Mt Kilimanjaro seems to be perpetually clothed in clouds. The first two days we were in fog and mist much of the time. There were times in camp when you could not see the other tents, it was so foggy. The dampness gets into everything, although we were lucky to have a large vestibule attached to our tent, so all of our gear could remain out of the mist. Once we got to the high camp (Kibo Hut) we were above the clouds, and the sun could be intense at times. However, seldom was the entire mountain out of the clouds - when we had sun, we were often looking down onto a cloud cover of the lowlands. As you can tell from the photo of Dave on the left, it was foggy and misty, but not terribly cold.
The summit was quite cold and windy - I am guessing perhaps -10F. There was a fine mist which had coated the rocks with frost, but the footing was adequate, not too slippery. During the ascent below Gilman's Point there were times when the wind got chilly, and times when I was hiking in a T shirt, long underwear top, light sweater and lightweight long sleeved shirt (in other words, rather lightly dressed). I did not put on my heavy parka until about 3 hours into the climb. At the same time, I removed the sweater and shirt, so I went to the summit with a T shirt, long underwear top and heavy parka. I had a light weight balaclava, a wool stocking hat, and heavy wool mitts. The parka had an excellent hood that I would use intermittently.
Descending, we once again entered the cloud layer and remained there until we left the mountain. We descended on the Marangu trail, so were in cool rain forest for the final day and a half - quite a lovely way to end the trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment