Day 5 -To Karanga Camp:
The Barranco Wall deserves its own page. That should give you some sort of indication of the impact that feat had on all of us. Scaling that wall was daring & awesome & thrilling, & scary. I would assume this to be especially true for David, who, I discovered, is scared of heights.
Wow! How dare us have the audacity to climb a wall of rocks that was formed by volcanic activity (as well as landslides in the area) between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago! Yeah, this page is dedicated to the Barranco Wall AND David.
The Barranco Wall is so high it is difficult to see the top when you look up from the bottom. Because of this, many mountaineers add this climb to their bucket list. It’s what climbers would refer to as a scramble, meaning it doesn’t require mountain climbing skills to traverse the area. So, on Day 5 we were told to put away our hiking poles. And with that, we set off to tackle ‘the wall’.
I had seen several YouTube videos of climbers traversing the Barranco Wall, but it was more than I had envisioned. The Wall is 843 feet high. Luckily, because we were still in the clouds, we couldn’t see the ground or how high we had climbed. We could only focus on the task at hand. And what a task it was!
There was a point at which the skies cleared a bit, and I was able to see how far we had come. Whoa! I could see Barranco Camp in the distance. Far away in the distance. It seemed we would never reach the top. The real phenomenon was watching the porters come up behind us with…….. the camp.
How? With the agility of a cheetah they made their way up the wall, through tight turns and while tackling the kissing wall; like it was child’s play. How?
We rested in a few spots along the way up. Partially for us, and partially so the guides could help the porters up through the tightest turns.
THE TOP
When we made our way past the ‘kissing wall’ and finally found our way to the top, the views were AMAZING! The Kissing Wall is a section of the Barranco Wall that’s located near the top, where the path narrows. To move on safely, you must hold onto the Wall so closely, that it’s like you are kissing the rock. At that point, I felt like I could reach out and touch the summit. Being so close was exhilarating.
Once we made our way to the top of Barranco Wall, we took it all in, and then rested. Before moving forward we retrieved our hiking poles for the trip down to Karanga Camp.
