Wake up call at 3:30 am? Just 5 more hours please. A quick breakfast and breakdown of camp, and we started up the hill. Damian and I carried all our stuff: tents, sleeping bags, the whole works with us, because we are headed straight down the other side after summiting. We plan on skipping the camps on the other side and walking all the way out today; this will gain us a day for safari. A long line of headlamps proved we brought up the rear of the climbers this morning. With Mars shining brightly behind us, we quickly gained ground, losing our assistant guide in the process. We hit the edge of the crater, then ran along the ridge to the summit. The locals try to follow, and the tourists swore under their breath at us. Somewhere in here we lost our guide as well. On arrival at the top, 2 and a half hours after leaving camp, we partied and drank mate, waiting for the sunrise. All of us were in tennis shoes, and light gear (rock climbing pants, light jackets and windbreakers) We felt the temperature drop, but paid no attention to the ice on the ground. Fernandito rode around on Ryan’s back (the true Kilimanjaro summit) while Damian and I worked on our dancing. Our guide Vince joined us, we saw the sun crest the ridge, and started down in a dead run. At this point Vince lost his breakfast, so he slowed down and we met him at the Kibo huts. We were the last to leave a high camp this morning, and the first ones back. We started the trip down, everyone laughing and joking, but that soon ceased. We realized we underestimated the walk. 30 Km later all of us were asking for wheelchair accessible terrain. Apart from making us all feel old and beat up, the walk was incredible, once in a lifetime. The start was like a moonscape, flat ground dotted with distant rocks, then it continued down though high alpine vegetation, alpine desert, miles of just bushes, then dropping below the clouds, we continued through high forest and all kinds of jungle, with colobus monkeys jumping overhead. It’s hard to believe that this morning we were standing in our whities at 19,500 feet. A few days work in one. Our bodies beat, we retired to the hotel beds after long showers.