Wednesday 29th Feb - Day 4

Today only happens once every 4 years - and it was an amazing day. The route today would take us across "The Saddle" from Mawenzi Peak to Kibo Camp - the starting point for our summit attempt. The walk was relatively flat by Kilimanjaro terms as Kibo Camp is at 4700m and we were starting out from 4330m. We were advised to make sure that we wore plenty of layers for the walk today because apparently there are often very high winds across the Saddle. We filled our water bottles, layered up and set off up a gentle incline to start with, before we would descend a little and cross the saddle. The views were amazing - and the wind stayed away!

Me and George taking a breather on the top of the incline

The group with Kili behind us, before crossing the saddle

Me, a porter and George with the Saddle and Kili behind.

We generally had a pleasant day of walking. It took around 6 hours to reach Kibo hut. There was quite a steep incline at the end, but we could see where we were going - and the route we would take for the summit starting later that evening. During the day, Johnny bounced around and took video messages from each of us on Paul's camera. The output is quite amusing and I'll work out how to share the results soon. There was also a crashed plan on the saddle where sadly some tourists were killed about 4 years earlier along with the pilot. At this altitude - no one could be bothered to collect the metal - no problems with metal theft up here!

On arrival at camp, we signed in yet again at the main hut. This camp is also on the "Coca Cola" route from the north - so called because you can buy Coke all the way up! Indeed - there was Coke for sale at $4 a can. Bargain, when you consider it takes at least 3 days to carry it up here.

We were shown to our tents and given a late lunch/dinner of.....sausages and chips! The food was truly amazing but unfortunately both altitude and exercise act as appetite suppressants so we were at the point where we had to force feed ourselves. We had our final summit briefing after dinner; what time to get up, what to wear, what to take etc. After that, we went to bed at around 6pm - faffed around for a little while preparing ourselves and our kit for a wake up call at 11pm. It was cold again so another set of hot pouches were used to keep us warm. I was then going to stick mine to my cambelbak pouch later as it's that cold on the summit that your water freezes. 

We were woken up after trying to get some sleep at 11pm. We had to be out of our tents and pretty much packed up by 11.30pm as we were told the porters would then come and sleep in our tents for security reasons. We were then given porridge, tea and biscuits - really hard to stomach - before we set off into darkness - and by this time it was also snowing! The light of our head torches and metronome pole pole steps of the person in front keeping us moving for the next 6 hours.