Climbing Kili….
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008Mt. Kilimanjaro, at 5895 meters above sea level, is the tallest free-standing mountain in the world. The hike can take 6, 7, or 8 days depending on how much you want to spend (more days=more money), which route you take, and how much time you want/need to acclimatize to the altitude. Our friend Mauricio, who’s a true mountaineer, picked the route and found a great resource in Paul Shayo (prshayos@hotmail.com) to organize the hike for us. Paul is very honest and attentive to his clients. He gave us a great deal and even let Paula and I borrow a number of items we needed for the hike free of charge (hiking poles, balaclavas, sweater, gloves, etc). We highly recommend him if you are in Moshi and want to do a safari or hike.
So it’s funny since even though Kili is known to be hard, you still have to avoid the Coca-Cola Route. Let me explain… there are three main routes: the Coca-Cola Route (marangu), the Whiskey Route (Machame), and the Vodka Route (Umbwe). You apparently have to do at least the Machame (whiskey) to get ‘respect’. Mauricio knew this so off we went to begin our journey down the whiskey route on our aggressive 6 day hike. The hike is easy…. did I just say that?…. well, it is. The guides take you VERY slowly along rather unchallenging terrain. They tell you ‘Pole Pole’ (pronounced Poley-poley meaning ‘slowly slowly’) to remind you to keep all your energy and not get tired during the early days as you’ll need all your stamina to withstand the altitude later on.
Each day, we wake early, eat a nice breakfast (the food was great… for the first time in any trek P and I have been on, no food-bourne sickness… nice!), then head off on our hike for the day. We arrive at camp around 1-2pm and quickly set up our tent before the rain comes in the early afternoon (the terrential downpour for an hour or so each afternoon… including hail). The cook gives us some popcorn, roasted peanuts, and tea as a snack… then we rest a bit before dinner. After dinner we chat about the day and past hikes and then it’s off to bed. As we brush our teeth we stare at the stars…. my god, the stars… P and I have been to some fairly remote areas of the world by now but the stars on Kilimanjaro are brighter and bigger and more abundant than I’ve ever seen. I found myself lost in them for quite a long time on the first night.
The hike on day 5 (summit day) begins at midnight… so after day 4’s 6 hour hike to our highest altitude (4600 meters) we begin hiking after merely 5, non-sleeping, hours of rest. Now, I said before that the hike is easy… well, it is until it isn’t if you get my drift…. As Mauricio, Kevin, P and I slowly trudged up the last big incline towards stella point, the lack of sleep and perhaps a bit of altitiude sickness kicks in on Paula. Kevin and Mauricio go ahead and push through the biting cold ahead of us toward the summit. P and I continue on. Paula begins to slow down further…. but she never stops. With more mental toughness than anyone I know, she forces her tired body further up the mountain. As we get to within 50/75 vertical meters of the top of stella point (5720 meters) her breathing and heartrate are very high and we begin to rest more than we climb. Finally after some prodding by the guides we decide it better to descend and return to camp. One of the guides pushes me to continue to the top but I decline. There is no way I could go up there and get a picture that shows me by myself…. that’s not what this trip is about. So together we start the long trip back down. Unfortunately, I had some bad luck on the way down and twisted my knee. This turned into a problem as after I twisted it, I still had to hike down 3 hours to camp.
After some rest, and some lunch, we congratulated Kevin and Mauricio on their summit success (way to go again, guys!) and continued the hike for another 4 hours to a lower camp. The next morning, we hiked our way out of the park and bid farewell to Mt Kilimanjaro…. an adventure, to be sure.
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