10:30pm. It’s dark. It’s cold. Fortunately there’s little wind. Amy and I crawl out of our warm sleeping bags. We get ready in our tent by headlamp. We slept in most of our clothes so we only need to add our top layers. After a quick bite to eat and some hot coffee, we’re ready to…
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Today we tackle the Barranco Wall! This is the Barranco Wall. It’s nearly 1000 ft of almost straight up climbing. More of a scramble than hiking, requiring us to use our hands to get over several obstacles. It’s one of the most challenging parts of the climb, besides summit night, especially since I agreed to…
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It’s day 4 of our 8 day climb. Today we head up to the Lava Tower at 15,200ft for an acclimatization hike, before heading down to Barranco Camp to spend the night. We’re up early to get a head start on everyone else headed this way today (as this is where the Lemosho Route meets…
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This is a pretty easy day for us. We cross the relatively flat Shira Plateau, gaining only about 1000 ft, most of it at the end. With views like this, how can you not start the day in good spirits? At one of our breaks, I take pictures of Amy and our guides. They are such…
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Day 2 takes us up into the moorlands of Kilimanjaro. It’s much longer (6 hours) and more challenging hike than day 1, so we get an early start. I didn’t sleep well the night before, and I realize it’s because I was still wearing the same sweaty clothes I arrived to camp in so I…
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Oh my gosh this is it. It’s here. Our first day of our climb up Mt Kilimanjaro! We’ve been planning and training for this trip for over a year, so it’s really hard to believe that we’re actually heading to the mountain to begin climbing it today. We’re meeting our guide Innocent at 830am, so…
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If you’re looking for a general overview of my climb up Mt Kilimanjaro, this is the post for you. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, or post a ton of photos, but I will give a brief description of each day, and a link to each post (eventually) for more detail…
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After 7 days of hiking, 42 miles covered and 13,000ft gained (total, not counting the ups and downs), we made it to the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro! It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Amazingly, I barely felt any affects of the altitude, with the exception of how hard it was to breathe. Thank…
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Back to Moneterey for round 2! This time I went with my parents, so the whole family was along for the ride. Kody (my brother) was getting ready to move back to Seattle, so we were there for one last visit, to help him pack and whatever else needed to be done. It really is a…
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Back in 2012 I took nearly 10 weeks off from work to travel to various destinations around the US and the world. It wasn’t taken all at once, but spread out over the entire year, ending with a month in India for a friends wedding. The first trip was to Aspen to visit my friend…
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I’m home and finally caught up on both work and sleep. The last week in Sydney was packed! Tuesday night we had dinner with the entire Australian Finance and HR teams which ended up being a late night of eating and drinking. We went to a place called China Doll, a modern Asian food restaurant…
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Earlier this year when I went to Thailand, we spent approximately three days in Cambodia visiting the sites of Angkor Wat. It is absolutely so worth the expense and hassle of getting there. The flight, for being as short as it was, was rather expensive. Once we got there, we had to buy a $20…
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