All posts by Markus Baumann

Guest on Destinations at MCC

Post Trip

Destinations - Boots Made For WalkingKristen will be a guest on Destinations – A Travel Club Series at the Midland Cultural Centre, speaking about her climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro. This edition is titled “These Boots are Made for Walking”.  See the attached poster for more info…

Whether you are interested in strolling the streets or climbing mountains, this months Destinations is for you.

Our first guest is a mother of two who will inspire you with her journey as she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Her story begins years before she ever set foot on the base of the mountain.

Our second guests enjoyed a hiking tour recently to Red Mountain, Utah and will be sharing their experiences with you about a location that covers a variety of activities (hiking, biking, walking, yoga, spa, cooking and photography classes – to name a few) along with excellent customer service. This place ranks # 71 on
Conde Nast Traveler 2013 “Top 270 Spas” list. Come and find out why!

Kathy Elsdon-BefortNEW HOST: Kathy Elsdon-Befort. She is a huge travel enthusiast and has traveled extensively including Europe and Great Britain, the Caribbean, much of Canada and the United States and, most recently, parts of Africa.

Wednesday May 28th: Doors @ 6:30pm – Show Starts @ 7:00pm.
Tickets: $10 – Order Online or visit the MCC box office

POSTER: Destinations – These Boots Are Made for Walking

Speaking Tour

Post Trip

Kristen will be visiting the local Rotary Club and a number of schools to talk about goal setting and her climb of Mount Kilimanjaro.

FEB 26 – Rotary Club of Midland
MAR 5 – Mundy’s Bay Public School
APR 23 – Byng Public School
APR 30 – Bayview Public School

 

On Their Way to the Top!

My Trip

Sarah, the team’s leader, posted this today:

We are heading up to the top of Mt Kilimanjaro – Uhuru Point – tonight at midnight. Everyone is feeling good, excited and a little anxious. It should take us between 6 to 8 hours to summit, ascending 3500ft or 1000m. We will then descend back down to our high camp at 16000ft and then onto our final resting spot tomorrow night at the Milenium Camp at 12500ft. We will put up a post tomorrow morning to let you all know how we did.

Spirits are high and we are thinking of you all. Send good thoughts our way!

As they’re making their final ascent, the sun will be rising…

Countdown to sunrise on summit:

days
0
-374
-8
hours
-1
-9
minutes
-4
-6
seconds
-1
-8

Sunrise on Mt. Kilimanjaro Summit Night
The sun is starting to rise on summit night.
A couple headlamps are visible in the foreground.

Day 5: Karranga Valley to High Camp

My Trip
Kristen at Karanga Valley Camp
Getting ready to depart Karanga Valley Camp

We are so close now!!!!! It is absolutely amazing how great this is!!! Today we left Karranga camp at 9:30. We climbed to Barrafu camp to have lunch at 1:30. Then, under the amazing leadership of Outward Bound and Chagga Tours we were able to secure a camp site at Kosovo. It is another 200m up – which means we are that much closer, and that have that much less to walk tonight.

Team Outward Bound has declared this “Christmas Eve”, and Santa might be over New Zealand at this time. We are just waiting with anticipation what lies ahead. Tonight we will go to bed at 6:30. We will wake up at 11:00 to start our final ascent for the summit. The ascent will be cold and dark. I am organizing my snacks, electronics and multi-layers of clothing now.

Hopefully next time I blog I will have a report on what it is like at the roof of Africa 🙂

Sorry, We’re Experiencing Technical Difficulties!

My Trip

It was all going a little too smoothly!  As Sarah noted in her Jan. 14 post, it’s not always easy to get the bandwidth required for data communications, so Kristen hasn’t been able to update her blog for the past 24 hours.  She was scheduled to finish her climbing early today, at 3pm (7am EST), but seeing no activity on both Sarah & Kristen’s blogs, we’ll assume that she’s still unable to connect.

Flowers from Kilimanjaro

While she can’t send us her update, she did manage to send flowers!  We were all a little surprised, even shocked, to receive flowers yesterday with notes of thanks as she started her climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Flowers went to a few people that had helped her prepare for this journey. The girls received theirs at school and were very excited. Taylor recognized the thank-you cards and figured out that she wrote and arranged before she left – how thoughtful of Kristen (not surprised)!

Flowers from Kilimanjaro
Cameron & Taylor with their flowers and thank-you notes.

Blog Comments

identiconThanks to everyone that has been commenting! As Kristen noted, she loves receiving them and it’s a great addition to this log of her journey.

Last night, we changed from the “Mystery Man” silouette to the Identicon. These avatars are dynamically generated based on your email address, unique to each. Cameron really wanted the monsters!

Hopefully this is my last post and Kristen can resume soon!
Markus