Day 7 - DAY 5 OF THE CLIMB! SUMMIT NIGHT!!! - 27th August

Jambo!! Today I OFFICIALLY REACHED THE SUMMIT OF KILIMANJARO!!!! Along with everyone else in the team (28/28!) which is pretty epic!

We woke up at 1am and set off at 2am, so everyone was shattered to begin with. All you could see was head torches moving along the path for the first few hours, and then we got to see an incredible sunrise.

Just as the sun started to rise!

Seeing the sun rise was a brief bit of motivation to keep going, as before that it was just cold and dark... But, the motivation was short lived, as carrying on going upwards just became harder and harder. The path we were walking on was a scree path, so every step we took, it seemed like we slipped back another half a step, which was what made the day really hard.

The hardest bit was getting to Stella Point, as it was so steep, on scree path and we just had no energy left, as well as a lingering headache and generally not feeling great from the altitude. We got very close to Stella Point when Simon just seemed to shut down temporarily, I don't really know what happened to him, but he just seemed to stop, and he sat down and we were both scared he wouldn't make it to the peak.

After not long he was helped up to Stella Point, and we were greeted with fellow team mates, guides and a cold ginger tea. After a little rest, we all set off on an hour long walk to the summit - where we came across the rest of the group all on the way back and we all stopped and congratulated each other, which was nice.
The walk to the summit was a steady ascent, so it was nice compared to the walk to Stella Point. Except for the lack of oxygen we all had. But seeing all the glaciers was amazing, - and they'll probably only be around for another 20 years because of climate change, so we were pretty lucky to get to see them.

High above the clouds and a glimpse of the glaciers

I finally arrived at the summit, with Simon, Katie, Will, Ro, Dan, Emma, Gabbie and Josh (and a group of guides), and the views were beautiful!! We took lots of cheesy photos with the signs and most of us had a little cry - it was amazing we'd all got that far after a year of planning and preparing.

All of us at the Summit! (photo courtesy of Gabbie Majer)

We only spent around 15 minutes at the summit before we had to begin our descent. (You're not allowed to spend long there due to lack of oxygen). Initially, 2 guides kind of linked my arms and pulled me down, but then they decided it'd be easier to take turns piggy back'ing me down (as I can't walk downhill very well) to the camp we stayed at last, for some late lunch!

After that we carried on down further (walking and piggy back'ing) until we finally got to our camp for the night! Which I was pretty glad for, to say the least!

It's been an amazing (but pretty hard) day, and it still hasn't quite sunk in that I've climbed Kilimanjaro!!

Lala Salama! 

(P.S. I apologise that I took so long to blog this, I suddenly got quite busy and completely forgot!!! My bad!!!)