holyspiritbns.scoilnet.ie

Hi again everyone,
We didn’t delay at the top, it took a lot out of us to get there.

We got back to our previous night’s camp, slept for about 90 mins, then ate and packed up for the big descent.
As you can see from the tracker we make great progress this morning covering about 9km back to what will be our final camp on the mountain at about 12000 feet or 3700m.

Now at 7.30 pm local time, we are about to go to sleep in advance of a last early start to a hike of about 7 hours to bring us back to the park entrance.

Then it is back on a bus to return to Moshi.

You have no idea how much we are all looking forward to a shower. Everybody is in such great spirits after the achievements of early this morning.

But now on to that very inviting sleeping bag- more news from off the mountain tomorrow!

Hi everyone

Yes, we have made it to the top of Kilimanjaro. We started out last night around 11pm GMT and 7 hours later we reached the summit. We covered about 4300 feet in a distance of about 3 miles. It was the hardest thing that any of us have ever done. We are quite tired now but really proud of what we have achieved this week. You can see exactly on the tracking device our route to the top.

We didnt delay at the top but made tracks back down again fairly quickly. We turned off the device so as not to confuse you with the trail to the top. We will turn it on later today again. We still have a few hours trekking to do today to get much lower down the mountain.

We will hopefully be back later today with more news .

Patrick, Damian  & Jon

Hi everybody.

11am GMT – eating popcorn !

We are now at camp at 15420 feet. Todays climb was in honour of Ty. We covered about 7km in total. The early part was a bit steep but we made a lot of progress later on when the terrain flattened out as we moved onto another shoulder.

It is pleasant enough here at the moment. The layers of clothing we wear helps us keep warm. But we are quite exposed up here so when the wind blows it gets very chilly.

This morning we passed the wreck of a plane that crashed here on on the mountain 2 years ago. Very poignant to see the shell of it just lying there.

It is definitely getting harder to breathe with every extra bit of height gained.

We are resting up in anticipation of our final push tonight starting at midnight in honour of Averi. as we said before we expect to summit around 7am local time.

Keep up all your good wishes,

Jon, Damian & Patrick

Hi everyone,

Today we climbed to honour Zoe.

We arrived earlier today at our camp for the night at about 4500 m or 14700 ft. We have set up beside a small lake fed by the meltwater from a nearby glacier. We are experiencing the effects of altitude a little, some lightheadedness and minor headaches but nothing to worry about.

It has been hard to sleep the past couple of nights, most of us getting no more than about 2 hours proper sleep but we are resting up just the same.

It is noticeably colder up here. We are currently surrounded by mist. It occasionally clears for brief periods where we can see about 1000 feet ahead, but it always closes in again fairly quickly. This evening we did our now routine acclimatisation recce where we advance on up the mountain by several hundred feet before returning  to the camp at lower altitude. This helps up prepare for the next day’s exertions.

We ate as much as we could take this evening. These large meals are hard to adjust to, but we know it is important to get the calorie count in our favour.

We saw some zebra mice and rather large ravens with distinctive white stripes on them on our travels today.

Tomorrow the plan is to rise early as usual and hike about 7km until early afternoon. We will then stop at our camp for the evening and rest up from about 4pm to 11pm. Then rising from sleep we will strike camp at approx midnight and begin the final stage of the ascent. We should therefore  arrive at the summit at about 7am. We wont delay too long at the top, about 30-45 mins before we begin the descent back to the last camp but via a different route.

More news tomorrow

Sunday 23^rd May. Another day’s climbing draws to a close. We covered about 5km today. Saw some buffalo, explored some caves and a waterfall. Everybody is in fine spirits, no problems at all to report.

Getting well fed and plenty of rest. Out guides are excellent at briefing us on what to expect each day. We are on the Mawenzi shoulder, having climbed a little higher earlier to about 12600 feet to acclimatize once again before dropping back to about 12000 feet to camp. The tracking device seems to be working very well and giving accurate evidence of our progress.

We have a great view of the top of Kili from here.

Tomorrow will be a tougher climb, so early to bed for us all here this evening.

A big thanks to everyone who has been posting messages of support and comments on our reports. We really appreciate them all.

Well, we have finished up for Day 2. the day started warm and sunny but quickly changed to rain for the rest of the trek. Our wet gear was very useful ! We climbed just above 12000 ft this afternoon to acclimatise  to the thinner air  but dropped back to about 11,800ft to settle down to camp for the night.

We hiked through mostly open moorland scenery today after breaking through the treeline early this morning. Tomorrow promises to have different terrain again with a more barren desert landscape all around us. Everyone doing fine so far. We are still eating very well and obviously drinking lots also.

There is so much you can learn from tracking us on the track our Climb website. If you zoom in and change from the regular map view to the terrain view, you can actually see the different contour lines on the mountain and you will be able to see how much higher we  climb each day and what each part of the day was like. Sometimes we walk for a good bit without actually climbing very much and then at other times of the day we go through much steeper parts.

Thanks to Clontuskert NS in Galway for following our adventures and sending in some questions for us.

The pupils in the school there wanted to know what we do when we are not climbing mountains. Jon works in one of the largest chains of outdoor equipment and adventure stores in America. Damian is an aircraft engineer with Cityjet in Dublin Airport, he makes sure all the planes are serviced and checked properly before they take to the air. Patrick runs his own Computer company, hosting and designing websites as well as installing and maintaining computer networks for all sorts of businesses.

The pupils in Galway also wanted to know about our previous climbing experience. Damian’s highest point was climbing in the Dolomites in Italy. Jon has climbed to about 11000 feet in the Rockies, while Patrick has been as far as 14000 feet in the Austrian Alps. Can you find all these places on a map?

None of us have climbed Kilimanjaro before, we are not afraid of heights. Patrick’s friend Andy climbed Kilimanjaro a couple of years ago. We are going to ask you how much higher the top of Kilimanjaro is than the highest point that Patrick has climbed.

We are climbing to raise awareness and funds for the St Baldricks Foundation. Each day of the climb is dedicated to one of the 5 special Ambassador children selected by the charity. That is how we came up with our group name Climb for Five.

We dont have too much in the way of special equipment. We wear plenty of layers of clothes at night to keep out the cold. Our gear is designed to keep sweat away from our skins and this helps to stop us getting too hot or too cold. We have good solid hiking boots that support our ankles and feet. There is a large group of people helping us climb. They are carrying our food and tents. We only have to carry a small day bag with some snacks, water and our cameras.

We love looking out for animals. On day 1 we saw lots of baboons in the trees and paths made by elephants and buffalo but we didnt actually  see them.

We really hope everyone makes it to the top safe and sound. It will get difficult the closer we get to the top as we will have less oxygen in the air around us and the danger of altitude sickness increases, but we are trying to do all the correct things to prevent this happening. Please keep your fingers crossed for us!

Keep those questions coming 🙂

Hello everybody

We have arrived at our first camp site. You can see the way point marked with our Spot  GPS tracker device on www.trackourclimb.com. Our group is quite large. Apart from “us 3” we have 3 tour guides and 6 others ranging from porters carrying all the gear to cooks preparing our meals.

We had a gentle enough day today. We left Moshi this morning for about a 3 hour drive to the park entrance. We had lots of traffic stops along the way as today was market day in many places. Most of what we saw at these stops were women selling large bunches of bananas on the side of the road as well as in co-op stores. Loads of children were running alongside our mini bus calling and waving up to us. We then had about a 5 hour hike through beautiful lush jungle. Patrick said it reminded him  a lot of forest walks in Ireland, with lots of ferns, heathers and other vegetation to be seen. We saw plenty of baboons in the trees and also tracks or trails made by elephants and buffalo but no sign of those big animals.

We know schools are starting to send in their questions to us, so here are some questions for you to find the answer to.  In Africa, particularly in Kenya & Tanzania, can you name the 5 animals known to hunters and tourists as the Big 5?

We are almost at the top of the tree line now. Can you find out what the tree line means too? Our altitude tonight  is 2700 metres. Can you turn that into feet above sea level?

From where we are, we can see across well into Kenya and also as far away as the Indian Ocean. It is quite cold where we are this evening so we have lots of layers on to keep warm.

We have just finished a very big feast for dinner. One of the things that affects mountain climbers is altitude sickness. This means you can get sick when you are up very high where the air is quite thin and there is less oxygen to breathe. It is really important when you are living up at high altitude in the mountains to eat very large meals and to drink a lot of water. We have eaten a lot more for dinner than we normally would at home and we have finished it off with some lovely popcorn. We also have to drink about 4-5 litres of water each day. Can you find some bottles and fill up 5 litres to see how much that is?

We are not carrying all that water up the mountain with us as it would be really heavy. We fill containers from mountain streams and boil the water over the fire. We also dissolve special tablets in the water to kill off any germs in it to make it safe to drink.

Tomorrow we will climb for  about 7 hours to get to about  3800m at our next camp.

Looking forward to letting you know all our news tomorrow.

Jon, Patrick, Damian, Simba & Dumbo.