Day 6 actually started in the waning hours of Day 5 – the wake-up call for summit day was 11:00pm! Having managed to grab about 5 hours of useful sleep, I sprang up in my sleeping bag as my watch-alarm buzzed 11 o’clock and began to assemble myself for the long day ahead. The wind outside had abated during the night, but I knew it had been snowing. I steeled myself for the worst as I unzipped the tent and peered out into the night. The sight before me was unforgettably ethereal. Turns out we had only picked up maybe an inch of wet snow from the evening’s storms, but the skies had now cleared to reveal an incredibly bright full moon! The moonlight, combined with the reflectivity of the snow made for a scene that was bright enough to maneuver around with headlamps, with the world cast in a pale white-blue light. The winds had died down to the merest indication of a breeze, and it actually wasn’t all that cold. Someone’s zipper-mounted thermometer indicated the low 20’s as we clambered into the dining tent for an extremely early breakfast.

Many of my fellow climbers looked a little on the pale side, and many said they’d not been able to sleep (the ~16,000’ of altitude taking a toll) and many more didn’t have enough of an appetite to eat much. On the other hand, I ate ravenously, knowing how important a good meal would be in the coming hours of slow, dark, cold climbing. In fact, I was a little surprised at my appetite at this altitude, and a bout of altitude sickness requiring a hasty descent the previous year on the Mexican volcano Ixta had been on my mind the last couple days, especially. But apparently I had acclimated quite well this time – a fact I happily reflected on as I mowed down fruit and eggs.

At 11:45 our guide, John, signaled time to get ready to head out, and we all scrambled around camp with last-minute preparations. Based on the calm weather, I made a last-minute gear change, swapping out my shell jacket for a down jacket. A little extra warmth seemed like a good idea, since there wasn’t any threatening weather to worry about. Cramming my shell into my pack, I joined the rank and file as we began our slow, steady trek, right at midnight.

Our summit team consisted of the 10 of us climbers, our American guide John, two local guides (Romli and Leonce) and four senior porters/junior guides. Plenty of support for all us climbers, and they did a great job of checking up on us and making sure everyone was doing OK throughout the cold, dark night. For a time we were quite alone on the mountain, but presently swarms of headlamps approached from behind, climbers who started back down at the main Barafu camp and were pacing a little faster than we were. Everyone’s trail etiquette was exemplary, moving aside for faster parties but never breaking the rhythm of the group. We climbed slowly, steadily throughout the darkness, headlamps only occasionally needed. The hazy lights from the towns of Moshi and Arusha helped give us some idea of scale and how far up we really were.

As the morning wore on and we climbed higher, the temperatures dropped rather dramatically. As we approached the crater rim at Stella Point, it had dropped several degrees below zero, and for the first time on the trip my Camelbak froze up (luckily, I had a couple spare bottles in interior pockets!). The first light of dawn painted a thin orange stripe across the sky behind us as we crested Stella Point (somewhere around ~18,000’), and were greeted with incredible moonlit views into the summit crater as low clouds scuttled around the glaciers on the crater floor several hundred feet below. Oh, if I’d only had a long-exposure camera and tripod!!

Stella Point is a pretty natural rest-stop…one of the very places you can find shelter in the rocks and get off your feet. Not to mention at 18,000’ we were all getting pretty tired! However, cold overruled tired for me and a few others of the group, so we started off towards the true summit after only a few minutes to rest, eat and hydrate. The trail from Stella Point winds clockwise around the crater rim, and for the most part is wide and unexposed. There is one place where the trail curves right up to the edge of the crater, and a misstep would mean one heck of a fall at best. Ever-vigilant, one of the porters was in place to make sure people navigated this awkward step without incident.

By this point the glow to the east was growing much stronger, and an orange alpenglow gradually illuminated the terrain around us, showing the first views of the massive yet retreated glaciers. As dawn came closer, I kept checking over my shoulder, not wanting to miss the first rays of the sun. Hell, I was on the roof of Africa, and this was a moment I might never experience again! Finally, the first glint of light broke over the horizon and despite the altitude I jogged over to the crater rim a few dozen yards away to capture the moment in as panoramic a way as possible. This was certainly the highlight of my climbing career to date, and even sitting here writing about sends shivers along my spine.

With the sun up, we found ourselves only a few dozen yards from the true summit…the high point on the crater rim at 19,340’, marked with a large sign. Surrounding the sign were a couple dozen climbers who’d summited before us, all posing for pictures either alone or with their climbing groups, many with flags, banners and signs. As we approached the summit there were hugs and handshakes all around. The sense of accomplishment was overwhelming, for all of us. It’s a very difficult experience to describe.

After a couple obligatory summit pictures (one alone, one with my tour group, and one with a ‘happy anniversary’ sign for my aunt and uncle in Kansas), it was time to step away from the rapidly growing crowds at the summit marker and take a look around at the worlds we were visiting. While the glaciers of Kilimanjaro are receding rapidly, they’re still massive and impressive…walls of ice up to a couple hundred feet thick looming off the summit and down in the summit crater. The summit crater itself is massive! Several hundred feet deep and at least a mile across, probably more (I think I mentioned the distances up here were hard to gauge). A number of huge ice formations populated the crater floor, along with a smaller, central crater known as the Ash Pit. And of course, a 360 degree view of the mostly-flat floor of Africa. Jungles and forests transitioning to plains and deserts as far as the eye could see, in almost any direction. Nearby Mount Mweka and Mount Meru were the only two exception, both mountains showing prominently against the rest of the Kansas-flat horizon.

The morning was actually warming up quite rapidly, and we were able to thankfully shed a couple layers over the next half-hour or so. After making the summit, we were allowed to spend as much time up there as we wanted, and descend back to camp at our leisure. I and a couple other guys wandered around the summit area for a while, and gradually headed back towards Stella Point, giving encouragement to climbers still on the way up. Some folks were moving strong, a few barely able to stand from the exertion and the altitude. One middle-aged woman was being almost completely supported by a porter, clearly not able to continue alone, but determined to finish the climb. We passed the last couple of guys from our group who were still on the way up, too – looking a little pale and shaky, but also determined to reach their goal.

From Stella Point the trail down diverges from the trail up, and rather than having to descend the rocky, windy trail that we climbed in the dark just a couple hours ago, the downhill trail wound down the middle of shallow gully, full of blissfully soft gravel and dirt. The made the descent a lot faster than I’d though, not to mention being a LOT easier on the knees! I spent the next hour or so slide-stepping down the steep gravel, eventually cutting across the gully to the original trail and back towards camp. My climbing compatriots took a couple opportunities to rest along the way down, but I decided to maintain my pace, and therefore ended up walking into camp alone, just after 9:00am.

Coming back into camp was an interesting experience. Summit day is the one day of the trip when most of the porter crew doesn’t have to get up early to break camp and move on down the trail. As our camp came into view, I saw most of them enjoying the bright, crisp morning, laughing and chatting with each other and generally having a relaxed-looking time. One of them spotted me coming, though, and sent out a shout that instantly brought about a congratulatory cheer from the entire group, and sent a half-dozen of them into action. Two porters rushed up to meet me and took the pack right off my back. One had rushed into the dining tent and come out with a jug of fruit juice and a plate of cookies. Another had produced a camp chair next to my tent and beckoned me over to sit down. Man, talk about being made to feel welcome! Just another example of service above and beyond anything I would have expected.

The rest of camp turned out to be empty, and it surprised me that I was the first one back. Still, I decided to make the most of it, and I kicked off my boots and put my feet up on the tent, enjoying the warm morning sun (needless to say, I had plenty of sunscreen going…bright sunlight at 16,000’ will burn a person in about two minutes!).

Looking back up toward the crater rim, I could see a steady trickle of hikers descending the same gully I had just come down, and presently a few other of our group ambled into camp, greeted with the same service and enthusiasm I had been given. We all exchanged high-fives and our own personal accounts of our climbs and descents, each enjoying fresh fruit juice and the chance to get off our feet for a little while. Even though it felt like a full day, we knew that we still had a long hike down to Mweka camp coming once everyone was back in camp.

By noon, we still had two team members and a couple porters out on the trail. Two of our group had been having an extremely rough day, and apparently had been suffering from some altitude-related nausea and diarrhea since early in the ascent, some 12 hours ago. I’d seen them both headed to the summit above Stella Point when I was on the way down, so I assumed they’d both made it to the top, but were moving slow now on the way down. Someone with binoculars and a sharp eye spotted them about a half-mile up the trail, and a number of porters took off up the trail to assist. Tom and John came weaving, unsteadily, into camp about 12:30, surrounded by a small entourage of guides and porters. Both looked terrible…almost ashen complexions and moving shakily, but triumphant in their summit attempts! I daresay they got the biggest cheer of all, from both the porters and the rest of us.

Now that the crew was all back in camp, our guides took a look at the time and decided that we’d take an hour for everyone to rest up and pack, then head down the trail to our low camp at Mweka, barely above 9,000’. Gearing back up at 1:30pm and heading down the trail was a painful process, and there were countless grunts and groans as we shuffled down the trail, picking our way past the Barafu camp (and other shagged-out summit-day climbers), down past the vegetation lines (where it was much cooler, cloudy and drizzling) and to Mweka camp. No one had much to say as the hours passed. Luckily the trail was, as usual very well defined and maintained in most places. The group spread out quite a bit, depending on how fast we were all moving, most of us hiking in ones and twos for most of the afternoon.

The last hour into Mweka camp had as fully back in rain forest conditions, humid and musty. Luckily the cool afternoon was transitioning into a cool evening, and it wasn’t nearly as hot as it could have been. Unluckily, though, the trail was muddy and slick from the days’ precipitation, and most of us took a fall here or there on a wet rock or exposed root. I took a couple small dives, tearing my right hand open on of them, as I reached out to break my fall and caught it on a sharp rock. Luckily, there were plenty of first-aid kits around, so getting it cleaned, sterilized, coated with an anti-bacterial and bandaged was barely a minutes’ effort.

Finally, somewhere around 5pm we trudged into Mweka camp, a huge, sprawling collection of campsites in the dense trees. As always, our porter crew had picked a sweet spot to set up, and our tents were all ready to go, each nestled in the trees near the dining tent. The last of our group made camp at about 7pm, moving slowly but steadily. After a hearty dinner and realizations that this was our last night together as a group (and an experience like this will tend to bond you with your fellows), we all crawled into our tents one last time, everyone asleep within probably minutes. Nothing like a 20-hour day involving moving from altitudes of 16,000 to 19,000 to 9,000 feet to wear a person out!