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Hitting the peak of Kilimanjaro is a shock, a relief and an ecstatic rush all rolled into one.
The orange horizon burned my eyes after hiking for 6 hours in the dark, my fingers were frozen, lips ripped apart from the wind and sand.
My boots weighed ten times what they did when we set off 5 days before, my head was throbbing from the thin air up here.
But still it was amazing. Having trekked through monkey-filled mountain rainforests, from soaking cloud layers to parched, dry deserts and up the steep volcanic ash fields to the frozen glacier walls, i was now looking down on Kilimanjaro, the saddle between us and the sister peak, Mawenze, and over the clouds and Tanzania's early morning steppes.
I was looking back on the past days, plodding along at a snails pace, across the rocks and tracks of the National Park.
Our Chief Guide, Samueli, has been climbing Killi for 35 years and set us off at an unbelievably slow walking crawl - heel to toe, heel to toe, all day long.
Altitude Sickness is the biggest villain on this mountain and Samueli ensured we would ascend very slowly to allow our bodies to acclimatise properly.

Samueli also chain smoked the whole way, rarely cracked a smile and claimed his grandfather had been one of the first porters to the peak a hundred years ago.

12 of us had set out at midnight, six hours ago.
5 of them were members of the military.
3 had to retire due to altitude sickness symptoms, all 3 were military folk and fit.
Altitude sickness doesn't favour the healthy.

Our nine-strong crew had reached the plateau, but not the peak - that was another one and half hours slog in thin air with tired legs around the ash bowl crater.
The glaciers looked amazing and i felt good - i wanted to push on to the peak.
The other 2 military members turned back, leaving the unhealthiest and, presumably, blind stupid members of the group(3 nurses and 3 'London media types') to press on with Samueli and Ellie, our second guide.

Half way round on a thin ridge we were battered from both sides by 40mph winds rushing up Killis slopes in the morning heat, spinning clouds of ash and sand into our clothes, eyes and mouths. Everyone huddled together.
Samueli crouched out of the wind, straining to light a cigarette in the rare air.
"This very dangerous" he said, but it was hard to hear in the blizzard.
"Other groups turn back" He was right, there were few people up here at Stella Point.
Our group had their heads down, tired and whipped by the wind.
I couldn't hear him very well so leaned forward to get the leaders eye and hear what his instructions were.
He pointed his lit cigarette at me and said "You. What do you think?"

Eh?
Me?
What do I know?
I've been bitten by mountains before enough to know to respect them and respect the words of people who know the mountain, I thought.
But don't get me to decide what to do up here! I'm used to having a snowboard at the top of a mountain, not the contents of a million fireplaces blowing over me at the speed of sound!

"OK Samuel, you're the boss. Whenever you say 'go down' then we all go down together."
I was prepared to turn round and trudge back the way we came when Sam jumped up, into the wind and started for Uhuru Peak, the highest point in Africa.

"Its not so bad up here" he shouted, and the wind was lighter, higher up out of the funnel of the ridge.



We made it. We struggled up to that wind-swept, bare rock with a battered wooden sign and a trash box with plastic bottles blowing out of it. Fingers were frozen and cameras were seizing up. Water was getting low. It was hard to speak in the thin air and raging wind.
The view was hazy, the clouds were building and even now at 9am, the sun was scorching our skin.



What had we done this for? Humans have an urge to go through intense effort for little, if any, personal gain.
'Man climb big tree'
'Man climb mountain'
'Man walk on moon'

Why?
Because its there?
Because someone else has done it?
Because it looks fun from the bottom?

Who knows. Personally, i don't know where the passion to climb a dangerous chunk of rock came from but I remembered that we had raised 5000 pounds from our family and friends for the Zanzibar Action charity. As we skidded and skiied down the scree, tired, dehydrated and looking forward to another 6 hour walk before any rest, amazement flowed over me, thinking about the amount of money we had raised.
And that feeling beat any spectacular view, personal goal or ecstatic rush I'd had all week.
Maybe there had been a point to it all, after all.

more of my stupid mountain adventures: Here- Dead Leg

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