Day 6 - Summit Day

Notes

• left midnight/12:15am, headlamps on
  
• the ascent was really really hard, Eric had the runs :(
  
• Eric went mental-escapism to make it, like Michel Crichton in Travels
  
• got to Stella Point around 7:30am, just in time for the sunrise
  
• incredibly windy, brutally cold
  
• group split up, Eric and Michaela headed to Uhuru Point asap, Danusia and ACD caught up later
  
• took photos, Eric's hands were freezing, everybody was exhausted
  
• Eric and Michaela headed down around 8am, got in 10-10:30am, Eric promptly went to sleep
  
• Danusia and ACD arrived ~11am, napped for a bit
  
• lunch around noon, much chatter about the climb
  
• packed up to leave around 1-2pm, ~3-4 hour walk down to a lower camp
  
• Eric met a group of Indians on the way down, including this guy)
  
• Eric got to camp around 16:45, went to sleep, the ladies arrived ~18:20
• dinner: leak soup, rice, green beans, bean sauce
  
• Michaela not well, took some oxygen on the way down and it helped
  
• Emmanuel thought it might be pulmonary edema, decided to walk off the mountain and get to a hospital
  
• Eric and Michaela and Emmanuel and 4 porters left around 22:00, headlamps on, Danusia gave us some clean syringes just in case
  
• the walk down was wet and slippery (Eric fell three times), could see our breath, bugs flying in the lights, constantly stopping to rest
  
• 4x4 ride on another gnarly road, with everybody crammed in the vehicle
  
• called Eric's friend Becky the Doctor at KCMC (who he'd met at the airport before the trek); it was past midnight but she was awake!
  
• Becky said to come by her place instead of KCMC, which was near the hospital, to check blood pressure, etc.
  
• she diagnosed the same thing, altitude-induced pulmonary edema, suggested a chest xray but we decided to wait on that
  
• got to zara's house around 1am to see about a hotel, got there ~1:30am, sleep around 2am

Photos

• Day 6: Eric's