak to Tracey and Ollie.
The enormity of the Barranco Wall which we were due to climb tomorrow was not lost on anyone, it was huge.
Soon our tired group has had a wet wipe wash and were huddled in the mess tent, eating under candles and head torch light. Everyone was tucked up in bed by 9pm, the temperature had already dropped and the ice was forming on my tent as I was trying to take some night photos of Kibo peak, trying to capture the moon reflecting off the snow covered peak, whilst trying not to think how big Barranco Wall is.
https://www.justgiving.com/Tony-Mattravers/
