Day 6.1, 7.1: Kibo, Oh Kibo, Kibo...

... you are my sacred Kibo. GLBC.

After me going "yack, yack, yack," for past couple posts, today will just be "Pictures of Kibo" day. The pictures will be from the first half of both days 6 and 7, as they were pretty much indistinguishable, and also just happened to be the best views of Kibo (see my first post for the significance of Kibo) we would get on the entire journey. Had we known that at the time, we would have taken even more photos. Still, I think we did a good job, nonetheless.

But first a word from our sponsors.

Sergey has emerged from the African bush with great pictures of Western Tanzania (scroll to bottom of page), Malawi, and Zambia.

Congrats to Paul and Jenn on their new addition M. If you know Paul and Jenn, you know M is going to follow in their ridiculously successful footsteps and take over the world. So get in good with her now.

Okay. To the camera!

Kibo!

A close-up of an ice-freaking-berg on the summit.

These were our first pictures with Kibo.

I'm pretty sure this is the first Barack yard sign seen on Kili.

The best pictures of Kibo were early in the day, when the sun had burned off the morning dew, but the moisture hadn't quite condensed into clouds yet. Hence the great views during breakfast.

Between breakfast and when we started hiking, we had some time to kill while the crew was packing everything up.

So, we goofed off a bit with some more "glamour shots."

I think I was trying some sort of Iron Cross.

These, on the other hand, are incomprehensible. My story is we were just learning the timing functions on our cameras, and I'm sticking to it.

This is us trying to do a Double Dragon, Mortal Kombat, Harry Potter, Star Wars (use the force) type scene. We were trying to get the bottom picture, but due to the vagaries of the camera, a time-lapse sequence conveniently emerged.

Anyways, at some point when most of camp had been broken down, Ronald would decide that he didn't need to supervise them anymore...

... and so we would continue down the path to Kibo.

It was kind of surreal as we started down the trail with Kibo RIGHT THERE in the distance.

Ronald was gracious enough to have us stop at a spot with a particularly clear and spectacular view.

Can you tell we are psyched?

Various panoramoramas including Kibo.

At some point, we veered away from heading to Kibo, and per my previous post concerning different routes, started heading toward Mawenzi.

Due to parallax movement, the panorama function on the camera didn't quite turn out right, but you get the point that Kibo is to your right, and Mawenzi is to your left.

Good panoramas and other pictures of Kenya in the distance, and the valley through which we had ascended. We are now above 10,000 feet.

And now to my ending glamour shots, all of which pretty much started with me looking like this...

... The Thinker...

... I am a Giant that is orders of magnitude bigger than Kibo...

... I am tiptoeing on Kibo...

... and my favorite, jumping over Kibo. Although the clip almost ruins it.

I'll be off in the Canadian wilderness next week visiting my brother (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - 7 hours NORTH of Montana), and unfortunately will not have Internet. No, Saskatoon does have Internet, but I'll be at Prince Albert and Lac La Ronge. So, see y'all in two!