The 4th day of our journey dawned clear and bright, but it did not take long before the morning blue skies gave way to those low, fast-moving clouds that we had grown used to over the last couple days. By the time breakfast was over, it was more cloudy than clear, and the promise of rain was definitely in the air. Our goal today was to climb over the Barranco Wall and continue trekking counter-clockwise around Kilimanjaro to the Karanga Camp. A lot of groups pass this camp by and head straight for the high camp at Barafu, so there was a lot of bustle and folks leaving early.

The trail up and over the Barranco Wall was narrow and steep in places, requiring a couple Class III maneuvers, and I thought that the previous day’s scramble up Lava Tower was a good warm up for some of the stretches today. It was nothing all that difficult, but as the trail narrowed to single-file width, the number of climbers and porters really became evident, since we were all moving in a slow single-file up the steep trail. The line stretched upwards into the low clouds and downwards almost all the way to camp – quite an impressive sight!

The slowness of the mornings’ hike gave us time to say hello and lightly socialize with some of the other climbing groups…we often found ourselves at a bottleneck requiring a ~5 minute wait, and we made the most of it by comparing our experiences with other tour groups. Except for a few folks who were clearly not feeling all that well, we were all having a great time, talking amongst ourselves and cheering on those who had a tough time with some of the steeper pitches. I was a little bummed that the clouds were closing in, because I am sure the views of the valley below were magnificent. But all we could see way gray and more gray as the fog closed in and the mist turned to a light drizzle.

At the top of the wall the trail leveled out on a wide, flat rocky expanse, and we took the opportunity to don rain gear as the drizzle evolved into a light rain. It amazed me how the porous volcanic rock was still grippy and easy to climb on, even in the rain. As we trekked on down the trail in to a series of undulating valleys, the weather closed in and the rain came steadily, somewhat cutting into the cheerful mood.

The next 3 or 4 hours were pretty uneventful. The scenery was socked into the fog, and the rain fell steadily. It was pretty much a quiet, heads-down march across the rolling terrain, and finally an ascending traverse at the base of a sheer cliff before the sounds of camp filtered through the rain.

As I mentioned, many groups pass the Karanga camp by, headed straight for high camp at Barafu, so this camp wasn’t quite full as the previous camps had been. Alpine Ascents uses the Karanga Camp to provide an additional day to help with acclimatization on the mountain (and not beating the crap out of their clients) which was not only well appreciated by all of us on this trip, but is a major factor in the >90% success rate AAI has on Kilimanjaro (on average, just over 50% of all climbers actually summit).

Again, our group had spread out since topping out on the Barranco wall, and I found myself and a couple other guys first to camp. We made a beeline for the dining tent where hot drinks were waiting (and damn, they were GOOD!). We took a while to rest and warm up, shedding our rain layers and coming up with various ingenious ways to hang them over chairs and on the sides of the tent for maximum drying. Someone in the tent started singing Toto's "Africa", and we all thought about chucking them outside for singing so horrifically off-key. By late afternoon the whole group had made it to camp without incident, and the rain evolved back into a light mist and then to just low clouds. A few rays of sunlight even broke through as the afternoon waned, but there was still no view to be seen in any direction, just the foreground-views of tents of all shapes and sizes. We all hoped for some better weather over the next couple days.