Kilimanjaro

Congratulations! How long and what route?

Well done. I did this years ago. Not sure I'd recommend it, though. It was a bit of a zoo, really. Just about any other mountain in Africa would be a more remote and interesting experience to me. For example, if you climbed the nearby Mt Meru, you'd have it pretty much to yourself. Not quite as high, obviously.

mount meru from kilimanjaro by winkyintheuk, on Flickr

Congratulations also.

I am truly envious,  its something that I should have had on my "wish list" before knee replacements arrived.   Oh well maybe on my next recycle.   

But it is the easy one you know.  You need to try its little brother Mt Kenya. 

This is the view from my lodge balcony taken only 2 weeks ago.

I did this last year. One of the hardest things I ever did (did the cycling tour in France, the Marmotte as well, which wasn't as bad as the Kili see https://www.facebook.com/pages...807589243557?sk=info) 

I did not take pills or Oxy but it was bad. 

Did they make a new sign?

This was the sign i saw

Oh, sorry, great achievement!! Congrats!

That was the sign when I was there. It was in better nick, though. That's an unusual amount of snow these days. I have seen a view that the disappearing glaciers on Kili are due to the local deforestation (due to farming and illegal logging) reducing local precipitation, rather than global warming.

This is the next big trekking peak I tried to summit. Failed, though.

predawn aconcagua by winkyintheuk, on Flickr

Yep - I confess I was a little disappointed at that. The old sign was badly damaged in a storm, so they decided to replace it with a new one (for Tanzanian Independence day) this year. Obviously, because the sign is facing the morning sun, the natural choice was to make it glossy so that it does not come out in photographs very well, but that's just so, er, African somehow.

We had perfect conditions for the summit day, but on the days both before and after (we saw returning groups) it snowed, and all they got was pictures of them in a blizzard, so we were very lucky.

Winky, is Aconcagua just a trek? I have to realise my limitations, and one of them is that I have a terrible fear of heights, which has manifested itself as vertigo and being petrified in the past (on Uluru/Ayer's Rock for one thing). I was so relieved on this trek that I managed the Baranco Wall, which was nowhere near as bad as either my nightmares of the evening before, or indeed the word 'wall' suggested, but even that had me firmly looking at the ground beneath my feet and not down in any other way.

Kilimanjaro is only difficult because of the altitude and oxygen, but I am not a natural climber. Aconcagua is obviously quite a bit higher, but takes longer so presumably acclimatisation is more natural/gradual, and I didn't suffer from Altitude Sickness personally (just a mild headache, easily cured, and some frankly not-unpleasant hallucinations on summit night).

I might lay off mountains for a bit, but now I have all this stuff you see! And realistically, unless I want to take up bank-robbing, when am I ever going to use the balaclava again?

The sign I posted is not my picture. Can't make it word to post a pic of me  on top.

We were very lucky last year to see the summit from the start of the trip. Long route, so 6,5 days to the top. Almost no snow then to be seen.