Brother Shannon Jones and I had our first planning meeting for Climb To End Poverty 2, and came to some conclusions:
- We plan to climb sometime in Sept or Oct 2013
- Lemosho looks to be our favored route
- Undecided yet on taking the Western Breach or Barranco Wall
- Guides are undecided...but we don't want to be part of a big group
We started reading together John Bowling's
Making The Climb. In the book, he recounts how Johann Rebman, the European who led the first expedition to Mt. Kilimanjaro in May 1848, described the mountain:
"There are two main peaks, which arise from a common base measuring some 25 miles long by as many broad. They are separate by a saddle depression, running east and west for a distance of about 8 or 10 miles. The eastern peak is the lower of the two, and is conical in shape. The western and higher presents the appearance of a magnificent dome, and is covered by snow throughout the year, unlike its eastern neighbor which loses its snow during the hot season. By the Swahili at the coast, the mountain is known as Kilimanjaro (Mountain of Greatness) but the Wa-Jagga call it KIBO, from the snow with which it is permanently capped."
Lots and lots remains to do: planning, training, fundraising. But in the famous words of Plato:
"The beginning is the most important part of the work."
