The coldest we’ve ever been. The highest we’ve ever been. The most exhausted we’ve ever been. The dirtiest we’ve ever been. The most exhilarated we’ve ever been.
At 19,344 feet, Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest peak in Africa and the largest free standing mountain in the world. It’s so high in fact, and with so few obstacles blocking your view of the horizon, that it’s is the only place on the planet where you can actually see the curvature of the earth’s crust. Sadly, by the time Emily and I reached the summit, we were so exhausted that that amazing, not to be missed, bend in the earth was the last thing on our minds. We were totally consumed by the quest for rest, warmth, oxygen and Mars Bars.
Emily and I started our quest 5 days prior at the Lemosho Route trailhead, a relatively new trail up the western side of the mountain that, although longer than other trails, allows for an extra day of altitude acclimatization. This extra day supposedly increases your chances of success. Our team included five porters, two guides as well as a couple of cooks. We also had one last-minute addition to our team: Anna from Australia. She was just off the plane from Sydney and had a ready-for-anything, “die before I quit” attitude that we found infectious. It was a welcome addition and provided us a much needed shot of confidence.
Apparently, Anna also thought, contrary to 100% of the information available, that Mount Kilimanjaro was flat.
Day one started out easy enough: a 3-hour hike up a relatively steep incline that ended at Big Tree, a modest campsite where we found our tents and dinner already prepped and ready for us. This was the first time we’d seen our “mobile home” for the next week and we were pretty impressed. Our site included a sleeping tent, a mess tent where we’d eat for the next week, a cooking tent and a hole in the ground surrounded by warped boards for a toilet. Our first impressions were shattered once we got a look at the adjacent campground. It included ten climbers with an entourage of over one-hundred-twenty porters. They had brand new, just out of the box, monolithic tents from Mountain Hardware. They also had actual toilets that included seats, a flush, and a tent surrounding it so you could do your business in private. Solar panels were included in their gear, although I never figured out why. That said, I wanted a solar panel desperately.
We found out later that this team included the russian guy named Abrohomovich, the owner of the Chelsea Soccer Team. This guy was the buzz on the mountain. Emily and I had never heard of him, but we had the inside track on all the rumors because he took the same route up the mountain as us.
He didn’t summit, by the way; blamed it on a sore throat. What a sissy!
The next 4 days started at 6:30am with a knock on the tent door followed by a monotone “Wake up time” from Abbas, our camp helper. We had a hot breakfast typically including eggs, white bread and fruit. On day 3 we started to see a pattern in the eggs; our guides called them “omelets” and they invariably included leftovers from the previous evening’s meal. One morning it was french fry omelet. Another day the main course was spaghetti omelet. (Strange combo, I know, but it’s not that bad). After breakfast we hit the trail. The scenery was amazing, the trail well defined, and it was an all around good experience with one exception - the constant background banter of
“I’m sleeeeeepy,” “I’m tired,” and “I just want
to sleeeeeep” from Anna, our
un-ignorable travel companion. The locals call
Kilimanjaro “Crazy Mountain”. This is partly
due to the unpredictable weather patterns but
mostly because of the continuous stream of foreigners that show up every year expecting the trip up to be like a chairlift ride. Anna never verbalized her request for a chairlift but she got it anyway.
September 8, midnight:
We got the typical alarm of Abbas saying
“Wake Up Time” just outside the tent.
Knowing the trek ahead, we were already
dressed for and ready to go. Our outfits: 4+
layers of clothes, including 2 long underwear shirts
and pants, fleece jackets, GoreTex shells, 2 layers of
gloves and multiple layers of socks. We ate a couple of candy bars and hit the trail. We reached Anna, who started 1.5 hours ahead of us, in a mere 45
minutes. She was literally, being dragged up the mountain by Julius, our super-strength Assistant Guide.
Things were going well, and although the climb was difficult and straight up, Emily and I felt pretty good about ourselves. We were actually sweating under our outfits. Then the wind hit. At about 3am, a forty-mile an hour wind came whipping across the mountain and all the accumulated sweat on our bodies froze immediately. The wind chill dropped to well below zero. Emily cried these cute little frozen tears...or at least I think she did, it was too dark to see and I was too busy crying myself. At one point we dove behind a large boulder and just held each other for a couple of minutes in the attempt to generate some warmth. We couldn’t feel either our hands or feet. At this point, I started to seriously question that advice given to Emily prior to the trip, telling her that she wouldn’t lose any toes. On top of that, Emily started to have some altitude issues; the main symptoms being a sharp headache and the inability to catch her breath.
That said, we never actually thought about turning back. At just after 5, we saw the the faintest line of light on the horizon. I’ve never, ever been so happy to see the approaching dawn in my life. With the constant reminder from Shani, our guide, of “Pole’ Pole’” (swahili for slowly slowly), we kept trudging upwards.
We reached the summit, just over 19,000 feet, around 8am. Once we hit that point, we were so exhausted that we collapsed in front of the Congratulations Sign and lay there motionless for 5 minutes.
Incredibly, around 9am, once we’d taken our photos, congratulated each other and started down the mountain again, we found the Anna 300 meters shy of the top still being dragged up the mountain by Julius. Now that’s true customer service! It’s also highly dangerous - altitude sickness isn’t something you want to fool around with and Anna definitely had the symptoms.
As difficult as we found the climb up, the 7000’ climb down to Mweka Camp was in some ways an even greater challenge. All in all, it was a 14 hour day of scrambling, hiking, half-falling our way up and down Kilimanjaro.
We loved every minute of it.
