A Week on Kilimanjaro

Nearly six months ago, I embarked on an adventure of epic proportions. Okay. It wasn’t so epic, but I needed to grab your attention, and therefore we’ll just pretend it was of epic proportions. Truth be told, I’m not sure I have a complete understanding of the distinction between epic and merely grandiose, but we’ll save that exploration for another day, perhaps as part of another adventure of epic proportions.

You may ask why it took me so long to log this account and add it to my sparsely populated blog. Well, you see, this trip has been a difficult one for me to recount – the reasons for which will become apparent enough through the course of my monologue. I was reading a recent issue of Esquire the other day where one of the staff writers recounts his climb up the mountain. He mentions one of his thought processes during the hike: “I want to be done climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and jump right to the part when I can tell people that I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.” I guess I need to get on with doing that – telling you all my tale.

I had been bugging my brother-in-law Chris for several years about going on a hike with me to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and after much cajoling, he finally assented. After extremely little cajoling, Chris’s childhood friend Mike decided to join us. So last November, we bought our flights, arranged a hike and booked a safari. Our trip would start in mid-February, which gave us 3 months of prep time.

For the next two months, I did what I normally do prior to embarking on any highly demanding physically challenging endeavor: nothing much.

When I started telling my co-workers and friends that I would be gone on vacation for a few weeks, inevitably the first question was “Where are you going?” After I divulged, a typical follow-up question was, “How long have you been training?” My response was generally along the ilk of “Training? We don’t need no stinkin’ training!”

Before I continue, I thought that it might be fun to quickly summarize some of my choices before and during the trip.

Dumb Choices:

1.   After 8 months of not even looking at a gym, I finally got off my butt and started a training regimen 30 days before my trip began.

2.   My training regimen of choice was the Wii Fit, more specifically a 30-day challenge on EA Sports Wii Active.

3.   I only completed 2/3 of the aforementioned 30-day challenge.

4.   There are several routes up the mountain. I specifically avoided the Marangu route because that route is routinely booked up completely, and is even lovingly referred to as the “Coca-Cola” route. So I went with the Machame route. Little did I realize that the Machame route does not have a maximum and therefore has about twice the number of hikers as the Marangu route. I hate crowds of people… in fact, that’s kinda my reason for hiking to begin with – to stay away from crowded cities and buildings.

5.   Never start a 7-day hike up a 19,000 ft mountain when you’re coming off a 102 fever and 4 hours of sleep. So, when the guide director tells you that “you need to be 100% before you start the hike,” it might be a good idea to listen to him.

6.   If you’re already spending multiple thousands of dollars on a plane ticket and in tour fees, it may be worth it to spend several hundred more on proper clothing and equipment instead of merely packing any article of clothing you own that says “Columbia Sportswear” on it.

7.   Just because it says “Columbia Sportswear” on it doesn’t mean that it’s an appropriate item of clothing for hiking. Apparently this company has a wide variety of clothes, many of which are cotton. The majority of mine were cotton. Cotton doesn’t do so swell a job wicking away moisture, which is a good clothing property to have when you’ll be sweating in freezing temperatures.

8.   If the weekly anti-malarial pill (mefloquine) is known to have annoying adverse effects on people, it might be worth the extra hassle to take the not-so-challenging daily pill (doxycycline).

9.   You should know whether or not your backpack is indeed waterproof before you set out on a journey that has a high probability of involving heavy precipitation.

10. If you know you’re a light sleeper, it would probably be a good idea to make sure that your earplugs survive the final cut when you’re making decisions on what to leave and what to take.

11. Along that theme, if you’re a light sleeper and you’re camping for 6 nights on a mountain at abnormally high elevations, it’s probably a better idea to bring your own sleeping gear (sleeping bag + pad) instead of relying on borrowing it from the touring company.

12. If you’re going to go through the hassle of climbing a big-ass mountain, suck it up and take the nice camera, even if you’ll have to carry it.

13. Nalgene bottles are not the best bottles to use when you need to carry three 1-liter water bottles. They’re kinda rigid and don’t pack so well in a small backpack.

14. Layers. And more layers. Enough said.

Smart Choices:

1.   I took the advice of a friend and bought some trekking poles, which got a ridiculous amount of use during the hike. It’s one of those things that once you have them, you can’t believe you ever got along without them. I might even start using them to walk up the steps at home or the long walk from the parking lot at work to the front door.

2.   Instead of taking a few rolls of toilet paper for use in the squatters, I took a package of Charmin Freshmates wipes. I would say more, but I think we’ve probably sufficiently approached TMI.

3.   We booked a 7-day hike to give us ample time to get acclimatized to the altitude before doing the long strenuous hike to the summit. The aforementioned Marangu route gets to the top in 5-days.

4.   Suck it up and just embrace the squatter. Fear of the squatter will only provide you with discomfort and the potential for squatting behind a large rock off to the side of a very crowded trail.

Yes, that’s it. I didn’t make a lot of smart choices. Either that, or it’s more fun to point out the dumb choices. Or maybe the dumb choices are more memorable.

My flight from Boston to Kilimanjaro had been largely uneventful, sans the 15 hour layover in a very poorly stocked airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Nothing happened in that 15 hours. It was about the most boring 15 hours of my life. I guess it would be better described as completely uneventful instead of largely uneventful. I arrived in Addis at 8am and my flight left for Kilimanjaro at 11pm. Amongst the very few learnings that day was the realization that the Addis airport is supremely busy early in the morning and supremely busy late at night, but there are almost zero flights during the day.

Our plane reached the Kilimanjaro airport at about 2am, and then I had another 90 minutes in a taxi to the hotel. When I arrived at the hotel, the night staff took me straight to my room and I had a nice long sleep. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to nap in a warm humid airport, so I had some catching up to do.

Chris and Mike arrived over the next 18 hours. That evening, I came down with a fever and didn’t get much sleep. We were slated to begin our hike the next day, so I spent the majority of the time in my room trying to rest. Chris and Mike took a walk to a local market and waterfall, but they too spent the majority of the day relaxing. During our pre-trip briefing that evening from the hotel’s tour director Desmond, we learned that our humble party of 3 would be accompanied by a gaggle of locals – one head guide, two assistant guides, one cook, one porter each for our personal goods, and four additional porters. That’s 11 people tending to 3 tourists. We definitely had to check our egos at the base of the mountain.

Because of my sickness, Desmond suggested that we might want to delay our trip and take a shorter 6-day hike on the Rongai route. He cautioned strongly against starting the hike without being 100%. He also explained that while offering some very stunning views, our chosen Machame route was easily the most heavily touristed, especially during the peak season that we were in the middle of. My initial inclination was to take his advice, but I didn’t want to cause my travel mates a delay, and so I figured I would tough it out. Desmond’s other major piece of advice was to take your time and go VERY slowly – the Tanzanians have a phrase in Swahili that we would learn too well “pol-e pol-e”, which means “slowly, slowly”. Hiking slowly helps your body acclimate to the altitude.

The watered down version of our trip itinerary:
Day 1: drive to Machame gate at 1800m altitude, hike for about 6 hours through a rainforest canopy to the Machame camp at 3000m.
Day 2: Hike for 8 hours from Machame camp to 3900m to the camp at Shira plateau.
Day 3: Hike for 8 hours from the Shira camp up to the Lava Tower at 4500m, and then back down to Barranco camp at 3900m.
Day 4: Hike for 4 hours from Barranco camp to Karanga camp at 4000m.
Day 5: Hike for 4 hours from Karanga camp to Barafu camp at 4600m.
Day 6: Begin at midnight to hike from Barafu camp for the summit climb to 6000m. Return to Barafu camp for a quick rest and lunch before continuing down to Mweka camp at 3000m.
Day 7: Hike for 4 hours through rainforest from Mweka camp to Mweka gate at 1800m.

The next morning we woke up and packed up our belongings into potato sacks that the hotel crew gave us. They had an entire gear room with items available to borrow for any poor souls who didn’t bring a full complement of gear. I borrowed some lightweight waterproof pants, gaiters, a sleeping pad and a sleeping bag. The pants and gaiters didn’t fit perfectly, but I suppose the price was right.

After a two hour drive with our 11 person crew in what can described as an Extended-Extended-Cab Family Truckster Rovermobile (with a Mercedes badge), we arrived at the very crowded Machame gate entrance to Kilimanjaro National Park. Our lead guide Martin handed us some brown sack lunches and waited in line to get our paperwork processed while the rest of the crew unloaded the Rovermobile and assembled the gear for the hike ahead (50lbs per porter).

Our paperwork was completed about two hours later and we set off on our hike at about 1pm up what I am positive was a naturally occurring constant incline gravel road. Fortunately, the gravel road ended about an hour later and we were hiking uphill in the middle of a rainforest. We had yet to get a clear view of the top of the mountain – there was cloud cover between us and the peak. In retrospect, this was probably a good thing since our spirits were pretty good, despite the almost complete lack of any flat stretches, let alone slight declines to rest our legs. Heeding Desmond’s advice, we took our time and didn’t rush the hike. It seemed that most other tourists received the exact same advice, so there really wasn’t a lot of traffic from other tourists. On the other hand, porters from all groups were constantly running right by us – as effortlessly as though they were running downhill towards a free Chic-Fil-A buffet. Desmond had prepared us and told us to not let our egos get hurt too much by this – for me, this was really no different than seeing the porters race by us when I did the Inca Trail in Peru 7 years ago.

The entire hike on this day was overcast, except for a moderate rain for the last 30 minutes. Julia had given me a $1 plastic rain poncho for just the occasion and it covered me and my backpack like a charm. I suppose that should have been added to the “smart choices” section.

The campgrounds were littered in all directions with tents everywhere. This trail was, in my opinion at least, severely over-crowded. After a quick meal in an unbelievably cramped dinner tent, we retired to our sleeping tents for the night – me in one tent, and Chris and Mike sharing the other.

“Crowd Noise” is how I would describe the next 5 hours. Apparently, many of the other hikers didn’t get the memo that we were trying to climb a massive frickin’ mountain and chose instead to gabber into the wee hours. And when they finally went to bed, the porters decided to gabber loudly for a few hours. Hyped up on anti-malarials and Diamox (altitude sickness prevention pills), I slept nary a wink all night. When Martin came to wake us up in the morning, I was not a well-rested camper, so I asked Martin if we could find a more remote area away from the festivities for the next evening.

After a simple breakfast in the awkwardly cramped dinner tent, we joined our fellow hikers in continued ascent. Soon after we began, we were harassed by throngs of porters attempting to pass us on a very narrow rocky path up a never ending hill. In my exhausted state, it didn’t take long before I grew frustrated, so I found a nice spot to step aside for 15-20 minutes to let the hordes through. This dance continued for hours – walk a little, let porters pass a little, walk a little, let porters pass a little.

Normally at this point in a hike (or in a blog post about a hike), I would begin waxing poetically about the stunning scenery and take my time just soaking in the atmosphere and the surroundings. I was just too exhausted from the lack of sleep to do too much of that. We weren’t really in a position to see the mountain top itself, and the terrain we were hiking along had spotty vegetation on it and looked kinda weird, so maybe it’s just as good that I didn’t stop and soak in too much. I think my guides thought I was walking too slowly anyway… even though every other sentence out of their mouth was “pol-e pol-e”.  It seems that the majority of people who don’t make it all the way up the mountain tend to fail because they hike up too fast which doesn’t give the body adequate time to acclimatize to the thinning air.

After about 8-9 hours of steady hiking, we were the last to arrive to our campsite for the evening. This area was called the Shira Plateau – it was an apt name, as it was a vast area of flat land, perfect for pitching hundreds of tents. And owing to my request that morning to be planted far away from other campers, the crew pitched our tents away from the masses next to an emergency heliport pad. Our tents also had our own personal bathroom squatters! No waiting in line or having to worry about manually holding the door closed tightly lest ye be intruded upon. More importantly, the view from this plateau was positively stunning. If it weren’t so stinking cold and I weren’t so stinking exhausted, I would asked for a few cups of tea, grabbed a chair and just sat and stared. That is, in fact, my idea of a perfect vacation – sitting in peace staring at one of nature’s wonders where pictures will never do it justice. Somehow the nights on this mountain were far more peaceful and beautiful than the days.

Dinner was again in an all-too-crowded short tent, which was perfectly designed to get you to eat quickly and get out from sheer discomfort. Unfortunately, hiking at high altitudes requires you to do the exact opposite – eat as much as humanly possible. This is really difficult when you’re cramped in the corner of a tent leaning over the table at a 40 degree angle just to fit inside… and this is coming from a 5’5” guy. Chris and Mike are almost a full foot taller than me. We actually would have been better off just eating on the floor.

The silence was beautiful tonight. The hike and the altitude had set in for all of the tourists, so most everyone went straight to bed. Being a few hundred feet away from them helped more. And still I couldn’t get a wink of sleep. I tried absolutely everything imaginable… I read a book, I listened to my iPod, I counted sheep (yes, I actually did try this), I tried sleeping on my side, I tried sleeping on my front, on my back, leaning up against the tent, lying on top of the luggage – you name it, I tried it. Except sleeping pills… I didn’t bring any of those. Normally, being physically exhausted is all you need to hit the sack.

At some point in the night, I began to hallucinate from the exhaustion and sleep deprivation. I was reading “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson, portions of which tell stories about hiking in high-altitudes to get to remote areas. I began to live the story, and I started visualizing the next chapters as if they were real and in the moment. I was having trouble distinguishing where I was on Kilimanjaro from the mountains of Pakistan in the book. Talk about creepy.

When Martin came to wake me, I was in a complete daze and felt separated from my body in a strange way. I was operating in some weird state of auto-pilot and was really just following whatever orders I was given. With no one ensuring that I was doing everything I needed to do, I didn’t really know what to wear, how much water to get, or anything else that I needed to do. I don’t think Chris and Mike fully realized quite yet what state of mind I was in. For the most part, I was just trying to muscle through it and kept quiet. I think the one decision that I did make that any semblance of intelligence to it was to stop taking the Diamox pills. I had decided that this must be the reason for my insomnia.

The first 4 hours of today’s hike was a slow steady climb uphill on a semi-rocky terrain. We were well above the tree-line at this point, so the vegetation was very sparse. So I just kept my head down and that “Put One Foot in Front of the Other” song from the old stop-motion movie Santa Claus is Coming to Town that we used to watch as kids kept repeating in my head. I suppose that singing would normally be considered a really good way to pass the time and keep moving, but the only problem is that I only know those 8 words of the song – I don’t remember any of the rest of it. So it was 4 hours of these same damn 8 words ringing in my head. And I REALLY hate Christmas music to boot. I just googled the song and apparently every other line in the song is this same verse, so I guess I wasn’t that far off after all.

After what seemed like an eternity (though it had only been 4 hours), I reached a stopping point where Chris and Mike had been patiently waiting for me for the past 30 minutes. They had eaten their packed lunches while they waited for me, and I sat down as soon as I saw them, intent on getting a little bit of rest while I could. I was also suffering from the mental and physical exhaustion that accompanies a complete lack of sleep. We were at approximately 15,000ft so far, and there was another 1000ft to go before reaching the Lava Tower, after which point the trail would descend back down to Barranco camp at 13,000ft.

My exhaustion was pretty obvious, and so Martin decided that I would go with an assistant guide on a shortcut straight to the Barranco camp instead of going up to the Lava Tower. After a quick visit to the squatter, we split up and I was assured that there would be water (I was almost out) and camp after a quick hike.

I don’t remember much about the next 4 hours. All I remember is realizing that I had not actually had any lunch, but that I was too exhausted to even try. I also remember asking Simo, the assistant guide, how much further camp was every 30 minutes and his response in his non-existent English was always the same. He would motion to me that we had a few hills to go up and down and then we would be there. He also gave the same response when asked where I would be able to get more water.

After what seemed to be an eternity, I was on the verge of collapsing. I couldn’t see straight. I could barely pick up one leg to put it in front of the other, in spite of what the darn song was telling me to do. About all I could do was shuffle my feet forward. The problem with this was that the hills were extremely rocky, requiring extension use of our trekking poles and preferably a decent sense of balance. My hiking technique at the time was definitely lacking in grace and I consider it to be a minor miracle that I didn’t tumble and fall and completely lose it.

What I did lose was my temper with the guides. I was completely out of water because Simo kept telling me that there would be a stream very soon to fill up my bottles. I was also a wee bit frustrated that the alleged 3 hills to go up and down actually numbered closer to 17. Before too long, I noticed that our path to the camp was intersecting with the trail with the rest of the hikers coming down from the Lava Tower and I ended up spotting Chris and Mike. After waving them down, I grabbed Chris’ extra water bottle and re-hydrated. Water had never tasted so good.

Our guides were really frustrating me. I was learning more about the mountain and the trail listening to the assistant guides from other tour groups than I was from my own head guide. Whenever I asked a question, I would get one of three responses: 1) an unrelated response, 2) “pol-e pol-e”, or 3) “Be Free”, which I suppose was Martin’s version of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. I don’t tend to be a needy tourist, but it seems to me that a bare minimum should be to get a quick description of the day’s hike each morning – how long the hike is, what the terrain and trail are like, and what our elevation will be like. It helps you become a bit more mentally prepared. But hey – maybe “Be Free” is really all the description we needed.

From this point, camp was only another 10 minutes away, which meant that it was easily 30 minutes for me at my current pace, and that was easily the longest 30 minutes of the hike. I think Chris had seen enough during these 30 minutes to decide that I needed to be sent down the mountain and back to the hotel, and so he began to discuss different scenarios with Martin on how to get this done.

When we finally arrived at camp, I went into my tent and rolled out my sleeping bag and was a few moments from passing out. Chris had different plans – he made sure that I got out of the tent and ate some food first. Chewing is already a chore at 14,000 feet, and it was even worse in my condition. But I was famished and he knew that I needed some nourishment before falling asleep.

In the middle of the night, I woke up for a bathroom break and the most amazing scenery met me outside the tent. The sky had opened up and the moon and stars illuminated the landscape – no flashlight was required. The snowy peak of Kilimanjaro was directly above us and glowed effervescently. My eyes turned to follow our trail and it disappeared straight into a massive wall of a mountain. Even now, six months later, this is my fondest memory of the mountain – how I wish I had a chair and a cup of hot cocoa so that I could sit there and stare for an hour. That would have made it all worthwhile in a heartbeat.

I probably got about 6 hours of sleep that evening. I woke up very refreshed, gobbled down breakfast, and was rearing and ready to go. I couldn’t have picked a better day to have a ton of energy. The wall of a mountain I had spotted last night turned out to be part of the trail. I could see a steady trail of tourists and porters both dotting a line all the way up the Great Wall of Barranco. Actually, I’ve been to the Great Wall and that moniker wouldn’t do this wall justice. I suppose calling it the Barranco Cliff of Insanity might work, but it seems to me that when you call something a cliff, you tend to be on the top and not at the bottom. So I’m going to go with The Great Waterless Fjord of Barranco. In truth I think it’s called the Barranco Wall, but that’s just kinda lame.

The path up the side of the waterless fjord was exhilarating with stunning views as we teetered on the edges of the trail, one mis-step plunging us to our collective dooms. The guides were very cautious with us, and with me in particular given my condition the past few days. I think I caught them completely by surprise by being so energized and scrambling up the mountain with ease. The wall would have gone very quickly had it not been for so many people. Inevitably, we’d get to a difficult patch where only one person could pass at a time and a tourist faint-of-heart would take an exorbitantly long time to climb up. The porters would frequently get very impatient and shove their way through or find less secure alternate routes to circumvent the tourist roadblock – I can’t say that I blame them. After all, it can’t be comfortable having 50 lbs of unbalanced tourist supplies strapped to your back and neck. These difficult patches were not necessarily easy – they were very similar to a medium-difficulty rock-climbing wall… except a little more slippery, a lot colder, a lot higher altitude, and lots of people staring at you.

Once reaching the top, we relaxed for a few minutes to soak up the view and then continued on our way, a casual stroll down a slight descent until the next uphill climb. It began to rain shortly thereafter – thank goodness we weren’t still on the (not-so) waterless fjord anymore. The wall definitely wouldn’t have been so much fun in the rain.

Our hike today was pretty short – about 4 hours in total to the Karanga camp. When we finally reached the camp, I was completely soaked by the rain. Mike and Chris were both relatively dry, so I started changing in my tent to try and figure out why. It turns out that I had left my armpit zippers wide open, which allowed all of the rain hitting my shoulders and upper arms to stream down the jacket and straight onto my shirt. I was also wearing a balaclava on my head and my hood apparently was not completely covering it. As a result, my balaclava was soaking up rain water and wicking it straight down to my back. In retrospect, I probably should have pulled that $1 poncho back out. Fortunately after reaching camp, the sun came out and we could dry our clothes and gear by hanging them on the tent lines.

The campsite for tonight was on a very noticeable incline on very rocky terrain. It was clear that we had gained in altitude as well – a seemingly short jaunt to the squatter left me breathless, even with no backpack to carry. The peak of Kilimanjaro was right smack dab in front of us – almost as though you could reach out and grab it. It wasn’t off in the distance or over the next hill anymore, it was right there. Tomorrow, we’d have another 4 hour hike to both ascend a bit more and also to get into the right spot of the mountain before we attempting the final ascent.

That night I didn’t sleep very much – maybe an hour or two at the most unfortunately. It seems my insomnia had returned, I suppose because I was no longer exhausted. The hike to Barafu camp was nothing special under the circumstances. I don’t remember it all that well – I just remember having some gradual ascents and gradual declines on very rocky terrain. We reached Barafu camp at about noon. The plan was to get an early rest and begin the ascent at about midnight for those final 1400m. This is standard for the mountain because it’s such a long day – about 7-8 hours to the top, another 4 hours to get back down, and then 4 more hours down to the next camp at Mweka.

When we arrived at the camp, we ended up sitting on a bench for 3 hours waiting for the tourists who had ascended the night before to get back down the peak, rest for an hour or two, eat lunch, and then make their way down. Sitting there with nothing to do and nowhere to go for hours on end was quite frustrating. To make matters worse, our porters had chosen spots right on the trail in the main campground for my tent – my tent actually shook a little bit all evening as people plodded by. I clearly would not be getting any sleep that evening again unfortunately.

Our gameplan for warmth was to load up and put on every possible article of clothing. It’s quite freezing on the peak in the wee midnight hours – if the temperature doesn’t get you, the wind-chill definitely will. I had on 4 layers under my jacket, 3 layers on my legs, 2 pairs of gloves, 2 balaclavas, a ski jacket, ski goggles, and my thick woolen cap from Mt. Bromo in Indonesia. Water tends to freeze if left in your backpack alone, so we filled our water bottles up with warm water and put them inside our jackets to keep them from turning to ice.

We set off for the peak at about 11:30pm under the light of moonlight. Plenty of people had their headlamps on, but I actually found it easier to see using the moonlight instead. Scattered up and down the path were trickles of light from the headlamps of long lines of guides and tourists, trudging along in unison in as a train of human hikers. The guides sang songs to pass the time and give something for the tourists to focus on.

The trail itself from the start was very steep and a bit icy from the previous day’s snowfall. There were small leveled out strips from time to time, but it was largely straight uphill. It didn’t take long for my shorter well-bundled legs to fall behind Mike and Chris, so within a few hours they had pulled far enough away from me that they decided that we should split up. I don’t blame them at all. It didn’t help that I was also getting very short of breath and stopping every five to ten minutes to rest. I tried to get a sip of water, but my hands would freeze every time I pulled my gloves off.

Honestly, I don’t remember much. I do remember hiking up a seemingly never-ending maze of switchbacks with the end nowhere in sight. Trains of tourists would pass me when I stopped to catch my breath. The wind was gusting and made it impossible to do little more than put your head down and keep trudging forward in baby steps.

I remember getting a granola bar out to try and get some strength and sat on a rock for about 10 minutes gazing at the mountainside glowing in the moonlight. I noticed that there were very few people below me on the mountain… a straggler here or there at the most.  There was one fellow who was 30 yards down from me who was puking non-stop and the guide was arguing with him that he needed to turn around and get back to camp. These guides pride themselves on getting people to the top – I heard from a lady after the trip that her guide basically pushed her up the mountain for the last 3 hours of the hike. Unfortunately, mine was not so determined. In fact, he seemed quite happy when I had decided at that point that I didn’t have the energy to move forward. Exhaustion had just gotten the better of me, and unfortunately the benefits of the 6 hours of sleep from two nights before had long been used up. The only problem was that I still needed to make my way back to camp.

Sometimes, I find that it’s actually harder to go downhill than it is to go uphill – I know there are more than enough people that don’t agree with me on this point. When you are going uphill, your center of gravity is moving towards the landmass and if you stumble, you stumble into the mountain. When you are going downhill, it’s the opposite – if you stumble, you tumble. The only way to not do this is to walk down backwards (takes too long) or to lean back as you step down (hard on your knees). Because the mountainside was so steep and icy, I skidded down a lot and I even fell down a few times. I also helped a few others who were struggling with the same decision I had faced – I like to believe that they felt some comfort in knowing that they were not the only ones who had to turn back. I know I did.

Best I can figure, I made it about halfway up from Barafu to the peak. This would put me at a maximum height of about 5300m or about 17,400ft. I got back to my tent and didn’t sleep very much. But it didn’t seem like it was too long before I heard Chris and Mike’s voices again (probably about 6 hours later). They had reached the summit in superb time… so superb that they got there too early and would have had to wait for another 30 minutes to see the sun rise. Apparently, when you’re at the top of a 19,500ft mountain – 30 minutes is an absolute eternity. They reached the top, took the obligatory picture, and promptly turned right back around as I’m sure every single one of the other 25,000 successful hikers per year do at that peak. Glory is short. There is no reveling necessary, since reveling would imply that it’s an enjoyable experience. Of course, I wouldn’t know. And yes, that bothers me to no end.

After letting Chris and Mike rest for a few hours, we had some lunch and started a rapid descent down the mountain. Six hours later, we were at Mweka camp at the top of the tropical foresty portion of the mountain at the same elevation we had been at 5 nights before – 3000m. What had taken us 4 days to get up had taken us only one day to get down – certainly there are much faster paths, but the name of the game is acclimatization. The more time you have to get your body accustomed to a higher altitude on the mountain, the more likely you’ll be able to reach the top.

Sleep at 3000m was no problem at all. Sure, I was very tired, but it was nothing like the exhaustion I had felt a few days prior when I collapsed at Barranco camp. A thousand meters clearly makes all the difference in the world. After a few more hours of hiking the next morning, we reached the Mweka gate, had a bite to eat at a roadside stand, and then rode back to the hotel in the Extended-Extended-Cab Family Truckster Rovermobile where the first order of business would be a well deserved shower. The week on the mountain had flown by. We had hiked a total of 50 miles from gate to gate. And it was hard to stomach that I had missed my goal.

Early in this post, I mentioned an Esquire article I had been reading… the writer mentions that he trained for four months for the hike by working out six times a week and by sleeping in a special altitude tent each night to get his body accustomed to low altitude conditions. You really don’t need all this. You don’t need to be supremely fit to hike up this mountain – anyone can do it. No, seriously. There were grandmas and grandpas who were climbing up the mountain – sure they were in decent shape and were finding it difficult, but they were still making it up.

I think that’s what makes it so difficult for me to recount this trip – the way I see it, I just flat-out failed. I know that sounds harsh and many have told me “at least you tried”, but somehow that doesn’t comfort me much. Perhaps this trip has reminded me that I’m not indestructible, much like my ACL tear did to my psyche a decade earlier. I’m sure that better training or more appropriate gear would have helped me get farther up the mountain, but I really don’t think it’s the sum total of why it didn’t happen for me. At times, I think that perhaps I did not commit myself enough mentally to trudge through and make it up to the top. At other times, I think that there were just too many obstacles to overcome – sleeplessness, altitude sickness pills, anti-malarials, physical fitness, and appropriate gear. Actually, I think I would have been able to push through with everything except the sleeplessness. That was an absolute killer.

The Esquire columnist ends his article saying “For me, the most gratifying part of finishing Kilimanjaro is that I know, for sure, that I can do it, that I did do it, and that I never have to do it again.” My immediate thought when I read that was… “Damn!”

So who’s up for climbing up Kili with me next year?