Day 7 - December 17, 2013.

Up at 11:30pm and start our ascent at midnight. Unbelievably, the moon is out and bright, no clouds and about -10C. This is doable. The hike up is very Pole Pole. Several folks are suffering from some sort of altitude discomfort. Cat was sick to her stomach and couple of times in the night. Poor kid, I was so worried she wasn't going to make it, but she is one tough cookie. It seems one of the Army guys, Dave, and I were the only ones not that affected by altitude. He spent time in Afghanistan patrolling mountains. He, being the most decent of 'them', funny because one night during one dinner when Zak, Will (never shut up) and Sarah were in their ritual talk about all their Army camps and parachute jumps and stuff (it sometimes went on and on and on and on - using abbreviations and shop talk so no one understood what they were talking about), I asked "so who has taken on fire" ie been shot at. ONLY Dave had, the rest was a lot of tough talk and bravado - so unattractive!

Back to the climb. After 7 hours of Pole Pole (OMG), we made it to the first summit, Stella, just as the sun was rising. It was spectacular because you could see all the plains, other mountains and glaciers - there are quite a few there which seem to be growing, not shrinking. Thank goodness being the major waters source for a huge area. We continued on for another hour to the final summit - Uhruhu - 5,895 meters, 9,300 feet. What a feeling, cannot explain how happy I was. I took out my little neck buff with the Canadian flag on it and took my pictures. Everyone did their own little thing - except - you guessed it, the Army pukes. They took over ½ the time on their pictures, one of which included handstands from three of them, on the sign. Chambo was having a heart attack cause they could have wrecked the sign. No one could talk to them at this point. Then they pull out a FULL SIZED American flag and stood getting photos for like 15 minutes. Chambo really wanted to start getting us down because of the altitude, but no, they had to take their time. We finally took a group picture so other groups could take photos too!

We started our descent which was fun - I did a snow bum slide in several spots. Jesse and Cat were having trouble so I stayed back with them to help them with the steep parts, there were lots. Of course, half way down, around 10am, yep, full on sleet blizzard - great. Made it back to camp around 11am. Had to pack up, had lunch, and then left for ANOTHER 5 hour hike down to final camp. Through Arctic dessert, Mountain Morraine and then a steep rock river bed through rain forest…..brutal on the feet. Some of us had dinner then turned in early for some well deserved sleep. It wasn't cold any more so I slept very well.