Making base camp 15,000 feet.

Mount Meru (14,997 ft), Kilimanjaro's sister in the background. 

At some points during the trip, you felt like you were right under the mountain and that you could summit that day.  At other times you would feel like you had covered miles and it still seemed so far away and no matter what our elevation gain, it still seemed like thousands of feet above us.

The cloud cover blanketed the valley around the mountain for most of our trip.

A group shot with the team and the guides!

Right behind Mike is the the ridge that we would be climbing up during our summit.

The temps would change on us as quickly as the clouds would.  One minute it was sunny and warm, the next clouds would be socking us in and it would be cold.

This was our guide Theo (holding the red water bottle).  He was born and raised in Moshi (a town at the foot of the mountain) and was a very competent and experienced guide!  The other three were his assistants,  these guys spent most of their time with us, hiking with us and helping us each step of the way. Theo divided his time between the team and supervising the rest of the porters. 

At the end of each day, we marveled at how many miles and terrain we would cover!
This stretch was so barren of any plant, I likened it to hiking on mars.  

Here we are at base camp (15,000 ft)!  The three squatty potties you see in the back
were built over a cliff.  Needless to say, you don't want to spend a lot of time in there,
especially when the wind picks up!