Acclimatizing at 14,000 feet

Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009 Time: 7:00pm Tanzania, noon EDT, 9:00am PDT Location: Mawenzi Tarn (Glacial Lake) Camp - Nalemaru (Rongai) Route Altitude: Start: 11,900 ft Camp: Mawenzi Tarn 14,000 ft Hiking Time: 4 hours Today was a four hour hike with 2,100ft altitude gain to 14,000'. We are definitely seeing a weather pattern on the mountain, clear and cold until the sun comes up, then the direct sun heating us up (we are only a couple of degrees from the equator), then around 10:am clouds forming in the valley that become high clouds and bring cold winds for a couple of hours, then the wind dies down, the weather stabilizes and the minute the sun sets behind the mountain the temperature drops. Right now we are in our sleeping bags at around 0 deg C and expect it to be colder tonight. Typing is definitely with cold hands! This is the highest altitdude Deb & Jim have been at while Shirley and Peter have been to 17,500' trekking in Nepal. We all are doing very well although stomach sickness continues to challenge many and Deb has a low grade headache from the altitude. Our team of 8 is doing well, we travel "pole, pole" (slowly, slowly) and everyone is helping each other out. The altitude we are at now is approximately twice the height of Whistler Mountain and the air is getting thinner. We reached our camp at 1:15pm today and had a rest afternoon which consisted of sleeping and/or listening to our iPods. Tomorrow is an acclimatization day for this level of altitude, we have a 2 hour hike and return to the same Camp for R & R the rest of the day. The terrain is spectacular and very different to back home. The route we are taking looks over the Kenyan plains below - it is quite amazing how much distance you can cover in 17 hours of hiking going pole, pole. If you have a chance, look at the first few maps in our photo album and you will be able to see where we are. Tomorrow we hope to publish pictures, as it is getting a little too cold for that right now. PS: Sorry for the formatting and spelling, we are using a rudimentary text editor to allow us to use the very slow satphone effectivelly.Res