An unforgettable trek to the Kilimanjaro

An unforgettable trek to the Kilimanjaro

This was not my first time up Kilimanjaro, in fact I had taken my then 10 year old son up a few years previously. But this was the first time that I would be climbing the mountain whilst being totally responsible for the eleven people climbing with me. Every year, over 35,000 people set foot in Tanzania specifically to climb Kilimanjaro. As the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, Mount Kilimanjaro is a place of myth and legend. Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro may not require any technical skills or special equipment, however, the journey is not to be taken lightly, you need to be prepared and understand what lies ahead. I was trip leading for White Magic Adventure Travel (www.whitemagicadventure.com) an outdoor adventure company in Delhi, India, and all of the group were Indian. I had first started interacting with the team about two months before we would meet in Tanzania, and obviously the first thing we discussed was their physical and mental preparations for the climb. Many of the group had never trekked before, most had never climbed before and, in fact, some had never even camped before. This was going to be a trip that took all of them out of their comfort zones and made them confront their personal inner strengths and weaknesses. They needed to know that this trip would be no picnic; after all the summit of Kilimanjaro is not only the highest place in Africa, it is also the one of the highest points in the world that can be reached without mountaineering equipment. The highest point on Kilimanjaro, UhuruPeak (19,340ft/5,895m), is approximately 1,500ft/457m higher than Everest base camp (which climbers take about two weeks to reach), and it presents some formidable obstacles, especially for inexperienced climbers. The air is thin, your movements are slow, and altitude sickness can strike like a tightening band of steel round the top of your head and force even the fittest of climbers to descend if they have gone up the mountain too fast. I knew the success of the climb would be won or lost in the group’s physical and mental preparation. I didn’t want them to feel that they had come half way across the world to ‘fail’, so I had to convince them just how important their training was going to be… just taking long strolls was not going to be enough, they had to practice walking or, better still, running up steep hills, and “stairs, stairs, stairs” was to become my motivational mantra! So having briefed my group, monitored their training, issued them with elaborate and varied packing, gear and medical instructions and, more importantly, chatted with them on a daily basis for two months, it was now time to meet! I flew in from Zambia and they flew in from India, and we all met up in Moshe, the town closest to the base of Kilimanjaro. It was an interesting experience finally putting faces to the names that I had been communicating with for so many months, but I could see straight away, that despite our varied ages and backgrounds, this was going to be a good group and a cohesive team. After introductions all round, some last minute gear checks and a good night’s sleep we were ready to tackle the mountain. There are many routes up Kilimanjaro, but we had opted for the Rongai Route as this was a route that would allow the group five days to acclimatise before their final assault on the summit. People who take only four days to base camp tend to have an approximately 50% chance of summiting, and with a five day ascent the average success rate goes up to 75%. But I was aiming for better than that, I wanted 100% of my group to make it to the top, I knew they were capable of it, I just needed to convince them of the same! Where ‘stairs, stairs, stairs’ may have been just right for pre-climb training, on the mountain itself that would change to the words most frequently heard by any climber on Kilimanjaro, ‘Pole Pole’, Swahili for ‘Slowly, Slowly’; for any climber on Kilimanjaro it’s always a good idea to heed this advice and steady your pace. Of those who don’t make it to the summit, altitude or acute mountain sickness (AMS) is usually to blame. Altitude sickness strikes randomly and indiscriminately; age, fitness levels and previous experience are no safeguard. Many people suffer mild symptoms, but in its most severe forms, high-altitude cerebral oedema or high-altitude pulmonary oedema, it is life-threatening. Officially there are, on average, two or three deaths annually as a result of AMS on Kilimanjaro, although the total number of annual fatalities is between 10 and 15. There are a number of ways you can help prevent altitude related symptoms from dashing your summit dreams, and these include slow ascent, consuming lots of water, avoiding alcohol and caffeinated drinks, and taking Acetazolamide/Diamox a drug that fights altitude illnesses (the down side of Diamox is that it is a diuretic and often this means many inconvenient trips to the loo!). Day one dawned and we set off for the mountain. After a fair drive we finally alighted at Nale Moru gate, which is the start of the Rongai Route. Our path wound through towering moss draped pine trees and there was the occasional colobus monkey to be spotted. Children and local villagers shouted ‘jambo’ (Swahili for ‘hello’) as we passed. We walk at a slow pace up steady slope, letting our legs get used to the idea of walking again after all the time spent in our various flights. The only way to tackle this mountain is inch by inch, unless, of course, you are a super fit porter who does it a couple of times a month. We have 38 of these porters with us, and they speed past us with the group’s luggage, camping gear and water supplies on their heads. We reached our first camp by afternoon, and the group got down to the business of selecting tents and getting comfortable for their first night on the mountain. After dark the temperatures on Kilimanjaro fall quickly, and the team members were relieved to see vegetable soup, as entrée, on the menu for dinner that night (little did they know then that vegetable soup would make a regular, and at times very monotonous, appearance in their daily diet!). After dinner the group sat around chatting and admiring all the stars that were just simply never spotted from their Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta apartments. One of the group members had a particularly beautiful singing voice and, once this was discovered, she was put to work entertaining the rest of us! Finally it was time to face the inevitable and the entire group went off to their respective tents for what they hoped would be a good night’s sleep. From my tent I could hear people settling into their tents and getting used to the idea of camping life… and I knew exactly the sort of thoughts that were going through their minds… “should I get out of sleeping bag and put on another pair of socks?”, “why didn’t I go to the loo before I got into my sleeping bag?”, “where did I leave the torch?”… finally the rustling and fidgeting stopped and the group settled down to sleep serenaded by the snores of one of the group reverberating around the camp. Day two dawned and the clients were greeted by beautiful sunshine and a small bowl of warm water at their tents to perform their daily ablutions. Despite probably having slept pretty fitfully, being their first night in tents, all were in remarkably good spirits. After breakfast we set off for a pretty uneventful day’s journey to Camp Two. At Camp Two were are finally joined by the missing member of our team (who had been stranded in Amsterdam on his way into Tanzania from Canada), despite having walked two days trek in one to catch us up, he is in good shape and at last all the team are together. Night two in the tents and I can see the group are becoming more accustomed to the discomfort of tent life and working out various ‘coping mechanisms’ for surviving the experience. Setting off day three, we head to Kikilewa Camp; a pretty steep climb and the pace slows as people begin feeling the effects of the increasing altitude and some start wheezing in the thinner air. That afternoon there was a game of ‘high altitude Frisbee’ in the camp, and a lot of time spent in the hills above the camp looking for cell phone signal so I could update the group’s facebook page and keep all their family and friends up to speed on progress. Yet more soup for dinner and a pretty raucous game of cards before bed. We reach our next camp, Mawenzi Tarn, by lunch time the following day and a number of the group are delighted to find that, for a fee, one of the porters from another team will provide rudimentary massages (the group quickly asks me to ascertain that our new found ‘masseuse’ will be available at our next three campsites!). In the afternoon, I drag the team off, very much against their will, on a cold and damp ‘acclimatisation walk’ up in the hills behind the camp. It’s a very cold night, so I teach the group the trick of, before bed, filling their drinking bottle for the following day with boiling hot water, and using them literally as  ‘hot water bottles’ in their sleeping bags that night. Day five dawns, Valentine’s Day, and we see great views of the Kenyan plains below us. We have long day ahead of us, we need to reach base camp, Kibo Huts, as early as possible in order to ‘rest up’, because, just before midnight tonight, we will set off for the summit. After a relatively short, ‘roller-coaster’ style, walk across moorland, we have a long haul across the ‘saddle’, the flat, barren, desolate area between Mawenzi and the Kibo crater. The path to summit is visible and, for many of the group, it appears terrifyingly vertical; reality starts to set in, that we will be on that very path in the dark tonight. En route we pass the scattered remnants of a light aircraft that crashed in bad weather in November 2008, killing four Italian tourists; it’s a stark reminder of our mortality. The last hour of the walk is a relentless slog as oxygen deprivation for number of the group really kicks in. We arrive at Kibo base camp in time for lunch and a summit briefing. Everyone is a little subdued. I do a final tent to tent check of what exactly everyone will be wearing that night and then send them all off to rest. A light dinner at 5pm, with not much conversation, then everyone is back to their tents to try to rest. I’ve eaten, drunk, or done something that has clearly disagreed with me, and spend the next five hours vomiting. For most of the group they manage some fitful snoozing (in between Diamox induced pit stops), then at 11pm, I wake them all up. This is it… A cup of tea and a few biscuits later, I line them all up, putting them in the climbing order I have decided will work best for the group, and after a few last minute instructions and motivations we set off, at midnight, up a zigzaging route on a slippery shale slope. In the dark, with only our head torches lighting the way, I can hear rasping breaths all around me. It’s a crisp clear night; the stars seem very close. It takes a while for the group to get into ‘climbing mode’; heads down, focusing on the feet of the person in front, not looking up, down or sideways. At our first rest break the cold bites hard, temperatures are between -5C and -15C. All around I can see the head torches of other groups strung out along the trail, like fairy lights. I try to rally my group’s flagging spirits by cheerfully telling them they have already got a quarter of the way… fortunately this piece of information seems to go down well. As we go higher the path becomes steeper and narrower, and runs between huge boulders and rocky overhangs. I have put the local Tanzanian guide at the front of the group and I’m working as ‘the sweeper’ at the back, shouting encouragement and periodically walking up the side of the line of climbers, checking on each in turn, and handing out sweets, hugs or stern words as required. At the next stop fatigue has very clearly set in with a number of the team, I divide my time between treating frozen hands, dealing with frozen water bottles and slipping energy sweets into peoples mouths. Group moral is at an all time low, gone is the cheering and singing of earlier in the night. I can see head torches moving directly above us and urge the team onwards and upwards. Despite my optimistic promises to the group, it’s still not light, and we’ve almost reached Gilman’s Point, the crater rim (5,684m), but only the Tanzanian guides and I know it. The path becomes steeper still … then finally we’re there… all eleven of the clients have made it this far. It took us six hours to reach Gilman’s Point, and the true summit is almost in sight, but I can see the group feel strangely unelated, some in fact fall asleep at this point. Do they have the energy and nerve for last push to Uhuru, the true summit? Finally the sun starts to come up, oxygen deprivation is now crippling the group, they are doing remarkably well considering there is 50 per cent less oxygen here than at sea level. I can see they are weakening, all are breathless and the sunrise is not having the morale boosting effect on the group I had hoped for! There are gale force winds of over 30km/hr to contend with, and the temperature is approaching -25C; it is like watching them all move in slow motion as they shuffle along on the precipitous narrow path inside the crater. The seemingly interminable plodding past glaciers and ice cliffs continues; no one is talking, they have to concentrate very hard on every step, ignoring the stunning views, they just want to get there and get it over with. Then they see it… the sign board marking Africa’s highest point. The sight of the sign pulls some of the climbers slowly on, like a magnet, but for others, seeing the distance still ahead it is almost too much to bear. Myself and the local guides, take hold of the weaker climbers and lead them by the hand to the summit. It’s 7.30am. There are half hearted cheers as everyone in the group reaches the summit, brief congratulations and a few pictures. One romantic man leads his girlfriend aside for a proposal that has been months in the planning, but due to the horrific summit conditions is no doubt not quite as he had hoped for (fortunately she said “yes”). Fifteen minutes later we’re heading back. What took us nearly eight hours to get up, will only take us three to get down, slipping and sliding on shale all the way. As the group reach back to Base Camp they collapse in various states of undress into their tents. They are too tired to feel triumphant, especially when they realise that, after a short rest period, they still have to endure another three to four hours walking to our final camp for that night at Horombo. Our night at Horombo is the quietest of the trip, some of the group don’t even manage to make it out of their tents for dinner. The final day dawns, and we are off for our last few hours walk down the mountain. Down, down, down the mountain… into rainforest, over rivers, past waterfalls, lush foliage and flowers... everyone’s mood is upbeat, if tinged with exhaustion… and then, suddenly it looms, the Marangu Gate, and the end of the journey. Everyone savours the moment. I’m sure they all felt it was hellish at times, and their bodies took a hammering, but I can see they feel euphoric now at their achievement.

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