My flight to Tanzania had a layover in Nairobi, so on the southbound leg, my window seat included a great view of Mount Kilimanjaro. Her snowy peaks and crater burst up through the clouds into the sunlight and seemed to almost scrape the underside of the jet's wing as we passed overhead.
"I 'm going to attempt that?" I asked myself, trying to calculate how much worse 5896m (19,457 feet) is than the 13 thousand or so feet I endured skiing in Colorado last year. "Well, I am going to give it my best," I decided, worrying a little about the 30%-50% failure rate the guidebooks claimed.
Cut to: a couple of weeks later.
In Arusha, there are probably 50 companies running treks up the mountain and there are almost as many different ways to make the climb. There are around seven routes of varying difficulty and scenery, then you decide how many days from five to eight or nine with the longer trips offering more acclimatization time. Of course more days = more money. Next decide how "gourmet" you want to travel. There are all kinds of amenities and services offered from meal quality to better lodging and bedding. I even saw one group with a tiny, tented, private port-a-potty! No sharing the nasty wooden hole in the floor outhouse for these climbers. Of course more luxuries = more money! I got pretty lucky and found a group doing one of the routes I was interested in, Machamé (scenic and not too crowded but one of the harder routes,) leaving the day after I got back from safari, taking six days and in my price range - hooray! They even had cold weather and trekking gear I could rent.
So early in the morning, I joined a French couple, Christelle & Christophe (another language workout!) who live on Reunion Island near Mauritius, and set off with 12 porters and a guide up the mountain.
The climb is broken up into reasonable daily hikes to allow for some acclimatization and not completely exhaust the tourists. Our first day we were supposed to leave from the Machamé entrance gate at 1700m, but our van broke down a kilometer short of that so we had some bonus hiking right at the start at no extra charge. It was a very pretty hike through the green rainforest, moderately strenuous most of the way, but it got a little steeper after we broke through the treeline and approached our goal. Four and a half hours after starting, we arrived at our first night's camp at 3034m and found the porters had pitched our tents and dinner was almost ready. We all went right to bed after eating and I tried to sleep all bundled up in my chilly little tent.
Day 2 started with breakfast at 7:30 (porridge! - am I back in the -Seychelles?) and then hiked another 4.5 hours up to 3800m with great views most of the way, but the clouds closed in and it started raining just after we reached camp at 1:15. The rest of the afternoon was acclimatization time and we all napped after Christelle, who is a biology and geology teacher, worked on my French. Christophe has just a little English, but Christelle's was about level with my French, so conversation was pretty easy. It was a cold, cloudy, and cold (did I mention it was cold?) camp with some weird sci-fi looking plants growing in the rocks all around.
After a very cold night (-10°C) we woke up to sunshine glinting off the frozen tents and a beautiful view of the high peaks and glaciers up on Kili's summit. I had slept badly due to the cold - Nature Beauties gave me a crap tent and sleeping bag. And who designs a thermal mat that is narrower than a person? Every time a part of my body touched the ground off the mat, I was quickly wakened by cold seeping in through my layers. If I didn't lie like King Tut with my arms crossed on my chest, not moving at all, I kept waking up and I could feel exhaustion beginning to take its toll. I was chilled as I don't think my gear was designed with this kind of camping in mind. That day, we hiked six hours up to Lava Tower at 4600m and back down to Barranko Camp which is just under 4000m, to get more used to the altitude. It was bloody cold and even planning to wear most of the clothes I owned, I was not looking forward to that night. I had a solid headache due to altitude and effort despite hydrating like crazy. And peeing every hour made sleep even more difficult. I was worried what the next day would bring...
All the clothes did not help and I spent a mostly sleepless night trying to find the warmest position and then not move. After a quick breakfast that I really didn't feel like eating, we packed and hit the trail on a long ascent to altitude for our last camp before the summit push. The combination of altitude, hard climb, cold and lack of sleep were beginning to exhaust me and I felt awful all day. By lunch the hike and altitude robbed us of our appetites, and we huddled out of the wind behind some rocks, staring at bag lunches we barely touched. I forced down what I could and packed in a liter of water on top of that. I knew dehydration in the thin dry air must be avoided and I swallowed the icy water knowing that we would at least get a breather every time we stopped to pee. After lunch, conditions got worse - colder and wetter - and Christelle started getting sick.
Staggering along, I caught my mind considering ways to quit and end the misery and controlled it by forcing everything out and just counting my steps. Left foot odds and right foot evens and trying to focus on any interesting numbers I passed.
34- my lucky number...
1066 - William the Conqueror...
1492 - Columbus...
1776 - Declaration of Independence...
1968 - my birthyear...
1990 - college graduation...
2002 - CJ is born...
2068 - I turn 100...
3434 - lucky number twice.
Soon they lost all meaning as I moved slowly up the mountain and I really had to focus during the breaks not to lose count. Christelle got sicker, puking every couple hundred meters, and I was now fighting the nausea and taste of my own old food. "What is that awful taste? Hard-boiled egg? I threw mine away at lunch, can I be fighting down yesterday's lunch?!?" The step count grew until after six hours of hiking, finally we stopped at Barafu camp, altitude 4662m.
Step count - 7192.
The plan was to nap, grab some dinner, then sleep for a couple more hours before rising at 11:30PM for a midnight start on the summit climb - hoping to arrive around dawn.
Here is where I got lucky. I had been trying to come up with a better way to sleep and decided that half my trouble was the mummy style sleeping bag that I just could not get comfy in. So this time, I put on all my warmest clothes and lay down directly on the thermal mat with the unzipped sleeping bag over me like a blanket so I could lie on my side, which was all but impossible before. Our guide Arushaa had noticed my struggles with poor gear and the cold and dug up some decent socks for me. Between the two, I got a decent nap before dinner and felt a little better.
By then Christelle was so sick she could not even get out of her sleeping bag - she wouldn't be going any further and would head down to a lesser altitude as soon as possible. The thought of eating turned my stomach and Christophe had it worse - all the difficulties we were sharing, plus a ton of worry about his girlfriend. We stared at the food for a while, and I eventually managed half a bowl of soup with a piece of bread crumbled in, two spoonfuls of plain pasta, and some tea. Chris only had soup and I struggled to encourage and cheer him up in French. Then it was back to our tents for some sleep before the midnight hike.
As I zipped the flap, I noticed how the strengthening winds were rattling my tent and I thought it might blow away if me and my pack weren't inside holding it down. Every time I needed to pee, I stayed inside and used the water bottle trick I had discovered in the Serengeti. Only this time, I augmented my new sleep system by huddling around the warm bottle until its heat faded. When I woke with a stuffed nose, I just blew it right into the sleeping bag without even uncovering my head, "I've only got to sleep in it one more night," I thought as I drifted back to sleep, "my snot is the next guy's problem." This way, I managed to get another decent five hours of shuteye.
I awoke to a porter calling my name, quickly dressed in my planned ascent clothes, drank the cup of tea, and downed the cookies he left. The wind was really buffeting my tent as I put brand new batteries in my headlamp and mentally got ready for what lay ahead in the dark on the frozen hill.
Decent sleep made all the difference and I felt pretty good. My blood was up and I just knew my goal was within reach. Determination took over and now I just had to get it done.
Then Arushaa came and I crawled out into the frigid dark to begin the final climb to the summit of the highest mountain on the continent. Chris was nowhere to be seen as we started out, but I barely gave it a thought and just focused on keeping the beam of my headlight on Arushaa's boots and trying to step in all the good spots he used. "Poley poley," I thought, rerpeating the Swahili words for "slowly, slowly," over and over again in my mind. Step step breathe. Step step breathe. An hour and a half in, my head lamp died - the batteries killed by the cold. With chilled fingers like dead meat, I struggled to reinsert the half batteries I had pulled out in my tent, and opened my jacket to put the dead ones close to my body where they might get some more life as they warmed. The constant wind gusts were trying to knock me off the exposed rocks and for the first time, I feared not making it for reasons other than my own exhaustion or reaction to altitude. I knew I had the mental strength to drag my body to the top and well beyond, but "What a shame," I thought, "if I failed because of no lights or a fall in this shitty wind!" When the second set of batteries gave out, I pulled out the the dive light I usually keep on my BC and had luckily brought along as a third backup. Poley Poley, higher and higher.
Even though I could no longer feel them, I kept wiggling my toes and fingers, trying to keep the blood flowing. It hurt every time I scraped the snotsicles off my nose, so I figured I was safe from frostbite there, at least.
Around 5AM, the divelight died and when Arushaa seemed a little frustrated while I was switching back to the headlamp and changing out batteries, I almost snapped at him, "I brought TWO flashlights and THREE sets of batteries," I raged but kept it inside, "and you didn't bring shit - so get off my back!" This time, the rewarmed first batteries lasted no more than 20 minutes, and I was about to chuck it off the mountain. But Arushaa came through and scrounged two AAA batteries from another guide, and with the one leftover I remembered sticking in my pocket from the four-pack I had opened in the tent, I thought we would have light until dawn. Back to the climbing, up through the wind and the cold.
I was still plodding along, somewhere deep in my own mind where it wasn't cold and painful, when suddenly Arushaa was hugging me, "Congratulations," he shouted in my ear, "we're here!" and I realized that it was light enough to see and the slope had gotten more gradual. We had reached Stella Point, not the top top yet - that lay several hundred meters up, but was just a 45 minute walk instead of a climb through the really thin air. Looped on the lack of O2, I staggered into the wind on to Uhuru Point, arriving at 6:20AM, just over six hours after leaving camp.
I dragged out my camera, inserted the battery I'd kept warm against my body, and took some pics at the wooden sign. It was cloudy and the top is pretty flat so there wasn't really any views. I pulled out a sign I made as a joke for some GVI friends and found some people to pose with it. The relentless wind tore one of the pieces from someone's grasp and it was instantly gone forever - I didn't even bother to look. I just tried to shoot what was left before it got snatched away, too. Drunk with success and the thin air, I put the camera away and pulled out the Mars Bar I'd carried all week to celebrate and almost broke a tooth on it, "We'll eat that later," Arushaa cautioned, "you'll just throw it up, here." And with that we started back down.
Now I noticed the exhausted and desperate faces of those on the way up as we passed. "Almost there," I cheered them, "you're doing great!" I tried to give them some of my energy to make it. Few noticed and soon I was far enough down that I felt silly saying anything so I just looked at them, wondering who would quit. Lots had, I realized when I compared the numbers of people I saw around the summit with the hordes that left camp back at midnight - the cold and altitude had taken their toll.
We descended back to Barafu Camp to the east and soon the sun cleared a peak and shone horizontally under the clouds, warming me as we almost skiied down a dusty gravel slope. I could have slipped and fallen all the way back to my tentand not cared - I had made it! I'd been scared my body couldn't handle the altitude, but it had. I'd survived days and nights of dreadful cold I'd never expected and wasn't prepared for. I totalled the hours of climbing in my head and realized that I had hiked 4.3 km vertically and 26.5 hours to the summit in five days! Finally I reached camp around 9AM where Arushaa let me sleep for an hour before waking me with a quick bowl of soup and then we were off for another three hour hike to that night's camp down at 3089m.
I rolled into Mweka Camp on rubbery legs with a small smile and asked Chris & Chris how they were doing. Her stomach was lots better and they hugged me and we shared my Mars Bar. I know Chris could have made it, physically I think he was stronger than me, but I also think he had to stay with his girlfriend. I told him this and said he had made the right decision and he looked relieved. Then this Quebecois guy named Simon showed up and we talked in French until dinner. How did I get stuck with the only three French speakers on the mountain?? It was OK, though, I could follow most of it, and they talked slowly and helped when I needed a translation. Simon works in Montreal as a Survival Instructor (!) and incredibly he had summited in the dark before 5AM, took two pictures and was back in his tent by 6:30 - when I was still at the summit. Wow!
The next day was a quick morning walk in shorts and a t-shirt and we descended quickly in the newly thick-feeling air. At the gate, we signed out of the mountain and I bought the porters a round of beers (at 10AM!) to thank them for the amazing job they did. Their job is very difficult, walking with huge loads balanced on their heads at twice the tourists' speed, while we were struggling with a light daypack. By early afternoon I was checked into my "splurge" hotel and was vainly trying to run them out of hot water.
The grand totals? - Six days. 34 hours of hiking. 1600m to 5896m and back down, about 8.6km of vertical change, (actually way more with all the ups and downs in between.) Four huge blisters and about 2kg of weight lost. Most importantly, I'd found inner strength and resolve I never knew I had. Arushaa said the summit temp was -13°C and we had gone up in the worst wind storm on the mountain in five years.
"I 'm going to attempt that?" I asked myself, trying to calculate how much worse 5896m (19,457 feet) is than the 13 thousand or so feet I endured skiing in Colorado last year. "Well, I am going to give it my best," I decided, worrying a little about the 30%-50% failure rate the guidebooks claimed.
Cut to: a couple of weeks later.
In Arusha, there are probably 50 companies running treks up the mountain and there are almost as many different ways to make the climb. There are around seven routes of varying difficulty and scenery, then you decide how many days from five to eight or nine with the longer trips offering more acclimatization time. Of course more days = more money. Next decide how "gourmet" you want to travel. There are all kinds of amenities and services offered from meal quality to better lodging and bedding. I even saw one group with a tiny, tented, private port-a-potty! No sharing the nasty wooden hole in the floor outhouse for these climbers. Of course more luxuries = more money! I got pretty lucky and found a group doing one of the routes I was interested in, Machamé (scenic and not too crowded but one of the harder routes,) leaving the day after I got back from safari, taking six days and in my price range - hooray! They even had cold weather and trekking gear I could rent.
So early in the morning, I joined a French couple, Christelle & Christophe (another language workout!) who live on Reunion Island near Mauritius, and set off with 12 porters and a guide up the mountain.
The climb is broken up into reasonable daily hikes to allow for some acclimatization and not completely exhaust the tourists. Our first day we were supposed to leave from the Machamé entrance gate at 1700m, but our van broke down a kilometer short of that so we had some bonus hiking right at the start at no extra charge. It was a very pretty hike through the green rainforest, moderately strenuous most of the way, but it got a little steeper after we broke through the treeline and approached our goal. Four and a half hours after starting, we arrived at our first night's camp at 3034m and found the porters had pitched our tents and dinner was almost ready. We all went right to bed after eating and I tried to sleep all bundled up in my chilly little tent.
Day 2 started with breakfast at 7:30 (porridge! - am I back in the -Seychelles?) and then hiked another 4.5 hours up to 3800m with great views most of the way, but the clouds closed in and it started raining just after we reached camp at 1:15. The rest of the afternoon was acclimatization time and we all napped after Christelle, who is a biology and geology teacher, worked on my French. Christophe has just a little English, but Christelle's was about level with my French, so conversation was pretty easy. It was a cold, cloudy, and cold (did I mention it was cold?) camp with some weird sci-fi looking plants growing in the rocks all around.
After a very cold night (-10°C) we woke up to sunshine glinting off the frozen tents and a beautiful view of the high peaks and glaciers up on Kili's summit. I had slept badly due to the cold - Nature Beauties gave me a crap tent and sleeping bag. And who designs a thermal mat that is narrower than a person? Every time a part of my body touched the ground off the mat, I was quickly wakened by cold seeping in through my layers. If I didn't lie like King Tut with my arms crossed on my chest, not moving at all, I kept waking up and I could feel exhaustion beginning to take its toll. I was chilled as I don't think my gear was designed with this kind of camping in mind. That day, we hiked six hours up to Lava Tower at 4600m and back down to Barranko Camp which is just under 4000m, to get more used to the altitude. It was bloody cold and even planning to wear most of the clothes I owned, I was not looking forward to that night. I had a solid headache due to altitude and effort despite hydrating like crazy. And peeing every hour made sleep even more difficult. I was worried what the next day would bring...
All the clothes did not help and I spent a mostly sleepless night trying to find the warmest position and then not move. After a quick breakfast that I really didn't feel like eating, we packed and hit the trail on a long ascent to altitude for our last camp before the summit push. The combination of altitude, hard climb, cold and lack of sleep were beginning to exhaust me and I felt awful all day. By lunch the hike and altitude robbed us of our appetites, and we huddled out of the wind behind some rocks, staring at bag lunches we barely touched. I forced down what I could and packed in a liter of water on top of that. I knew dehydration in the thin dry air must be avoided and I swallowed the icy water knowing that we would at least get a breather every time we stopped to pee. After lunch, conditions got worse - colder and wetter - and Christelle started getting sick.
Staggering along, I caught my mind considering ways to quit and end the misery and controlled it by forcing everything out and just counting my steps. Left foot odds and right foot evens and trying to focus on any interesting numbers I passed.
34- my lucky number...
1066 - William the Conqueror...
1492 - Columbus...
1776 - Declaration of Independence...
1968 - my birthyear...
1990 - college graduation...
2002 - CJ is born...
2068 - I turn 100...
3434 - lucky number twice.
Soon they lost all meaning as I moved slowly up the mountain and I really had to focus during the breaks not to lose count. Christelle got sicker, puking every couple hundred meters, and I was now fighting the nausea and taste of my own old food. "What is that awful taste? Hard-boiled egg? I threw mine away at lunch, can I be fighting down yesterday's lunch?!?" The step count grew until after six hours of hiking, finally we stopped at Barafu camp, altitude 4662m.
Step count - 7192.
The plan was to nap, grab some dinner, then sleep for a couple more hours before rising at 11:30PM for a midnight start on the summit climb - hoping to arrive around dawn.
Here is where I got lucky. I had been trying to come up with a better way to sleep and decided that half my trouble was the mummy style sleeping bag that I just could not get comfy in. So this time, I put on all my warmest clothes and lay down directly on the thermal mat with the unzipped sleeping bag over me like a blanket so I could lie on my side, which was all but impossible before. Our guide Arushaa had noticed my struggles with poor gear and the cold and dug up some decent socks for me. Between the two, I got a decent nap before dinner and felt a little better.
By then Christelle was so sick she could not even get out of her sleeping bag - she wouldn't be going any further and would head down to a lesser altitude as soon as possible. The thought of eating turned my stomach and Christophe had it worse - all the difficulties we were sharing, plus a ton of worry about his girlfriend. We stared at the food for a while, and I eventually managed half a bowl of soup with a piece of bread crumbled in, two spoonfuls of plain pasta, and some tea. Chris only had soup and I struggled to encourage and cheer him up in French. Then it was back to our tents for some sleep before the midnight hike.
As I zipped the flap, I noticed how the strengthening winds were rattling my tent and I thought it might blow away if me and my pack weren't inside holding it down. Every time I needed to pee, I stayed inside and used the water bottle trick I had discovered in the Serengeti. Only this time, I augmented my new sleep system by huddling around the warm bottle until its heat faded. When I woke with a stuffed nose, I just blew it right into the sleeping bag without even uncovering my head, "I've only got to sleep in it one more night," I thought as I drifted back to sleep, "my snot is the next guy's problem." This way, I managed to get another decent five hours of shuteye.
I awoke to a porter calling my name, quickly dressed in my planned ascent clothes, drank the cup of tea, and downed the cookies he left. The wind was really buffeting my tent as I put brand new batteries in my headlamp and mentally got ready for what lay ahead in the dark on the frozen hill.
Decent sleep made all the difference and I felt pretty good. My blood was up and I just knew my goal was within reach. Determination took over and now I just had to get it done.
Then Arushaa came and I crawled out into the frigid dark to begin the final climb to the summit of the highest mountain on the continent. Chris was nowhere to be seen as we started out, but I barely gave it a thought and just focused on keeping the beam of my headlight on Arushaa's boots and trying to step in all the good spots he used. "Poley poley," I thought, rerpeating the Swahili words for "slowly, slowly," over and over again in my mind. Step step breathe. Step step breathe. An hour and a half in, my head lamp died - the batteries killed by the cold. With chilled fingers like dead meat, I struggled to reinsert the half batteries I had pulled out in my tent, and opened my jacket to put the dead ones close to my body where they might get some more life as they warmed. The constant wind gusts were trying to knock me off the exposed rocks and for the first time, I feared not making it for reasons other than my own exhaustion or reaction to altitude. I knew I had the mental strength to drag my body to the top and well beyond, but "What a shame," I thought, "if I failed because of no lights or a fall in this shitty wind!" When the second set of batteries gave out, I pulled out the the dive light I usually keep on my BC and had luckily brought along as a third backup. Poley Poley, higher and higher.
Even though I could no longer feel them, I kept wiggling my toes and fingers, trying to keep the blood flowing. It hurt every time I scraped the snotsicles off my nose, so I figured I was safe from frostbite there, at least.
Around 5AM, the divelight died and when Arushaa seemed a little frustrated while I was switching back to the headlamp and changing out batteries, I almost snapped at him, "I brought TWO flashlights and THREE sets of batteries," I raged but kept it inside, "and you didn't bring shit - so get off my back!" This time, the rewarmed first batteries lasted no more than 20 minutes, and I was about to chuck it off the mountain. But Arushaa came through and scrounged two AAA batteries from another guide, and with the one leftover I remembered sticking in my pocket from the four-pack I had opened in the tent, I thought we would have light until dawn. Back to the climbing, up through the wind and the cold.
I was still plodding along, somewhere deep in my own mind where it wasn't cold and painful, when suddenly Arushaa was hugging me, "Congratulations," he shouted in my ear, "we're here!" and I realized that it was light enough to see and the slope had gotten more gradual. We had reached Stella Point, not the top top yet - that lay several hundred meters up, but was just a 45 minute walk instead of a climb through the really thin air. Looped on the lack of O2, I staggered into the wind on to Uhuru Point, arriving at 6:20AM, just over six hours after leaving camp.
I dragged out my camera, inserted the battery I'd kept warm against my body, and took some pics at the wooden sign. It was cloudy and the top is pretty flat so there wasn't really any views. I pulled out a sign I made as a joke for some GVI friends and found some people to pose with it. The relentless wind tore one of the pieces from someone's grasp and it was instantly gone forever - I didn't even bother to look. I just tried to shoot what was left before it got snatched away, too. Drunk with success and the thin air, I put the camera away and pulled out the Mars Bar I'd carried all week to celebrate and almost broke a tooth on it, "We'll eat that later," Arushaa cautioned, "you'll just throw it up, here." And with that we started back down.
Now I noticed the exhausted and desperate faces of those on the way up as we passed. "Almost there," I cheered them, "you're doing great!" I tried to give them some of my energy to make it. Few noticed and soon I was far enough down that I felt silly saying anything so I just looked at them, wondering who would quit. Lots had, I realized when I compared the numbers of people I saw around the summit with the hordes that left camp back at midnight - the cold and altitude had taken their toll.
We descended back to Barafu Camp to the east and soon the sun cleared a peak and shone horizontally under the clouds, warming me as we almost skiied down a dusty gravel slope. I could have slipped and fallen all the way back to my tentand not cared - I had made it! I'd been scared my body couldn't handle the altitude, but it had. I'd survived days and nights of dreadful cold I'd never expected and wasn't prepared for. I totalled the hours of climbing in my head and realized that I had hiked 4.3 km vertically and 26.5 hours to the summit in five days! Finally I reached camp around 9AM where Arushaa let me sleep for an hour before waking me with a quick bowl of soup and then we were off for another three hour hike to that night's camp down at 3089m.
I rolled into Mweka Camp on rubbery legs with a small smile and asked Chris & Chris how they were doing. Her stomach was lots better and they hugged me and we shared my Mars Bar. I know Chris could have made it, physically I think he was stronger than me, but I also think he had to stay with his girlfriend. I told him this and said he had made the right decision and he looked relieved. Then this Quebecois guy named Simon showed up and we talked in French until dinner. How did I get stuck with the only three French speakers on the mountain?? It was OK, though, I could follow most of it, and they talked slowly and helped when I needed a translation. Simon works in Montreal as a Survival Instructor (!) and incredibly he had summited in the dark before 5AM, took two pictures and was back in his tent by 6:30 - when I was still at the summit. Wow!
The next day was a quick morning walk in shorts and a t-shirt and we descended quickly in the newly thick-feeling air. At the gate, we signed out of the mountain and I bought the porters a round of beers (at 10AM!) to thank them for the amazing job they did. Their job is very difficult, walking with huge loads balanced on their heads at twice the tourists' speed, while we were struggling with a light daypack. By early afternoon I was checked into my "splurge" hotel and was vainly trying to run them out of hot water.
The grand totals? - Six days. 34 hours of hiking. 1600m to 5896m and back down, about 8.6km of vertical change, (actually way more with all the ups and downs in between.) Four huge blisters and about 2kg of weight lost. Most importantly, I'd found inner strength and resolve I never knew I had. Arushaa said the summit temp was -13°C and we had gone up in the worst wind storm on the mountain in five years.
I believe it.
-Clement
