Kilimanjaro: Day 5 - The Great Barranco Wall, "Breakfast" and Karranga

Katie and I at Barranco

The next morning we had a choice to make.  First, we could go back to Shira 2 where an emergency road could get us out.  This meant that we would have to go back up to the lava-tower which is very difficult in this direction and was out of the question.  The second option was going straight down.  Barranco is situated on clifs and this would mean some very difficult scaling and sudo-technical climbing.  If Katie still had breathing problems this morning, that is the option that we would have taken.  Fortunately, Katie had seemed to recover from her pulmonary edema and was out of immediate danger so we decided to go with the third option.

The second option: Straight down from Barranco...

 The third option was to continue to Karranga camp which was at the same altitude as Barranco and had a recovery/supply train that could take us down the mountain.  To do this, we had to continue with the normal Lemosho/Machame route and climb the Great Barranco Wall which is known by the locals as "Breakfast".  This day was supposed to be easy as we just had to get over this wall so we were eager to try it out.

Third option: straight up and over the wall.  Katie's going to do it.

Rule #1: Don't look down

Rule #2: Don't look up

Katie's getting some help.  Our assistant guide is carrying her pack.

 This is the steepest part of the hike where hands are required to pull yourself up to each ledge.  After about 300m of pure vertical, we were at the top of the wall.  We had thought that the Karranga camp was simply on the other side of this wall, but all we saw was an empty valley below us.  We walked down and then up the 300m again on the hill dubbed "Lunchtime", and then hoped to see the camp beyond this next ridge which we did!  What we couldn't see from the top of "Lunchtime" was a quite large valley between us and the camp.  As we got closer to the valley, we started to see how deep it was and our hearts sank.  Eventually we made it, and it only took us about 4.5 hours which is apparently fairly average after some research although our guide gave us the target of 3 hours for this day.

On top of "Breakfast".  We feel so close to the summit here.

Our guide had also suggested to me to stop taking the Diamox so that I could enjoy walking without the side effects (tingling extremities and excessive urination).  Since I had been taking this preventatively since Shira I don't think that I had properly acclimatised. Regardless of the reason, this was the most tiring day for me and by the time we had reached camp at 13:30 all I could do was set up my sleeping bag and flop.  I took a Diamox at this time and about an hour later I was ripe with energy again.  Katie on the other-hand started to wheeze again once she lied down. We weren't able to get down the mountain that day and so we decided to stay at Karranga camp for the night.

Today we had actually only hiked 5 km and had ended up at the same altitude as we had started, but the total 1000 m or so of climbing and the equal amount of descent was enough for us that day.
Unlike Barranco which is in a box-canyon, Karranga is completely exposed to the elements on the face of the mountain.  This is a very cold camp and despite the slightly-better breathing, Katie wasn't able to get much sleep due to the cold.  I, on the otherhand, slept like a baby except for when Katie woke up gasping at one point (which I've heard is called "paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea").