In light of last year’s media frenzy Miley Cyrus caused, I
am listening to “The Climb” on repeat while I write this. I feel it is fitting.
Last September, I took a trip to Tanzania, Africa with
Patrick and our good friend from college, David. We were headed to climb the
19,341ft Mt. Kilimanjaro. When planning this adventure, I demanded there be
some amount of real vacation, so we followed the climb up with a Safari – which
you can read about in Tanzania – Part 2 – The Safari.
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| Our fearless team. |
This journey really started about 3 years ago when I agreed
to climb Mt. Rainier with my brother. You can check out the blogs for that experience here and here. Or for the short version, check out the video here. Little did I know back then that I wasn’t just agreeing to climb one
mountain, but rather setting myself up for a lifetime of “vacations” that revolved
around doing something crazy. I don’t know what you think of when you think of
a vacation, but I bet it’s not camping for 7 days, port-o-potties, malaria
pills, and puking at 1 o’clock in the morning because of altitude – not
alcohol. Alas, there is much to the story before we get to the puke fun.
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| We played a lot of cards on this trip. |
Patrick, David, and I set out on a Wednesday afternoon and
in just 18 short hours we landed at the Kilimanjaro Airport. We met up with our
Kili guide, Fraterin; an incredibly talkative man who was very surprised at how
prepared we were for our climb. I’m not sure why he is shocked that most people
show up without the proper gear. When I asked for a packing list a month before
the trip, I received an email listing 4 non-descript items…I’m not exaggerating
when I tell you I asked them what temperature my sleeping bag needed to be and
they responded with “warm”.
Feeling pretty confident about everything, we spent the rest
of the day relaxing in blissful unawareness of what the future held.
Day 1 – Machame Gate to Machame Camp
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| The start of the climb! |
Fraterin and the rest of the guides picked us up from our
hotel and we promptly piled into a land cruiser for the hour drive to the
Machame gate. There are 5 routes up Kilimanjaro, each offering their own unique
difficulties. Ironically, our route was called the “whiskey route”; there is
also one called the “coca-cola route”. When I asked what the significance of
the names was, I only got chuckles.
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Here's a map of our route. We hiked in from the Machame gate
and ultimately hiked to the Uhuru Peak. We descended using the
Mweka Route. |
At the gate, we met the rest of the team that would be going
up with us. I couldn’t understand why there were so many people – for our 3
person group, we had 2 guides, 1 cook, and 10 porters. This was quickly answered
when I saw the massive pile of things that would be going up the mountain with
us: tents, chairs (yes - chairs), a fold up table, a portable toilet, food,
water, camp stove, piles of other gear, and then finally our own packs.
Climbers typically carry just a day-pack with them while the porters carry the
remaining bulk of the items.
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| A picture of our entire team. |
The first day was entirely through dense rain forest – the
surroundings were breathtaking and I truly enjoyed myself as we hiked the 5
hours to the Machame Camp. Throughout the climb, the much faster porters passed
us and by the time we got to camp, our tents had been set up and dinner was
being cooked.
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| The beautiful rainforest |
All in all, the first day was pretty easy and enjoyable – I
fell into a well-deserved sleep with no worries.
Day 2 – Machame Camp to Shira Camp
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| The viewpoint looking towards Kili. |
After breakfast we packed up and headed out. We started to
hear “pole pole” or “slowly slowly” frequently from our guides. They want you
to ascend slowly so that your body has time to acclimate to the altitude. Going
slow was fine by me so I took the advice very seriously.
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| The view looking away from Kili |
We hiked out of the
rain forest pretty early on and were hiking up and over rocks for the remainder
of the day. We arrived at Shira camp in the early afternoon and took a short
hike up to a view-point to get some pictures. The sunset that night was
breathtaking.
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| Sunset from Shira camp |
Day 3 – Shira Camp to Lava Tower to Barranco Camp
I started to suspect something fishy was going on throughout
this day. We hiked from Shira Camp to Lava Tower and then hiked DOWN to
Barranco Camp. When I hike, I hate when there is any sort of downhill section.
It is like doing work for nothing. If we’re going up, I only want to go up.
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| Barranco Camp welcome sign |
On
this day, the goal was to help acclimate our bodies so we hiked up to Lava
Tower for lunch, and then went down (note: DOWN) to Barranco Camp which is only
about 100 meters above Shira. I felt cheated. I also started to realize that we
were traveling around the base of the
mountain, but not making too much progress actually going up it.
Day 4 – Barranco Camp to Karanga Camp to Barafu Camp
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| Breakfast before starting another day. |
The morning of day 4, Fraterin came into our tent while we
were having breakfast to go over our game plan for the day. Our original
itinerary had us hiking only to Karanga camp to spend the night, then moving to
Barafu Camp the next day. Barafu is the camp you stay at right before summiting.
Fraterin started an intense sales pitch to have us only stop at Karanga for
lunch and move straight to Barafu so we could summit a day early.
He was hoping to avoid sleeping at Karanga because it is a
notoriously loud and windy camp. It’s also on a slope so sleeping is never very
enjoyable. The other issue is that once you get to Karanga, the elevation is
high enough to start causing altitude sickness. It’s never a good idea to stay
at those elevations for very long so by summiting a day early, we could
hopefully avoid some of the altitude sickness. Sounded good to me!
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| We had to sign in at every camp. |
I call this day, the “Day of Lies”.
In his sales pitch, Fraterin told us we would reach Karanga
in 2.5 hours. 4 hours of vertical rock climbing later, we rolled in.
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A group of porters making their way to the top of the vertical
rock wall. |
The one truth that was told that day was about the conditions
at Karanga. When we arrived, it was already windy and my soup bowl could only
be ¼ full at any one time because the slanted hill made our table at a perfect
45 degree angle.
After lunch, we started the “easy” trek to Barafu. The often
frustrating part about climbing Kili is that you can see only so far ahead of
you. You see the top of the hill you are climbing only to discover after you’ve
reached the top that it was really just a small slope compared to the vertical
climb you have in front of you. We trekked on, finally reaching our Barafu camp
site.
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Those rocks in the foreground had been hiding the long
journey still in front of us that you can see in the
background of this photo...joy. |
At this point, I knew altitude sickness was starting to set
in. I had felt this feeling a little while climbing Rainier, but it was only
for the last few hours or so of the summit. Now, we hadn’t even started our summit
and I already felt nauseous.
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| One of the lookouts on the way to Barafu |
For dinner we had spaghetti, my favorite food. As I stared
at my plate, I knew there was no way I could put any of it into my mouth. On
our very first day, Fraterin had described what this dinner would be like. He
said, “You won’t want to eat anything, but you have to PUSH. Push like a baby
so that when (not if) you throw up, hopefully you still have some food that
stays in your tummy.” With this in mind, I opted to stick with just plain
noodles and managed a phenomenal 4 bites. Patrick, on the other hand struggled
through a full plate. As I watched him eat, I knew he’d be puking in a matter
of minutes. It should be noted that David had seconds and managed to make it through the entire trip without
vomiting once. No, I am not upset about this…
After dinner, we headed to our tents to try and sleep. I
think I was in my tent for about 10 minutes before I heard someone violently
up-chucking a few feet from me. Throwing on my shoes in a panic, I emerged to
find Patrick on all fours looking miserable. This would be the scene for the
rest of the night.
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| Patrick, Pascal, Fraterin, and David in front of the ol' girl. |
There is very little water available at the Barafu Camp. The
last water source is at the previous camp so only enough water for drinking
while summiting is brought to this camp. After a full night of puking with no
water or towels to clean up with, Patrick and David’s tent was looking a little
worse for wear at 11:45pm when we were woken up for summit morning.
As I lay in my tent mentally preparing, I heard Beyonce’s “I
am a survivor” playing. No, I was not hallucinating – it really was playing
blasting. A large group of girls on some sort of organized school trip had been
climbing behind us for the majority of the trip and they had apparently decided
this was an appropriate time for Beyonce (really though, when is Beyonce not
appropriate). The fact that they had chosen that song in particular was
incredibly ironic. The song is what I used to play when I hit a wall during
marathon training. To say I know it well is an understatement.
I took it as a sign – it was time to dominate this mountainous
b**** called Kilimanjaro.
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| Another sunset from camp |
We were all supposed to meet in one of the larger tents to
get our water before heading out. David and I had a few minutes before Patrick
arrived and I quickly tried to gauge from him where Patrick was at mentally.
After throwing up all night, I was terrified that Patrick would be too tired
and weak to make the trek. As could be expected though, Patrick had no plans to
not attempt the climb.
As we got our water and made our way out of the tent, he
doubled over again to puke whatever could possibly be left in his system. I
went into panic mode. Fraterin and our other guide, Pascal, kept reassuring us
that this was “normal.” I pulled Pascal aside and told him, not calmly, that
Patrick had been throwing up ALL NIGHT – was THAT normal?? Finally, Pascal
admitted it was not normal…and then he threw on his pack and said “let’s go!”
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Excited to be at one of the checkpoints (note this is not
summit day...obviously) |
We made it about 15 steps out of camp before I politely
tapped Fraterin on the shoulder and said “excuse me, but I think I’m going to
throw up now,” turned to the side and let old Mt. Kilimanjaro have it. I claim
this was a sympathy puke, done to show Patrick that we were a team, puke and
all. I took a sip of water and we trekked on.
This being my 2nd summit, I knew what to expect
from the next 6 hours. It would be awful, cold, and dark. I would only be able
to see the back of the person’s heels in front of me and at several points, I
would want to die or at the very least, turn around.
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| Nothing better than Kilimanjaro Tea when climbing Kili. |
We were 2 hours in when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was
Patrick. He whispered, “Do you want to turn around?” Panic once again shot
through my body, as it was usually me begging to turn around, never Patrick. Without even thinking, my
mouth said “no.” I called for everyone to stop and get some water so I could talk
this out with him. I remember I told him that it would be ok if he went down –
that everyone would understand because he had gotten no sleep and had literally
no fuel in his system. I also told him that if he could just shut off his brain
for the next 4 hours, we’d be there. And then I remember him making that choice
– to not listen to his body and not listen to the voices in his head that told
him he couldn’t do this. We turned and started the climb again.
A little while later, he patted me on the shoulder and this
time he said “good job.” I don’t know if he meant I was kicking ass up this
mountain, or if he meant I had somehow helped him get over that hump of defeat.
Either way, it was a push I needed.
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| Sunrise - finally! |
When summiting, once you start seeing the sunrise, you
should be close to the top. At one point David yelled out, “IS THAT THE SUN?”
and we all turned to take in the glory that meant we were close. In fact, it
was a very bright, full moon, laughing at us. This must have been at about the
4 hour mark.
For the last 2 hours or so, Fraterin would take 10 steps and
then he would stop and rest for 15-20 seconds so we could catch our breath. It
becomes increasingly harder to breathe the higher you go so even just 10 steps
leaves you breathless. The top part of the mountain was also mainly loose sand
so it got a bit tricky to make sure we didn’t slide down while ascending.
Finally, we saw the sun and were actually able to see our destination point.
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Resting at the top and getting ready to hike to the
"true summit" |
We made it to the “top” and promptly sat down to rest for a
few minutes. We all knew we still had a little ways to go to get to the true
summit. It was a 45 minute walk – with only a few rolling hills to get through.
Something I can’t explain happened to me at this point. I don’t know if it was
the altitude or just mental exhaustion, but I felt like I was climbing Everest.
I’m not going to lie, I had felt pretty fantastic (considering) the whole way
up. I was far more prepared for this climb than I was for Rainier and mentally
I just could not be stopped; but that last 45 minutes. WHOO it gave me a run
for my money.
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| Ecstatic to be at the top. |
About half way to the true summit, I looked up and yelled
“where is the FUCKING sign.” Fraterin and Pascal turned to look at me and I
will admit, I felt ashamed at my outburst. But seriously – WHERE WAS IT. Fraterin
came to my side and he said, “I know you’re tired. I know you’re done. But it’s
so close and you’re going to make it. Just a little bit more.”
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| Patrick, David and I |
Fine. I pushed
on and finally saw that giant, beautiful, green sign that marked the true
summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The waterworks began and I pushed my way through the
small crowd to get my picture with that damn thing. It was a proud and
exuberant moment for me.
The Descent
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| Headed down. |
The first part of the descent is back through loose sand, so
it’s very similar to skiing, you’re just sliding down the mountain. Once we
made it back to camp, we tried to eat something and headed straight to bed. We
slept from 2-6pm, got up again for a quick bite to eat, and then went back to
sleep from 7pm – 8AM. Needless to say, we were a tired bunch. We took 2 more
days to descend and finally made it back to that beautiful rainforest early on
the 7th day. As we hiked down, we were able to see several tree monkeys, and amazing
scenery, but the best site of all was the parking lot. We had made it.
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| Parking lot is in sight - so pumped! |
About 10 minutes into the car ride out of the park, I asked
again what the significance of the whisky and coca-cola route nicknames were.
This time, I got my answer – it’s because the route we took is like taking a
shot of whiskey, tough to swallow and burns the whole way down. The other route
is like taking a shot of coca-cola, a little bubbly and pretty enjoyable. So, yeah, we took the hard route.
