Day 4 - Alpine Desert (From Warrington Guardian)

Day 4 - Alpine Desert

9:24am Friday 10th February 2012 in Your Say

Today's wake-up was at 5:30 for a 6:30 start, surprisingly not so bad - Guess I'm getting used to the early starts now!

The reason for setting off so early was to make way for the "big event" later that night.

We started the day climbing up Barranco wall - a massive 800 foot rock face with a narrow path weaving in and out of the rock, which featured a few hair raising moments as there were many pretty hefty drops if you lost your footing!

Once at the top of the wall, we got to see an amazing view of the summit of the mountain (see attached photo), and commenced our walk to the summit camp, walking across Alpine Desert. This started off looking just like a landscape from a wild west film and then as we got higher all signs of life ceased and we could have been on a completely different planet, with the scenery looking a lot like Mars!

After about 7 hours of walking we reached Barafu camp (4550m), the highest and most barren camp on the mountain and where we were to start our assent to the summit that night.

When we arrived we were briefed that for most of us, the night ahead would be one of the most challenging things we would ever do...

Like us on Facebook

Follow @warringtonnews

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here