There’s a large anthill just south of the equator in Tanzania with a big white pimple looking top that people commonly refer to as a “mountain” because of its above average elevation. It’s cold, covered in glaciers, and the airs too thin. People occasionally walk on top of it, like little ants, with either their arms raised high, or to their side because their vomitting. As is custom with any large hill, people tend to bestow names to them. This one in particular, with its head that looks like a balding old man with a beat up skull, was called “Mt. Kilimanjaro.” I climbed the crap out of it, and like anything a man sets his sites on something and ends up conquering it, I now have no respect for it. Not only did I climb it and climb it well, but I also did so carrying 15 meals, 6 gingersnap cookies, and one cup of warm tea with me. Let me explain.
A few days before we left, the haircuts began. It started with me asking Jess if she would just trim up my neck hair because as she put it, “It’s like there’s two people living on your neck.” The neck trim turned into a full head buzzing, and my head being buzzed turned into Kurt’s being buzzed, and then finally into Adam getting a kidoku, or Mohawk. After we all realized that we would be spending seven days on the mountain without the possibility of having a shower we decided that it would just be easier if we didn’t have any hair to deal with. Adam, being the tall skinny 15 year old he is with the quirky sense of humor, decided he wanted to look intimidating for the mountain. I respect his decision. Adam was later quoted as saying in his dry monotonous manner, “I want to sleep like a rock, because rocks are always, like, chilling,” and “My dad told me once that I could only have one soda a day, so I did. But, then, I realized I just wouldn’t tell him, so I had more.” I liked his unintentional dry humor from the start.
Jess, a short chipper blonde who works in LA making soundtracks for movies and always enthusiastic became our motivational cheerleader on the climb, did the majority of the hair cutting with all of us. I pride myself though on the fact that I did Adam’s bangs. Where Jess was precise and made sure that she cut the right spot at the right length, I went the complete opposite direction with my hair cutting technique. Instead, I stood in front of Adam, stared him down until he started feeling uncomfortable, and attacked the parts that needed to be trimmed without any hesitation. I’d ask Jess if this piece needed to be cut while I was already cutting it. I like to think I was the Jackson Pollack of haircutting. Afterwards it was confirmed by all that we looked significantly tougher and better prepared for the seven day adventure.
On the morning of July 10th our guide Fred arrived to load our gear into his van and head towards the Machame Gate. We were going to have two guides for this trip, Fred and Erick, and out of the two it could definitely be said that Fred was the superstar personality that was going to lead us, while Erick was the more quite and reserved leader that you could turn to if a dramatic situation arrived. Our nervous energy was comforted when we asked Erick if he liked his job and he replied, “I love it more than you could ever imagine.” Fred had on his red Yankees flat bill that he would wear throughout the entirety of the trip, which made it easier to find him when he fell behind from our group, and greeted us with his trademark phrase, “Superman!” In total we had 24 porters between the 6 of us, a cook, and two assistant guides. But the strange part about having that large of an entourage was that we rarely ever saw anyone else besides Fred and Erick, and the waiters who served us. The porters were ghosts carrying 50-pound bags on their necks for the entire trip. They were equipped with the bare essentials, transferring through the weather in sometimes only a t-shirt, jeans, and a worn pair of shoes. At night they’d sleep huddled together in a green tent, not much bigger than the dining tent we ate in every night.
It was a quiet car ride to the gate. Everyone either gathered their thoughts for the unknown that lay ahead, listened to music, or rested their eyes to try and catch as much sleep as possible. Alex, a 21-year-old Australian girl who is spending the next 8 months traveling from Africa to Nepal, to India and Vietnam was more nervous than anyone. Weeks prior she refused to look at the summit, but when she did she’d just mutter with a shocked look in her eyes, “Oh, no. Oh, this is just stupid.” In the car, she had her head in her arms with her eyes closed, hiding the face that we would so often see light up at the sight of each night’s dinner in the coming days. After a brief stop at a local restaurant so Fred could run in and grab breakfast he told us that there would be no other stops until we reached the gate. It wasn’t even twenty minutes later when the driver pulled over on the side of the road and got out to buy something from a local stand and completely erased Fred’s previous promise. I leaned forward and asked, “Hey, Fred, who’s running this show? You said no more stops.”
“Yeah, but he needed to get a voucher. I told him not to stop.” Fred replied.
“I already don’t know if I can trust you Fred, this is no good.”
Fred laughed, but seriously, I was questioning who was running the show from the start. Already I felt that eventually on the climb when everyone was tired and worn down and leadership began to fall apart, I was going to have to lead the crew to the top of the mountain.
After driving up steep roads we finally reached the Machame Gates. I still consider it sort of cheating since we gained about 6,000 ft. in the drive, but nonetheless we were finally there. The gate was a massive structure, with a wooden triangle frame hanging over the iron gates with a sign dangling from a chain that read simply, “Machame.” Porters were all standing outside waiting for an opportunity when a guide would be short a man and have to come ask one of them to join his team, but there were still many of them carrying things for sale like American flags, Tanzanian flags, water proof backpack covers, and any last minute item that someone might need. Of course, all the prices were significantly marked up, but I still enjoyed the fact that they were selling flags from all over the world, and strongly considered buying an American one before a guy from Oklahoma beat me to it. As our porters unloaded our gear for us, we walked over to a building just inside the gates that was the registration office. We had to wait half an hour for our turn to sign up because a British group of 33 were ahead of us. I know they were from Britain because they had the unmistakable accents of people with peanut butter permanently stuck to the roofs of their mouths.
At registration you had to put down the essentials: name, address, country of origin, passport number, and occupation. I wasn’t exactly sure what to put down for my occupation, because the way I see it an occupation is something that you are getting paid for, whereas I’m a volunteer, but I’m also supposed to not tell people that I’m volunteering due to passport regulations. Therefore, I put the only occupation I could think of that fit, and at each registration point along the trail I wrote underneath that section, Bum. We took a group shot in front of the gates to symbolize the beginning of the journey, and we met a group of five from Oklahoma that would become our hiking buddies at various points throughout the hike. Valerie, an unknown respectable age, older and a resident of Chicago whom we called “Momma Val” throughout the climb, pulled a green monster looking beanie out of her bag and claimed that, “This is what will get me up the mountain.” Val was more a realistic when it came to the climb, and spent the weeks prior to the climb reading other climbers accounts and tales of horror from on top of the mountain and reciting them to us at meal times. Later, after reaching base camp, a 60 year old Danish guy passing through camp on his descent, would tell her that the summit night, “Was the hardest day of my life,” something that scared all of us and made us wish we had not heard his words.
And then we were off. The first day we were going to be in the jungle where we were comfortably shaded from the sun by a thick cover of trees. Monkeys hung around the mouth of the trail, but didn’t venture much further because food was easier to come by with all the bags lying around the parking lot for them to pilfer through. It was humid, but the only sign of rain was the thick mud underneath our feet. We all tried to maintain a good pace for fear that if we went too fast we would run into the problems of altitude sickness that we had heard about from various people before the trip. Kurt, the entertainment coordinator for the Jacksonville Jaguars and according to what I told people, the starting running back for the team, decided to strap on Adam’s backpack as well and switch off throughout the day with him. They went a little faster than everyone else, and learned the consequences of that in the next couple days, but later on it was not uncommon to see Kurt lending a helping out to any one of us, or offering to carry our bags. Anything to make the hike a little easier, Kurt would be there.
We stopped for a hot lunch in a little clearing a couple of hours into the hike, and that’s where we learned about the incredible and amazing meals we would have in the week to come. Each day brought about a different meal. For breakfast, Erick or our waiters, Juma and Juma, would wake us in our tents with a fresh cup of coffee or tea in hand. We called one waiter Juma Kidogo and the other Juma Kubwa, Little Juma and Big Juma. The bigger Juma wore a Canadian sweatshirt everyday and gave us a thumb up at each meal with a broken, “It is okay?” while the smaller Juma had a pink pair of corduroy jeans that he wore daily along with a sheepish, quiet smile. Each breakfast we had porridge, a gray thick looking soup that tasted better with a little peanut butter and sugar, and toast. Eggs and sausage would follow soon after. We would have the occasional sit down hot lunch, or we would have packed lunches prepared for us in the mornings that Good Chance, our assistant guide, carried until it was time to eat. Hot lunches and dinners always consisted of a creamy soup and bread appetizer. We had cucumber, carrot, sweet potato, pumpkin, and lintel (don’t know what that is) soup and each one had either a little kick to it, or a garlic flavor. Following the soup we would have either the best-fried chicken in the world and fresh chips (French fries), or a rice dish with meat or vegetable sauce and a juice box. The packed lunches consisted of: a piece of chicken, muffin, banana, orange, large somosa with meat inside, cookies, a sandwich with shredded carrots and mayonnaise (actually really good), and a juice box. They served us popcorn and peanuts after each days hike just to hold us over before dinner. At dinner, accompanied with the soups, we had a different menu each night. We had fried fish, macaroni and cheese, beef stew and potato stew, vegetable sauces and meat sauces to mix with cooked white rice, and fresh mango, avocado, oranges and bananas for dessert. We ate very well throughout the entire trip, all courtesy of the porters carrying with them the food, eating and cooking utensils, oil and cooking gas on the backs of their necks day in and day out. Despite that each of our appetites changed through the course of each day and rising altitude, I still ate a fairly large portion at each sitting and maintained a healthy appetite.
We reached Machame Camp the first night right before the sun went down. We were now 9,350ft above sea level, and we were greeted at the sign by a fellow hiker passed out on top of the stone marker. The campsite looked like what you would normally see backpacking in the Appalachian Mountains. Our tents were surrounded by trees and patches of green grass, and despite that the day was humid and warm the temperature dropped drastically as soon as the sun went down. We found out that we had one more tent than expected and decided that Kurt, Adam, and I would switch off who got to sleep alone each night. Kurt and I had a tent together the first night and despite the cozy fit, it wasn’t bad having to share a tent. We made a rule at the beginning that there wouldn’t be any farting going on in the tent. Man code, of course. At night, sleeping in the tight constraints of our cocoon sleeping bags, it was impossible to feel completely warm. No matter how many clothes we wore to bed throughout the trip, there was still the damp moist cold feeling accompanying every night’s sleep.
It was at this camp that the sordid conditions of the long drop toilets were first encountered. On average, 30,000-40,000 people hike Kilimanjaro each year, and all are expected to share the same rickety wooden structures known as “long drop toilets.” Each toilet and camp was different, some structures had no doors, while others did but they were falling off the hinges. There was a small hole, about the size of an average book, in the floor where people were meant to squat over. Now, as is the case with even the military during wartime, some people are just more accurate when dropping bombs than others, and each bathroom there was no lack of surprises to what you would find. I won’t go into much detail, but there were some absolutely horrific ones that people just looked inside, shook their head, and walked away. I was happy to be a guy on the mountain, because at least I didn’t have to go in there just to pee. Boulders served as my urinal. It was always interesting to hear the girl’s stories once they returned about how disgusting each one had been, or how bearable another one was.
End of day one: 3 meals down.
The second day of the hike we finally made it above the clouds. The landscape went from jungle to a cold desert landscape with dry looking trees and mosses on rock faces and golden dust terrain. Against all odds, flowers seemed to grow and thrive in this harsh high climate. Even higher, when only prairies of rocks and boulders existed, the occasional giant groundsel, a cactus like tree, stood out in the alpine zones. Lower down though, there were red-hot pokers, everlasting flowers, white and pink daisies, African giant rosette lobelia, which looked like large bristly pineapples, and from the trees hung bearded lichen. After walking for a while in the mist of gray and not being able to see any of the scenery around us, we walked up an incline of smooth rocks until finally the air cleared and we turned around to see white clouds rolling over jade hills. It was crazy being able to look out and as far as you could see were just an ocean of white reaching far out into the horizon. A couple hundred meters after coming out from the clouds we found a rock ledge that provided a good view of the landscape and there we were able to soak in how high we actually were. I thought that it would have been chillier being up so high, but with the sun burning directly overhead that wasn’t the case. The hike for the day was all up hill over rocky steps and ledges. This day was the only day that I was able to use my Ipod, because it froze that night when I didn’t put it in my sleeping bag with me to keep it warm. Music was like medicine for everyone on the climb. Whenever someone was feeling down, or just wanted to zone out during the long hours of hiking, they would pop in their headphones and turn on the music. Hiking with a soundtrack was the best thing in the world. You didn’t hear your rough breathing going up rocky ledge after rocky ledge, but instead only smooth vocals and quick guitar. Everyone had a little extra pep in their step when they had a good walking song on, and I was disappointed that this was the only day I was able to enjoy mine.
When we finally reached Shira Camp it was early afternoon. We were now 12,500ft above sea level. The porters had set our tents up in a protective cove that sheltered us from the surrounding wind and gave us an amazing view of the “Cathedral Peaks” and clouds beyond. The peaks were called such because of the enormity and sharpness of each peak within the seemingly small space, and it turns out that they once were the highest part of the mountain until a couple thousand years ago when Kilimanjaro last erupted, and the resulting lava and ash resulted in the peak we have today. We took a short hike to Shira Camp 2 and to look at a small cave over there, and spent the rest of the afternoon re-hydrating and laying in the thick grasses around our camp. I found a small little nook in the wall of the surrounding rocks with a bed of grass inside and took my book up there to read and watched the sun go down.
At night, Jess and I found a cove protected from the harsh winds with the ground covered in a padding of thick grass and watched the stars. If I tried to describe how many stars there were up there above the clouds I would fail miserably and not be able to do justice to their vastness. I would say that they looked like a million diamonds strewn upon the blanket of black sky, but diamonds would be too big and take up too much space. If anything it looked like glitter was thrown glistening into the air and caught somewhere in the empty stretches of space to shine like the bright lights of a far off multitude of cities and towns too large for us on earth to fathom. The moon wasn’t even out, but you still felt that there was enough light coming from the night sky to be able to see clearly. In the hour we laid there we counted roughly 15 shooting stars burning through the night sky. We could see satellites making their orbits in all directions and it was difficult to make out constellations due to the number of other stars shining around. At one point we thought we had seen a question mark being made by the stars and thought that it might be aliens asking us to ponder their existence, but a moment later the stars seemed to shift into what eventually looked like a middle finger flicking us off. That’s when we decided that there must be alien life, and it was telling us to screw off. It was the most beautiful night sky I’d ever seen and I don’t know how any others could possibly compare. I don’t think any of us will hear the song “Yellow” by Coldplay in the same way again either, because every night I’d walk out, look to the sky, and sing, “Look at the stars, look how the shine, for you. And all of the things that you do,” in a completely monotone voice.
End of day two: 6 meals down.
After we left Shira Camp we began to head up the steep incline and never ending hills towards Lava Tower and Barranco Camp, our third camp. This trek was supposed to be the longest out of all of them, where we would be hiking about 8 hours. It was at the beginning of the day that we started catching our first glimpses of altitude sickness and its effects. First, Adam threw up at dinner the night before. Then, the morning of the hike Kurt started not feeling well and we found him throwing up throughout much of the morning and into the afternoon. The freakiest thing that we saw though was a group of four porters carrying another limp and unconscious porter in their arms and descending as rapidly as possible. We all became a little freaked out at that point, because I think it started to set in that in fact people do get sick even though most of us weren’t really feeling ill. Apparently, the porter just dropped a handful of yards ahead of us and was being carried down to the camp we had just stayed at so a 4-wheeler could take him down and off the mountain. Fred and Erick told us that it happens, and the only thing you can do is get the person off the mountain as fast as possible. I asked if the porter still gets paid even though he passed out and Fred said yes, because they sign a contract. I lightened up after that, because obviously the guy was faking it and just wanted to get paid without work.
The entire hike was windy and cold. If the entire trip had to be summed up in one word it would simply be: cold. No matter what anyone did there was no escaping the lingering chill, cold winds, and even colder nights. It wasn’t until the descent was any resemblance of warmth felt. This day, because we were walking on a raised ledge facing the open landscape around, it made us prime targets for the whirling wind. I thought I had enough layers on, but had to eventually stop to had my windbreaker. When we rested we always did behind piles of large boulders and huddled up underneath to seek some sort of refuge. Throughout most of this trek I had a bandana in front of my face to help protect from the wind, but also to keep the dust out of my mouth and nose. I’m just going to say this once; all of our boogers were black throughout the trip from the dust that was kicked up throughout the hike.
During one of our stops on this stretch we taught Fred the phrase, “Don’t bro me if you don’t know me,” and it was only after that we found out he pronounced his R’s like L’s. We all got a good kick out of that.
At Lava Tower we stopped for boxed lunches. Like everything else on the mountain, Lava Tower didn’t appear that huge in the distance, but once we were sitting underneath we realized the sheer size of the massive pillar of lava. It made sense why it was given a name, I guess. At this point we were 15,190ft above sea level, the highest we would be before base camp, and in order to acclimatize we hiked high and slept low. The rest of the trek to the third camp was down hill for a little bit, then back up, until finally we went into a valley where our tents were.
To our left was Kilimanjaro just being ugly and Barafu Wall with a winding trail etched into its surface, and another steep incline to our right. Out in front of the camp the area was opened up and there were the clouds again, as far as the eye could see. For the first time in our journey there was actually a western toilet at the campsite, but despite the fact that people had a seat someone still managed to “shoot” all over the wall behind it. No idea how that happens, but it did. Barranco Camp, 13,044ft up, is where I really noticed there was less oxygen than when we started. The bathrooms were only 50 yards away and instead of walking at the pace we do when hiking I went my own pace there and back. After I returned to camp I had to stop and catch my breath and sit down because going so quick made me a little dizzy. I started sleeping with my down jacket on because every night only became colder than the last, and going to the bathroom at night was a quick affair of taking one step out of your tent, going, and getting right back in.
End of day three: 9 meals down.
The first part of our fourth day was spent going up a gigantic wall of rocks called, Barafu Wall. We didn’t need walking poles for this part of the trek, because we would need our hands to actually hold onto the rocks at different parts. It wasn’t technical climbing, but we were still going up a trail etched into the side of a massive wall. There was one part nicknamed, “The Kissing Rock,” because when you went in front of it you were forced to kiss it because you were pressed against the wall with both hands holding onto rocks. How the porters managed to get up this portion of the hike with the massive bags on their heads I have no idea. While we were slowly struggling to hold onto the wall and move up the trail, they were flying past us just using their legs to go up and their hands to hold onto the packs. When we finally did reach the top, it was a flat rock covered by high up clouds where we took a brief break and I discovered a lost poop graveyard when I went to pee not far from where we were resting. The nerve of some people, I tell ya.
The rest of the day was all up and down, once again. We would descend into one valley only to go to the top of another ridge, and then back down again. When we finally did spot our camp it was on the other side of a valley, a little higher up than we were and I pointed at it and told Erick that it wasn’t too much longer. He laughed and shook his head, and told me that it was still a couple of hours away. After really going down a long way into a valley we had an even steeper hill to climb to get to camp. Throughout the trip I always asked Fred or Erick whether or not this hill or the next compared to the steepness of the summit, and each time I got the same response. I was positive that the hill we were at had to be similar to the summit because of how huge and steep it was, but once again they responded, “Nothing compares to the summit, nothing.”
Once we finally made it to Karanga Camp, we were 13,106ft in theair, and at the last spot on the mountain where porters could get water before base camp because no rivers or streams ran that high. Therefore, the porters would have to carry any water we needed for summit and the following day the 5 hours to base camp. The camp itself looked like a refugee camp surrounded by a thick fog. Tents were spread out amongst the open ground and each was slanted just a bit on this massive hill that ran off towards the clouds. We all took naps because there was nothing else really to do and no real sites to see, but once we woke up right before dinner we were treated to a clear night sky and the city lights below. The summit had been right in front of us the entire day, but because of the fog we hadn’t been able to see it until just then, and it stood enormous and weak over our shoulders. Mt. Meru could be seen off in the distance, poking its 15,000ft peak out above the clouds. Once we were above the clouds the summit was always insight. Essentially, we spent two days hiking up towards its base and then three days walking around it towards where we would summit. Naturally, with the peak right there I asked Fred and Erick everyday why we didn’t just walk straight towards the thing and go up it. I was tired of this lollygagging around, but they kept on insisting outrageous claims that it “wasn’t safe” and the “rocks would fall down on top of us and kill us.”
End of day four: 12 meals down
On the morning of the fifth day we started our accent towards Barafu Camp, the base camp. It was weird waking up every morning and looking out my tent and seeing only an endless expanse of clouds in front. It looked like an unending ocean of white. I never thought that I would see a sight like that. I’ve seen oceans that curved into the far off horizon, prairies and deserts that had no end, but never stood and looked out at the tops of clouds that went off as far as the eye could see. Being above them we knew that down below were the bright lights of Tanzanian cities but they were being shielded from something that was normally above us. On a couple clear nights you could see the cities below and despite how busy and large they seemed when you were at ground level that looked like little patches of light surrounded by the darkness of open land.
This was the only day that I began to feel a little sick from the elevation. It was just a constant nauseous feeling, and every time we thought we were done with the endless hills, there would be another larger one to follow. Each time we took a break I would just try and hold it together and not throw up. Jess came over and gave me her Ipod and let me listen to, “Ho Hey” by the Lumineers and I was immediately cheered up by it. The landscape was just piles and piles of shale with no huge boulders really anywhere. While we were walking it sounded like we were stepping on broken clay pots, and every now and then I’d throw a flat stone just to hear the sound of it breaking. After a few hours of hiking up endless hills, we came to a flat stretch of land that finally led towards base camp on top of a high up plateau. I snapped a picture that won't load on here before heading up the hill towards base camp because it literally looks like we were walking straight towards the sky, and it felt like it too.
Fred made the mistake of telling us stories about how he’s led hikes before where the customer who had organized the climbing group wanted to appear like the guide to his group. So, the fake guide would have Fred explain the next days hike to him and cover any questions he might be asked, and then the fake guide would tell the rest of his group. Fred didn’t mind, he figured some people just wanted to feel in charge, so I of course told him I was taking over the hike from then on. All questions were to be directed towards me, and whenever I didn’t know one, I’d walk over and whisper to Fred the question and come back with the answer. I don’t think I was a good guide though, I just kept repeating to the group that our destination was, “Up, and that’s all you need to know.” Since the climb, I’ve asked him every time I’ve seen him if they need me on the next trip to be guide. Needless to say, I haven’t been needed.
At base camp we settled in, had a light lunch, and waited anxiously for night when we would make our summit charge. I went searching for something Kate, a Canadian volunteer who had climbed a couple weeks prior, had left for me at base camp. I instructed her to leave it, “Shawshank style,” where I’d have to follow some route and find something “underneath a tall oak tree, and under that tree is a rock, one that has no earthly business being there. I proposed to my wife underneath that tree.” You get the point. I searched high and low for it, following Kate’s instructions on where I might find it, but alas, winded and tired, I came back to the tent empty handed. She had but it underneath a stone structure she had built, and after pushing a bunch over and finding nothing I realized, “Hey, somebody probably did this same thing last week and knocked the one with my letter over.” People, so inconsiderate.
End of day five: 15 meals down.
They woke us up at 12pm on summit night. Even though we needed sleep for the long day ahead, none of us slept too well. It became more difficult with each climb in elevation to fall asleep, and now that we were 15,331ft up and about to reach for the summit it made it even more difficult. We put on all of our gear by the light of our headlamps and shuffled around to get the last of our supplies into our backpacks. To prepare against the cold I had on: one pair of thick wool hiking socks, a thin pair of cotton running socks, thermal bottoms, hiking pants, and snow pants on over top. For the upper layers I wore even more layers: thermals, 1 long sleeve cotton shirt, 2 long sleeve polyester shirts, a flannel shirt, my Chive shirt, a fleece pull over, 1 wind breaker jacket, a thick neck warmer, bandana, beanie, a headlamp, one thin and one thick glove per hand, and two wads of tissue in each nostril to stop my runny nose. I kept my down jacket in my backpack because I didn’t want to be too warm during the ascent and sweat a lot, I had heard it was better to at least be a little cold than too warm.
They served us tea and gingersnap cookies as a light meal to hold us over on the way up; anything much bigger they said would feel awful when, “You all throw it up at the top.” I ate 6 gingersnap cookies and drank a warm cup of tea. 15 meals, 6 gingersnaps, and one cup of tea in total before summit. Have you figured out where I’m going with this yet?
We were initially told that we had to start our climb towards the summit this late in order to see the beautiful sunrise from the top of the mountain, but another reason was because the ground was frozen at night. The sun warms it during the day so that it unfreezes and the ascent is much more difficult because the ground will be loose and ashen. During our climb up, we could hear our boots crunching the frozen ground underneath.
We all formed up in a line with Valerie at front to set the pace and Fred just ahead of her walking in only a couple of t-shirts, a windbreaker, beanie, and his gloveless hands in his pockets. Before we set off I kept asking Fred if I could go to the summit in my sleeping bag and he kept asking why, and how that would be possible. “Because it’d be warm as hell, I’d just cut two holes for my arms and another for my head and just put it over me.” He laughed and said I’d look ridiculous, but I said I’d be the warmest caterpillar on the summit. Quite frankly, I think there’s a product that would sell here.
The initial part of summit was just going up a rocky incline near base camp, and once we were at the top it flattened out and we went around a long bend around some boulders and could vaguely make out what lay ahead. A dark monstrous shadow loomed ahead, with strings of white lights that went about halfway to the top from people who started much earlier than us. The entire group stopped dead in their tracks and just stared up at it and together mumbled, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” It was impossible to make out how large and steep it really was or the exact terrain we were about to walk up, but Fred said it would take 6 hours to get to the top and that we would be going from roughly 15,000ft to 19,341ft in that interval.
We walked slowly, too slowly really to produce any sort of body heat so everything became colder. At first the climb wasn’t too bad, I just kept my head towards the ground at Valerie’s feet and focused on breathing and ignoring any sign of a headache that might creep up. That task was made all the more difficult by Good Chance, our assistant guide, behind me singing and talking loudly for the first two hours. I literally wanted to punch him in the face. I was already concentrating on not dying and I also had to deal with a foreign language that was difficult to understand at ground level, let alone 15,000ft in the air ringing constantly in my ear. I think he was just trying to keep our spirits up and enthusiasm high during those long dark walks that he had done a hundred times before, but for us first timers it was more of a nuisance. Eventually, after a couple of hours, he did stop. Thank God.
It was important throughout the entire trip to constantly be drinking water to help your body carry oxygen to your brain and prevent altitude sickness. We had all done well the previous days, drinking about 4 liters of water throughout a hike, but on summit night it was made almost impossible to drink any amount of water because of the lack of breaks and the crushing cold. We stopped only a couple of times, and when we did it was only for a couple of minutes because you would start really freezing during that short time. At first we’d all gulp down as much water as we could, but eventually all of our bottles and camel packs, despite being covered by thick socks or against our bodies, all became frozen. Three hours into it I wasn’t carrying water anymore, but instead two thick blocks of ice. After they froze, things became a little more difficult.
At times we all felt like little kids around Fred and Erick. When we would stop the most mundane tasks would require their assistance. I had to ask Fred to put my glove back on for me, go into my backpack and get my down jacket out and help me put it on and take it off, and even take the one frozen cliff bar I had with me out of the wrapper. Jess began throwing up during one of the breaks, but not much came out besides some water and remnants of cookies. Erick patted her on the back and told her she’d feel better now that it’s all out, everyone else just kind of sat there confused about what the hell we were doing. I had to change out the tissue in my nose again because it had soaked through the first two I had stuffed in there, and barely putting my glove to my raw nose was painful.
The last hour before summit was when the altitude began to be felt. Each step seemed drunker than the last, kicking plumes of gray ash into the air and turning the landscape into a storm cloud with the silent lightning of the headlamps flashing. Up ahead, against the black backdrop of Kilimanjaro, the string of headlamps appeared like the soft swaying of a string of Christmas lights, the echo of carolers the booming voices of the guides wading ahead singing “Jambo, jambo guana.” Every two steps seemed to slip back into one because of the loose rocky ground.
I kept my motivation up by looking out ahead at the lights above us and compared them to the ones below us. I kept telling myself that I wanted “to be the lights out in front, I didn’t want to be the ones down there.” I confused myself at one point because I thought there was someone standing at the top looking down at us with their headlamp on and I used them as a point of reference to where the top was. It turned out it was just a star that seemed barely inches above Kilimanjaro, and it felt like we were climbing towards it.
We could see groups ahead of us leaving the slope of mountain to the flat ground of the summit, but even though they were only twenty yards ahead it seemed like an eternity inching towards them. Throughout the night it seemed like the cold just slowly accumulated onto your body, like it wasn’t just a chill on your arm that once you rubbed the spot it warmed it back up, but seemed to go down to the bone. My fingers felt like hardened broomsticks curved and frozen against the poles in each hand. It didn’t even seem like I had feet anymore, but instead two blocks of ice where they should have been. No matter how much we walked my legs never felt warm because we never moved our legs fast enough to produce the warmth. We walked in a straight line with Valerie out front, but once the summit became within arms reach we all spilled out from around her to reach the flat ground that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
I had made it to the top. When the steep incline finally ended after six hours the mountain flattened out at Stella Point. When I got to the summit I walked with my arms out to my side and wondered what to do next. It was kind of a breathless, confused, excited, exhausted existence and all I could do was look around. I walked over to Jess sitting on a rock staring off over the clouds ahead and knelt down beside her and patted her on the back.
Jess just put her hands to her face and muttered, “That was the hardest, stupidest shit I ever did. I’m so happy it’s over.”
I held my side trying to suppress my laughter because of how painful it was. At that high up the oxygen was too thin and the air too cold to actually laugh so all that came out was a hoarse wheezing and the quick gasps of me telling her not to make me laugh.
Alex was behind me and stood there in the same confused state I was at the beginning and was staring dumbfounded off into the ground. It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized that she was actually crying. I gave her a look and all she did was shrug her shoulders as if to say, “What else am I supposed to do?”
We were all freezing, exhausted, hungry, sleep deprived, and on top of Africa looking over the plain of clouds towards an orange and blue horizon as the sun loomed closer to rising. We had all done it, made it to the top, we were convinced that the hiking was finally over, until Fred’s familiar voice broke the congratulatory silence with, “Alright guys, time to go to Uhuru.” We all let out a pained groan because it wasn’t over. We still had 200 meters to go until we were at the real summit, Uhuru Peak, the highest point on the mountain. As we gathered our gear and slowly and painfully made our way behind Fred, I heard the hard grumbles and sharp spasm of my intestines sending me a pleasant reminder that, “Hey, you haven’t pooped in 6 days buddy.”
I think the hardest part was reaching the summit, but the 200 meters to Uhuru were the most exhausting. I wasn’t physically exhausted or winded, I was just completely drained of any energy. I would count ten steps and then have to lean over my poles for support and take a brief rest before counting out the next ten steps and doing it all over again. At first Fred tried keeping us together, but quickly realized that we were now in no rush. With Uhuru in sight, Jess and I had to sit down for 5 minutes to just muster the motivation and strength to keep going. People who had already been to the peak and were on their descent walked past with wasted words of encouragement for us to keep going, but we didn’t care how long it took us. After an hour more of draining hiking requiring every little bit of energy I could put together, we finally reached the large green sign congratulating us on being 19,341ft above sea level, at Africa’s highest peak, and the highest free standing mountain in the world. The group, who arrived at different intervals, all hugged one another and congratulated each other on top of the world. We sat perched on a pile of rocks and watched as this glowing orange ball of light slowly crept over the line of the horizon and provided us with the most amazing sunrise any of us had ever seen. It became immediately warm and our fingers and bones thawed out as we took all of our pictures at the peak and turned back around for the descent. We encountered the Oklahoma group that had taken our picture at the gate coming up as we were going down, passing by one another at the top like we had done at the bottom.
In total we spent about 10 minutes at the top of Africa. I started feeling a little nauseous at one point and wanted to get down as fast as possible because I thought that if I threw up I’d also crap out all the extra meals I had with me. Getting down the mountain was a trip in itself, but we were seemingly revitalized after leaving the summit. What took us 6 hours to go up, took us about 3 to get back down. The frozen ground had thawed and we all took to essentially skiing down the loose dirt towards the bottom. We had to stop at intervals to lose the layers we had worn to the top because of the intensity of the sun and apply sunscreen. Once at the bottom of our initial summit push I turned around and looked at what we had just gone up and come back down and was just disgusted at what I saw. The other reason for climbing at night, I found out later, was because if people saw what they actually had to go up in the daylight, the guides didn’t think people would do it. They were right. By the time I reached the bottom I was just in a t-shirt and my bottom layers, with my backpack full of the discarded clothes. My cheeks felt on fire, my lips chapped and nose raw, and I immediately stripped off my dusty clothes and into a pair of shorts. The two Jumas had Fanta Passion waiting for us at camp and a pat on the back, and after downing the glass I called my parents from base camp, 15,000ft up, and left them a voicemail that I had conquered the mountain. I immediately passed out for a couple of hours before having to descend further down the mountain.
In total it took us about 5 days and 10 hours to go from a starting elevation of 3,000ft in Moshi to the summit at 19,341ft. It only took us a combined ten hours to go from the top of the mountain to the bottom and back home. By the time we reached the parking lot to wash off our dusty and muddy boots all of our knees and backs felt like they were about to break. The quick speed in which we descended and the rocky steps we had to transverse took a toll on all of us, and we all warmly welcomed the comfort of sitting in the van on the way back to the guesthouse.
After reaching the guesthouse we all unloaded our bags, gave thanks to Fred and Erick for guiding us to the top of Africa, and ran as quick as we could to warm showers inside. We were all a mess. I had not showered in seven days, brushed my teeth (that wasn’t my fault, I used my tooth brush to get mold out of my water bottle on the first day and was too freaked out to use it after), or pooped. You can guess what the first thing was that I did once I got back to the house, and I’ll just go ahead and say that it was amazing. I can honestly say, that I climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro, that big ugly looking hill, with 15 meals, 6 gingersnap cookies, and one cup of tea more than I needed to carry. I felt like a champion with a rock hard six-pack, not made of muscle. After our showers, we all lounged on the couch, looked over pictures from the climb, and laughed at the fact that we had actually climbed the mountain. We went out for beers to commemorate our accomplished, and ordered six cold Kilimanjaro Lagers, because since we had climbed the mountain, we might as well drink it too. We went to bed early, exhausted and not yet feeling the soreness that would greet us in the morning when we awoke for safari, and for the first time in a week I was finally able to sleep a little more soundly in an actual bed, not listening to the wind against a nylon tent.
Thank you every one who contributed to making this climb possible. I would not have been able to partake in such an amazing and once in a lifetime journey if it was not for your kindness and generosity. Together, the climbers raised over $8,000 to go towards the children’s education. Once again, thank you, and I highly recommend a trip to the top of Kilimanjaro if anyone is considering it. It will take some strong convincing to get me back up there, but I would do it all again for that brief confused and exhausted moment at 19,341ft.
