Day 3, Sept 21, 2010

VERY cold last night . The tropical sun warms quickly in the AM however. We had to wait a bit for breakfast as the porters were alseep in the mess tent. After eating, all of us but Jesse head off across the Shira plateau to climb to the Cathedral, which adds nothing in elevation but puts an extra 3-4 hours hiking in the day. Jesse is exhausted and going with Masai directly to the camp at Shira 2. Johnny worries about him. Jesse's stated goal for this climb is to get some certificate which nobody else even knew about, stating that he made it to the top.

It takes us about 3 hours to get to the top of the Cathedral. We cross the Shira plateau, a caldera left by the first volcano in this area. And then climb up the lava formation, a short but steep and for me kind of scary and I worried out loud about getting back down (for which I took a ration of you-know-what from Joe), and some of the others are now starting to tease me about how many times I am going to say I'll die on this trip. In fact, by now I am feeling pretty confident that our training will pay off. We get to camp after 5 1/2 hours, only a little behind Jesse; climbed 1200 feet today with some up and down. Very cold again at night, peeing is a pain but at least there's a full moon. 40 degrees inside the tent at 7 PM.

(1) Shira plateau (caldera) from the top of the Cathedral (2) On top of the Cathedral (3) Emergency evacuation vehicle. There is a road near the Cathedral (4) Full moon over Kili