Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is the highest mountain in Africa and one of the tallest free standing mountains in the world, with it's peak, Uhuru, standing at 5,895m.
As we were driving from the airport to our hotel in Moshi, the night before our climb began, an incredible mountain came into view and I was filled with excitement. A few minutes later we realised we were looking at the wrong mountain as the unmistakable Mt Kilimanjaro appeared and my excitement was replaced with fear!
There are 6 main routes that can be taken to climb the mountain and we chose the Marangu route. While I had done alot of reading about the climb before arriving in Moshi, the experience itself was beyond anything I could have imagined or prepared for.
Our hike began at the Marangu gate Park Headquarters at an altitude of 1,700m. Alistair and I were joined on our hiking adventure by three lovely ladies, two Australians and a Kiwi. It's slightly embarrassing to say that the support crew for the five of us was 18 strong. For safety, there is at least one guide for every two people, so we had three guides, plus a cook, assistant cook/waiter and 13 porters. All food, cooking equipment and sleeping gear has to be carried up the mountain and 20kg containers of water are refilled along the way. We were told that for the other routes which require you to camp, the ratio of climber to support team is 1:10!!
We had a relatively short first day, walking 8km through rainforest and gaining an altitude of 1000m to our first camp, Marangu hut. The first surprise was just how slowly we walked. Our pace was something like "one elephant doing gymnastics on a rocking boat, two elephants doing gymnastics on a rocking boat, three...". While it took some getting used to, a slow and steady pace from the beginning is another tried and tested method of improving acclimatization and improving your chance of summiting and all the way up the mountain you hear the guides and porters saying "pole, pole" (slowly, slowly). At this slow pace, we found the walk easy going.
Another surprise was the food. At lunch we were served a huge plate of sandwiches, a muffin or cake, fruit, juice, a huge slice of avocado, salad and sometimes soup. Every dinner was two courses plus fruit with enough food to feed an army and they even had milo, which I almost single handedly devoured! Needless to say we ate very well. Baraka, our waiter, always greeted us with a smile, regardless of the hour. He woke us up every morning with a cup of tea in bed followed by a bowl of warm water for a quick wash before a hot breaky. With basic facilities and no shower for 6 days, this felt like luxury!
Day two saw us hike 11km and gain a further 1000m in altitude, with the landscape changing quite quickly from rainforest to shrubs. On this day, we had our first sighting of our goal, Uhuru peak. While the walk itself felt pretty easy going, we did start to feel the affects of the altitude by the time we reached our camp, Horombo hut, at 3,720m. Running up the three steps into our hut made me light headed and walking to the bathroom at what we would consider to be an normal pace left me puffing. Walking slowly slowly was the only way to avoid these altitude affects. By the end of dinner we were all feeling exhausted and went to bed at 7.30pm!
Our next day was an acclimatisation day, which involved a 2 hour walk up to 4,100m, returning back to our camp at 3,720m for the night. It was clear that our guides were paying close attention to how we were going and making assessments of how we would go with the summit night, though they strongly denied it!! This walk took us to the top of a ridge where we were able to see Kibo hut at 4,703m, our destination for the next day and the last hut before the summit. The walk to Kibo hut looked deceivingly flat and seeing the hut, as well as the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro directly behind it, made us feel like we could actually achieve what we'd set out to do.
Day four was a huge day, where we walked to Kibo hut, summited and returned to Horombo hut, all within 30 hours. First, we walked another 11km with some up hill and down hill sections with the shrubs clearing to a desert-like landscape. The last two hours to Kibo was really difficult, with quite a steep incline and the thin air making it exhausting. It really felt like it would never end and I did start to wonder how we would backup with our summit climb less than 7 hours away.
Sunset at Kibo hut was quite spectacular and it already felt like we were on top of the world. The air felt really thin and walking downhill 20 steps to the bathroom was tiring. We had an early dinner followed by two hours of sleep, for those that could manage it, before being woken up at 10pm to have a light breaky and be ready to set off for the summit at 11pm.
I donned all of my clothes to keep me warm - a thermal top, wool t-shirt, two polar fleeces, down jacket, rain jacket, thermal pants, walking pants, waterproof pants, the thickest socks I've ever seen, wool glove liners, ski gloves and a beanie!
We set off into the darkness with our three guides. As soon as we reached the first incline it became really difficult. All I could do was focus on breathing, I didn't have the capacity to think about anything else. Hour upon hour we walked, very slowly (that's all we could manage), up the gravel scree slope. The entire climb was steeper than any of our prior days and keeping momentum, even at a snails pace, was key. Just shy of 5,000m I started to feel really light headed and stopped for some trail mix and a muesli bar. But the sugar didn't seem to kick in and I could only walk 10 metres at a time before I needed to stop or else faint. I kept on going like this for what felt like a long time. Alistair stayed back with me along with another of our group who was suffering nausea, a common affect of altitude, and the rest of the group continued ahead at a normal pace. After a while, I decided I couldn't go any further. I farewelled Alistair as our assistant guide led him briskly up the path to catch up with the rest of our group (pole pole was suspended as he and the guide raced up the mountain), now some way ahead of us.
As I prepared for the walk back down, our head guide took my backpack and to my surprise started heading uphill! Without question I followed, very slowly, but was able to continue for longer bursts without the weight of my bag. After about 15 minutes the dizziness subsided, though we continued quite slowly for another hour with the other member of our group sick and really struggling. Once the the guide who had taken Alistair up to the others returned, the head guide and I continued uphill on our own at a steady pace. Every so often we wold stop and the guide would say 'eat, drink', then we would be off again within a few minutes. It was incredibly cold on the mountain so by stopping for more than a few minutes you'd risk not being able to warm up again. For most of the hike I couldn't feel my toes. Thankfully the dizziness didn't return. To my surprise, my guide said he thought we could catch the rest the group, and that gave me the extra energy I needed to go a little faster, knowing I might still be able to share the experience of reaching the summit with Alistair.
In between the feelings of nausea and trying to breath, there were moments where I lifted my eyes from the ground and saw the magical sight of small lights zig zagging up the mountain. I tried not to look up most of the time, because knowing the end was not near made every step feel even harder.
The air was incredibly thin, but I managed to keep my breathing under control. I just focused on putting one foot, barely, in front of the other and kept going. An hour from Gilman's Point (5,685m), being the top of the crater and our aim for sunrise, we caught up to Alistair and the two others in our group. It was an exciting moment and my arrival gave us all a little extra burst of energy and the motivation to get to the top. Alistair was really suffering by that stage, but with the end in sight, kept going.
The last hour to Gilman's was excruciating. The sections were even steeper and we had to climb over large rocks which we barely had the energy for.
It amazes me that, having left our camp some 7 hours earlier, our guides managed to get us to Gilman's point right as the sun rose. The final steps up to Gilman's point, combined with the incredible site of the sun rising was the most amazing experience. We were way above the clouds and the deep red sunrise stretched right across the sky as far as we could see.
I don't know where we summoned the energy from, but the four of us all decided we wanted to continue to Uhuru peak, another hour and a half further and about 210m higher. Initially the walk wasn't as hard, but with about 45 minutes to go it became the hardest thing I think I've ever done. I couldn't even lift my head so was waking hunched over, dragging my feet. I think everyone was the same (Alistair, maybe suffering delirium and some more serious effects of altitude, was bounding along with a huge smile on his face). The wind at the summit was bitterly cold (around -20 degrees) and at times I was doing a sideways shuffle to hide from it. Finally reaching the summit, we had an incredible sense of achievement and a very short celebration before we turned back to begin our decent.
After the the elation of reaching our goal came the realisation that we now had to walk all the way back down, with 18km to be covered to get us to Horombo hut where we could rest for the night. The walk back to Gilman's point wasn't too bad and we made good time, but we then returned to the gravel and dirt scree slope we had climbed. The downhill route - pretty much straight down - was very hard on our knees and alot of the time we were sliding rather than walking. It took us about 3 hours to cover the ground back to Kibo hut, by which stage Alistair's knees had just about had enough and I wasn't sure how we would find the energy to walk another 11km that day.
We stopped at Kibo for a hot lunch and an hour break before we continued. Muscles I didn't even know I had were hurting. Somehow we summoned the energy to continue and headed for Horombo. I'm not sure if it was the lunch, or the smell of home, but Alistair powered down the mountain to Horombo, walking as quickly as the porters for large parts of the descent! Our warm bowls of water from Baraka had never been so welcome at this point and we all enjoyed soaking our worn out feet after our wash, much to Baraka's horror!
We set off early the next morning to descend the final 19km of the mountain and Alistair again set a cracking pace! I kept up in the most part, knowing a warm-ish shower awaited at our hotel in Moshi (by warm-ish, I mean 2 minutes of warm water followed by cold water). My waking poles saved me from falling flat on my face quite a few times as my weary feet and knees failed me.
We walked through the Marangu gate, our finish point, with huge smiles and celebrated our achievement with our guides with beers, coca-colas and high-fives!
The experience was really really hard but amazing and something we'll remember for a very long time.
