Our guides woke us at 11 pm to have some soup and ginger tea (our regular morning drink). The only effects of altitude I was feeling was a loss of appetite (amazingly enough for me) and the soup was absolutely not appealing, in the least. In fact, thinking about it now (almost two weeks later) still makes me a little nauseous. I think that was the only thing I would change about the trip-- we had so much friggin' soup!!

Aside from the lack of hunger (don't worry-- I was still able to force-feed myself chocolate peanut butter candy eggs), I was feeling pretty great. Our pace up the summit was slooooowwww, which was good. It was pretty cold, but nothing we don't see in a Michigan winter (about 20 degrees Fahrenheit).

It was super cool and somewhat surreal to see the long line of headlamps heading up the mountain. They went as far as you could see. Where the line ended, I kept telling myself that that was the top. Not so much, but it did keep me putting one foot in front of the other.

We reached Stella Point, about 500m below the summit, at about 6 am. Sunrise was at 6:30, and it was an easy stroll from Stella to the top as the sun started to warm our backs.

The summit was kinda crazy-- so many people!! The sunrise was gorgeous, and I tried frantically to take some pictures.

At Stella Point, I realized I needed to, ah, decrease my bodily fluid levels. By the summit, I was pretty frantic. However, I had visions of a frostbit bum flashing across my mind, so I tried to hold it. By the time we were heading down, I was in tears from the pain in my abdomen (and probably a bit delirious from the altitude, though I didn't feel it at the time). There was no place to hide and take a break, because it is almost completely flat at the top! Finally, the other girl on the trip and the assistant guide found a semi-cave and agreed to stand guard while I stopped... it appeared that others had the same idea there :P I was very much relieved, so to speak.

The way down was awesome. On the way up all of the scree had been frozen solid, to the point that I thought we were hiking on rock the entire time, so it had been (relatively) easy to climb (thank goodness--- I can't imagine climbing up that if it *hadn't* been solid!!). Choua (the assistant guide) grabbed my elbow and "skied" with me down the now-loose scree. We each took a trekking pole and had a little three-legged race of sorts. Awesome! I'd probably still be sliding down that scree pile on my butt if it weren't for Choua.

By the time we got back to base camp at 9 am, we crashed in our tents (which we had left set up) for about an hour before dragging ourselves out for some solid food and the rest of the descent.

I was very proud of myself for carrying my little daypack the whole way :P

What a rush!!! Total altitude: 5895m... The highest point in Africa, and the highest free-standing mountain in the world!! (fourth highest overall mountain :D)