Tierney's OP Trip to Mandara Hut

By Tierney:

Last weekend I backpacked to Mandara Hut.

On Saturday,  6:45am, 13 of us met at school to go to the first hut on Kilimanjaro. I was the only student there who had done this trip before. We drove to ISM Moshi Campus to pick up two more students and while we were there we weighed our packs (mine was 2 pounds over weight, but if I drank enough water on the bus I would be OK!)

Getting ready to leave

                                     

School bus

Once we arrived at the gate, we ate lunch and signed the guest book, it was a long wait until we were ready to start hiking at 1:30 pm. We had lots of energy by the time we started, but we used all of it while hiking.

Group picture at the gate before the hike

After the 5 hour hike, we finally arrived at Mandara Hut and were all ready to eat dinner and get into bed. The hike was long and tiring, but we kept ourselves occupied by playing games and looking at the beautiful environment. We only took a few breaks along the way, but when we did we ate a little bit of food and drank some water and then we would start hiking again.

Group picture in front of Kili

Sunday morning we were up and going off to the Crater at 6:00 am and were very lucky not to have to carry our backpacks. Once we were at the Crater we walked down into it and then back out again. There was a beautiful view of the Crater, Mawenzi point, and Kibo point.

 View of Mawenzi (2nd peak on Kili) 

Beautiful sunrise view from the Crater

                  

                                                                Going into the Crater

Eating breakfast

After the Crater we went back to the hut to have breakfast. Once we were all packed up and ready to go, we set off. About half way through the hike it started to pour rain, so we had to get all of our rain stuff on, raincoat, rain pants and a pack cover (if we had one) and continue on with our hike.

                                                          Hiking in misty and cold rain

By the time we were back at the gate it had stopped raining, but all of our clothes were still wet. Just before lunch it started raining again and it was raining for some of the bus ride home too.

Happy girls after hiking

We made it! 

On the bus ride back we ate lunch which was chicken or veggie pizza. We are all very proud of ourselves for passing O.P level one to Mandara Hut on Kilimanjaro.

In two weeks I'm looking forward to the next level:  2 nights in the Pare Mountains.

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Here's the blurb in the school newsletter written by the ISMAC trip leader

I'm so proud of T for not only doing this trip, but doing it twice.  This might fall under things that should go under the "For the Grandparents" section of the blog, but I thought T did such a great job writing about it I wanted everyone to see it.