We travel by jeep to the Machame trail head. The drive winds through cultivated coffee fields and small forests of ferns and flowers. The environment changes from heath forest to moor lands. These moor lands are littered with two species of giant groundsel, Senecios and Lobelia. We spend the night at the Shira Camp, allowing plenty of time to properly acclimatize and explore the surrounding areas.
Today is a short day in terms of distance but a critical building block for our acclimatization.
We climb to about 15,000ft. Here we have lunch and admire the ancient glacier ice of the Breach Wall before dropping to our 12,800ft. campsite at Great Barranco. This day we pass below the famous Breach Wall on our left, the largest ice and rock face in Africa. The Breach Wall is famous for its climbing route, known as The Icicle , first climbed in the early 1970 s by Reinhold Messner. To our left lies the endless horizon of the African plains.