Hike Day 3: New Shira Camp to Barranco Camp

Start: New Shira Camp (Elevation = 12,620 ft)
High Point: Lava Tower (Elevation = 15,230 ft)
End: Barranco Camp (Elevation = 13,074 ft)

Cold this morning at camp. Ice fell off of the tent when opening the zipper in the morning. The whole tent was covered in frost / ice. Woke up at 6:30 AM, again before the call for breakfast. Very glad to have a -20 degree sleeping bag. Simko and Steph both have headaches from the altitude. Breakfast was:

- Oatmeal
- Mango
- Small Omelette-like things w/ peppers and carrots
- Sausage

Wore base layers and fleeces to start out in the morning after breakfast. The sun was out and the summit was visible so soon the fleeces were shed. Godfrey, our assistant guide, was leading us this day. Azizi said he hadn't slept well so he stayed behind at camp and caught up with us later. Since porters leave after we do and arrive at camp well before, you are constantly being passed by them. We developed an acronym 'PCT' = Porter Coming Through.. This was usually followed by the direction they were coming from. For example: PCT Left, and we would move to the right.

Another development is that we refused to say the word 'rain' after the bad luck we had with it the first day. Azizi called it the 'bad friend' so we called it that for the rest of the trip. Azizi also taught us that Juah was the word for sun in Swahili so we started refering to it as the 'good friend' or Juah. We thought of ideas for T-shirts with Juah involved, but didn't figure there was any way of making it appropriate enough to wear anywhere.

We were going very 'pole pole' behind Godfrey as we climbed steadily upward towards lava tower (~15,000 ft). Unfortunately, by the time we arrived our 'bad friend' had returned in the form of sleet. There is actually a large lava tower at this point which is supposed to be interesting to look at, but unfortunately we could hardly even see it through the clouds and sleet. This was also our lunch stop and we all agreed that a quick lunch was in order here given the conditions. Lunch was again a bag lunch including:

- Egg + Tomato sandwich
- 'Hot Pocket' with curry, carrots, pepper
- Orange Juice
- Small banana
- Fried chicken

The rest of the day was all downhill. The point of going to lava tower is to get used to the altitude slowly. One climbs to a high altitude but sleeps lower. There wasn't much going 'pole pole' on the way downhill given the conditions. We all used our hiking poles, but then Godfrey stopped us shortly thereafter and had all of us collapse all of our poles. From what we could tell, he felt like holding the metal poles in the cold could cause our hands to freeze somehow. We are all planning to use them on summit night, though.

The vegetation in this area is very strange. Most of the plants are very small at this elevation, but there are some very large ones which almost look like a palm tree on the top (picture below). At one point, we stopped for a quick break and Steph dropped her waterbottle on a rock which spilled a decent amount of the water and put a large dent in it. Fortunately, it did not puncture the bottle to the point where it leaked.

At ~3:30, we arrived at camp just as it started to rain again. We stayed in the camp and got orgainzed until we were called for tea and popcorn. After tea, the warden stopped by the tents asking us to sign in. Dinner was at ~6:00 and was:

- Leek (i.e. onion) soup
- Beef stew with noodles
- Fruit (watermelon, orange, mango)

The skies cleared off after dinner just before dark. We could see the summit for the first time since the morning. We could see the lights of Moshi clearly from our camp.