Mount Elgon - Day 2

On the second day we headed for the Wagagai summit. I was not confident that I could make it as I was feeling quite week, but after porridge and some coffee, I decided to try anyway. It would be 4 hours of climbing and 2 hours of descending back to the mude cave camp, so I could always just turn back early if my strength would fail me. Indeed, I found it difficult to keep with the pace of Tom & others and was trailing behind for the first half of the distance. The path itself was not particularly tricky to climb, but my pulse rose rapidly and I was out of breath quickly. Maybe in the end it was the porridge which kept me going, as for the remaining half I was feeling better and kept the pace that Tom set just as well as Ben and Carrey. The view from the top was great and I was extremely happy that I made all 4453 meters of it despite the circumstances!

We descended back to the mude cave back almost four times as fast as we had ascended and met the Danes on our way back. They had left about 20 minutes later than us, but still had more than hour to go for the peak, so I guess that in the end my pace was not so slow after all. We spent the rest of the day gathering strength for the next etape, but my appetite was still gone and I failed to eat most of my tuna pasta, matoke (cooked bananas) or the rice & lentils I got from Ben & Carrey. The Danes had their problems too, as all them had gained blisters from the first day, and the second day summiting naturally worsened the state of the sorry feet. Everybody seemed bit worried about the following day, as we would have to walk 37 km and even as long as 12 hours.