I’m leaving Tuesday to try to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. If you want to show your support, please donate at charity:water. Anyone who wants to give is welcome.

Mt. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa, at 19,340 feet (5895 meters). It’s hard to climb Kilimanjaro, mainly because of the altitude. I’ll be completely without internet access for a few weeks. Don’t expect any blog comments or email replies for the first half of August–right now, I’m not even planning to bring my laptop. Not to worry, the webspam team itself will keep chugging away: reading spam reports, improving algorithms, and stopping spam.

I’ve been doing practice hikes with the three friends that I’m going with. Here’s a few camping tips that I’ve picked up:
– Headband lights sound silly, but they work really well. And if you get one with a red light, the bugs bother you less.
– But it’s important to know where your headband light is, or you’ll just be feeling around in the dark.
– Chocolate bars and pepperoni sticks make nice treats after a full day of hiking.
– OFF! (the insect repellent) is sticky.
– You can pick up Neutrogena sunblock at your local drug store. It works well, and is a lot less oily than some sunblock.

As you can tell, a lot of hiking/camping for me is focused on food and water, plus minimizing how oily/sticky I get.

If you’ve got Kilimanjaro advice or a clean water story to share, I’d love to hear it. In the mean time, please donate to charity:water and let’s get more clean water to more people!