Climbing Mt Meru

Jambo!

This past weekend I climbed Mt Meru!

It was by far, the hardest physical thing i have EVER done. the last day was the killer - we woke up at 12:30 at night to reach the summit by dawn, and then hiked down the rest of the day. My legs are still throbbing, and all feelings of invincibility shattered. I made it to the peak, but at a price, and it was a close call.

Meru, standing at 14,980 feet, is the second highest mountain in Tanzania. Climbing Meru is extremely difficult, much moreso than Kilimanjaro, because of its sharp incline and quicker assent. While Kilimanjaro is 19,341 feet above sea level, you take 4 or 5 or 6 days to climb it, and the path is a slight zigzagging incline up the mountain. With meru you begin at 2,000 feet and reach the peak in less than three days at a grueling pace. At the beginning of the second day i was already feeling the altitude, unable to catch my breath as we hiked through the clouds. The breathless lightheaded feeling remained with me throughout the climb, and i eventually became accustomed to sounding like a panicy asthmatic.

The Flora was astounding, and we all were amazing at how quickly species change due to altitude. Ever few hours you felt like you were in a different region, and some of the changes were unexpected. When we started, piles of buffalo dung were frequent obstacles, and the magestic black and white colobus monkeys flew through the trees. the leaves of trees and bushes were huge and fleshy, with a very "african" look. At the cloud level, the humidity created a rainforest feeling, with thick lichen covering branches and hanging down like willow leaves. Huge armies of ants covered entire sections of the trail, so thick you think its a fallen branch at first. We soon learned to go offtrail to avoid them - one contact and they swarm up and into your shoes and pants, biting you until you do the ants in my pants dance to shake them out.

By the end of the second day we were above the clouds, and the trees had begun to thin and were dominantly evergreens. The red hot pockers were replaced by small yellow and white flowers that could withstand the cold temperature. As we marched to the peak that night in pitch darkness, all but the tiniest plants disapeared, and the terrain was only gravel, ash and rock. Each step on the steep trail of gravel slid you back half a step, and pulling yourself up over large boulders left you breathless and shaking. Though nerveracking at the time with my little flashlight, i now appreciate the darkness, as it preventing me from seeing how much farther i still had to go.

Near dawn, each step left me gasping, a few times i slumped onto a boulder, unable to stand. A few friends rushed a head, and i heard them exclaim as they reached the top. I was taking it slow until through a crack i gimpsed the sky - after 6 hours of darkness, the oranges and yellows were mindblowing. With a last burst of energy i scurried to the top, sitting on a comfy rock, privately soaking in the beauty.

Kilimanjaro lies to the east of Meru, and the entire climb we could see it in different stages. We admired its clarity as we stood at second camp, hundreds of miles of clouds stretching beneath us unbroken between the two mountains. At the summit, the sun rose behind kili, creating a startling silhouette surrounded by a beautiful sunrise. Pictures and words cannot describe its beauty, and the panorama of solid blue sky and cotton clouds and land from the peak.

It was freezing at the top, so we began decending after we had had our fill. On the way down i felt another surge of gratitude for climbing at night - on most of the paths the edges fell away sharply, and had so little flora that if you fell, there would be nothing to grasp and you would slide down hundreds of feet. Climbing with my shakey legs I'm sure i would have become nervous from this, and with my heartbeat pounding, any added anxiety would not have been helpful.

I remember the hardest section - we were working our way up miles of asphalt, and i felt certain i could not go on. My breaths were so strained, but worse were my legs, which could not cope with the repeated steps and were sending shots of pain into my hips and back. I found the only way to continue was to keep my steps so steady and regular that i did not have to think about them, and to accomplish this i began to search for a steady song. my fatigue and the altitude made thinking difficult when i finally found it - Adom Olam. The strong, regular beat enabled me to make it up the asphalt until we stopped for a break.

Mom told me a poem that Zadie had in his office after bubbie's stroke. it read something like this:

Climb the mountain
Reach the peak
No-one will know
that you are weak.

Even though the climb was painful, I'm grateful that i had the chance and the ability to finish it. It may have been the hardest for me out of the group, but i didn't let on how difficult it was. And at the end, I felt amazing of what i had accomplished, and what a personal struggle it was. It was different levels of difficulty for each person, and no-one can experience how you feel when you finish. Maybe my friends thought it wasn't too hard for me. Either way, if any of them ask me to climb a huge mountain again, I'm telling them there is no form of money or pleasure that would ever bring me to the base of that mountain again!

-Ariel

---

---