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Published: December 21st 2008
Preparation
Some time after the last Eid al-Futr (Oct. 1 -4), I began thinking about what I was going to do for the coming Eid holiday in December, Eid al-Adha. (The Eid holidays are huge national holidays in Jordan that combined with weekends can add up to 5-10 day vacations. Whereas working in a Muslim country as a non-Muslim can have its drawbacks, the Eid holidays are a definite bonus.) Number one in my head was to take advantage of my location in Jordan but without spending a whole ton of money. I had thoughts of Iran and Egypt or even India, but at the end of the day I wanted to really do something, not just travel around, see sights, and eat interesting food while trying not to break the bank. Sure traveling is doing something, but there is a part of me that has become tired of just wandering through another foreign country. I wanted a goal, a reason to travel that was more than just to see and experience.
I mentioned this frustration to a friend of mine here in Jordan and told her that I was thinking of heading to East Africa for the holiday, since
I had found some cheap flights with Air Arabia, the discount airline out of Sharja (one of the UAE emirates). She, Emily, immediately chimed in that maybe we could climb Kilimanjaro. Of course! The answer had been right in front of me the whole time, but why didn't I see it? Summiting the highest peak in Africa was a perfect goal and a good enough reason for me to get excited and begin to plan the trek.
Climbing "Kili" is not an overly difficult affair to plan but it does take shopping around with different trekking companies in Tanzania and comparing their prices versus the endless options that they offer. These options include things like the number of guides, the types of food on the ascent, questions regarding bottled water versus boiled water, whether or not you need a portable toilet throne, and the optional oxygen tank in case you get sick on the way up. The other striking thing that was mentioned over and over as you compare outfitters is altitude sickness. It seems that some 90% of people who attempt to summit Kili come down with some form of altitude sickness and a hand full of them
end up being taken off the mount in stretchers. Of course, this didn't dissuade me from considering the ascent, but it did put a thought of caution in my head. More than likely I too would have to deal with this nasty invisible enemy.
After making the appropriate wire transfers to a South African bank and confirming that all was well on the ground in Tanzania, I received an email confirmation of the trip with my final itinerary. When you hike Kili you get to choose from among 7 routes to make your ascent. The traditional route called the Manguru Route, aka Coca-Cola Route because of how often it is climbed, takes about 5 to 6 days round trip and begins at the southeastern based of the mountain. While this would have been the easiest ascent, we decided to avoid the other climbers and go with the Rongai Route which begins on the northeast side of the mountain. The Rongai Route takes about 6 days round trip and requires you to overnight in tents. Although I have to admit that I had been anti-tent even since I woke up as a kid in tents cold and covered in dew
one too many times, I thought that tenting it sounded like the right way to climb the mountain.
Our itinerary sounded great. We would hike for four days straight until we reached base camp, known as Kibo Camp, and then we would begin our final 6 hour ascent at midnight on the beginning of the fifth day. Assuming that the summit went well, we would then descend around 8AM arriving back to Kibo at around 11A or noon, sleep a couple or hours, and then hike another 4 hours until we reached our resting spot for the night of the fifth day. The sixth and final day would be a 6 - 8 hour hike back to the entrance of the Kilimanjaro National Park. What I didn't expect to see on the itinerary was the follow description of the ascent:
Tonight is very difficult - particularly the final 500m - and you’ll need to commit to fight for the summit. You will inevitably feel like giving up and going to sleep. This is normal and can be overcome with perseverance. When resting please ensure you only stand or sit and do not lie down or close your eyes. Please trust your guide; he is very adept at judging whether your condition will allow safe progress or whether you have succumbed to a potentially dangerous condition and to proceed will not be safe. Nausea and headaches are normal and around a quarter of climbers will vomit at or near Gilman’s Point. While very uncomfortable, these are not symptoms that are indicative of being at risk, per se. The onset of cerebral and pulmonary oedema are marked by distinctive early warning symptoms that your guide is capable of identifying....
When you reach Gilman’s Point you will sit and rest. At this point the body often thinks you have finished your uphill fight and will be trying to coerce you into giving up and turning around. While you may genuinely believe that you have already exhausted your reserves in reaching this point, this is actually very unlikely to be so. Remember that you are only 214 vertical meters short of the summit, the journey from here is much less steep, and you have plenty of time for further pauses. If you do feel the need to give up at Stella Point please proceed towards the summit for just two minutes
before making your final decision. In most cases this act of re-establishing momentum is enough to persuade the mind and body to co-operate with your intentions and you will ordinarily find hidden reserves for a final push, reserves that you were not aware you still had.
On the summit your guide will advise how much time you can spend there in consideration of your condition, your timings, and the weather.
The brain does not function very intelligently at this altitude so please remember to take many photographs in all directions or you will probably regret not having done so at a later stage.
Day 1: Gore-Tex Boots Save the Day!
Day 1 Video Journal Day one began with a frantic dash around the hotel grabbing rental gear, paying for the restaurant bill from the night before, and locking all our valuables into lock boxes provided by the hotel. With all our possessions either in our waterproof gear bags or locked away at the hotel, we sat in the hotel's gravel entrance way for our ride. Two friendly Canadians, a couple in their twenties, met us in the entrance and said that they would be joining us on the ascent. I
didn't expect to ascend with anyone, but they seemed nice enough so I was happy to have them along for the climb. When the van finally arrived, we were all surprised to see that it was almost empty except for our two guides and the driver. What we didn't know was that on the way out of town we would stop at a huge warehouse where a team of porters, cooks, and other covered the bus like ants loading us down with everything that we would need for the 6 days journey on Kili. All-in-all we were 4 trekkers, 2 guides, and 18 porters, cooks, and who knows whats. (FYI: As I write the sun is going down as a Friday afternoon comes to a close in Amman. The minarets just began to sing the call to prayer...quite nice.)
I think that one of the best reasons to take the Rongai Route happens before you even step foot on the path. To arrive at the starting point of the route you have to drive for 4 hours from Moshi, the small town from where most Kili treks depart, around the base of Kili to the trailhead. The trip around
the base of Kili is not necessarily a comfortable one, but you travel on a dirt road the entire way and go through what seem to be endless banana farms, small wooden shack villages, and very simple lumberyards with 2 story high mountains of orange sawdust. All along the roadside, women carry stems of bright green banana's on their heads as they make their way to the banana market. Of course, we too were driving along the same road that headed to the banana market and as we reached the crest of one hill we saw a busy mass of people wrapped in beautifully decorated cloth all selling, carrying, or loading huge clumps of green bananas into large trucks with open air beds. Once we arrived in the middle of the market, our driver stopped the van and our guides encouraged us to get out and look around. It was truly awesome. We were so far back in the bush that there were no other white people to be seen and the folks in the market, although engaged in serious business, were very talkative and happy to explain what was going on and how the sales of bananas worked. I
had one women even describe to me how to properly carry a bunch of banana's on your head without damaging the fruit. Maybe this piece of information will be useful someday.
After another hour of driving and a 30 minute lunch break at a small restaurant serving Tanzanian BBQ, you can always recognize these restaurants by the fresh animal caucuses hanging somewhere near their entrance, we arrived at the beginning of the Rongai trail. The porters quickly unloaded the top of the van, all of us foreign trekkers signed in at the guard hut, and we started up the trail. Initially, the trail primarily consisted of moist dark humus soil. The trees were conifers and to our left you could see plots of land being farmed by day farmers who lived outside the national park but tended to their lands at the base of the volcano during the day. As we moved further along the trail the grade increased and we made our way into a lush, green rain forest.
As if on command, the rain started to pour the minute we entered the rain forest causing everyone to break into elaborate dances that including ripping rain gear
out of bags and hopping on one leg while trying to pull rain pants over hiking boots. And then again as if on command the rain stopped the minute we left the forest. However, for almost everyone in my party the damage had been done. Either their boots were soaking wet or everything inside their day pack was now waterlogged. Both my feet, body, and pack had avoided the rain, but my legs were drenched in sweat from tight plastic rain pants that hadn't let any new air in or out since the moment I put them on. Needless to say, I had come out of the forest in good condition and enjoy the remainder of the hike to Simba Camp through a dense fern forest.
The camp (at 2,750m - 9,000ft) was located in a beautiful break in the fern shrubbery. Green grass and moss carpeted the camping area floor and stretched between every scrub and tree were dry lines draped with soaked pants, sweaters, and socks of all colors swinging in the breeze. From Simba Camp, we also got our first views of Kilimanjaro looming over us. Kili looked very conquerable from afar, however none of us
knew how we were going to summit the volcano in 3 days when its peak still seemed so far away.
Dinner was served around 7PM as the sun began to set, and we all hit the sleeping bags by 10P. Before going to sleep were we warned that elephants and buffalo roam the area and might make their way into camp at night, but to stay calm and inside the tents if you were awoken by them. Of course, I rolled my eyes at the thought that an elephant would actually make its way into camp, but to my surprise late that night I awoke to the grunts and thumping of some kind of animal near my tent. I didn't open the tent slip to figure out what it was, but early the next morning the porters informed me that a buffalo had wandered through the camp during the night.
Day 2: Tranquil Ascent...
Day 2 Video Journal The following morning I awoke to the banging of pots and pans and porters humming, singing, and whistling various hymns they had most likely learned at church. Outside the tent everyone was stirring around packing gear, cooking breakfast, or trying to get
their still moist clothes in the sun's rays so that they would dry before we headed off for the day's ascent. The assistant guide dropped by my tent to bring me my "water for washing," a 3 gallon red plastic bowl filled with steaming hot water, and informed me that he would prepare breakfast outside in the sunlight. After washing, I took my seat facing the mountain, gobbled down my toast, beef hot dog, and fried egg and washed it all down with a cup of good ole Aussie Milo.
Day 2 was fairly uneventful. The sun shined all day and the ascent which lasted about 4 hours was pretty easy going. The soil on the ground chained from a rich brown humus to gritty grey pebbles and within the first hour of the hike we saw our last tree over 3 feet tall. Shortly before 1P we reached Cave 2 Camp and set up our tents and dry lines again before sitting down to lunch. No longer was the landscape lush and green, but small prickly bushes and small grasses covered the ground and white and grey volcanic rocks were scattered all about. Kili now looked much closer,
but the nearer that we came to the peak the more daunting the coming days' ascent began to look. From what near the base of the volcano looked like small dark streaks of sediment running down the volcano's slopes, were now formidable rivers of sediment following towards the mountain's base. In addition, Cave 2 Camp was noticeably higher and windier, and whenever the clouds rolled into camp the chill in the air was enough to cause your finger tips to go numb.
After lunch we took advantage of the early arrival to camp to hike up trail another hour to acclimatize at a higher altitude before making our way back to camp to eat dinner and rest for the night. At 3,450m (11,300ft), there were no more animals to worry about except for the occasional lion, which the head guide had only seen once at this camp in all his years as a guide.
Day 3: Welcome to the Moon
Day 3 Video Journal Once again, I woke up to the singing of the porters going about their morning chores. The night had been a cold one getting down to somewhere around 5C (40F), but my sleeping bag had kept
me toasty warm. The clouds had rolled out during the night and the sun was now shining directly down on the camp keeping us warm even as chilly breezes occasionally blew through. The view of Africa below was amazing but there was little time to enjoy it, since we needed to get moving toward the Cave 3 Camp allowing ourselves plenty of time to acclimatize before heading onto Kibo base camp.
Once again we got a nice jump on the day, leaving the camp site by 8A. Although I had seen the first hour of the trail from my acclimatization run the day before, I was surprised to see how fast the vegetation began to disappear. The 5 hour hike consisted of a series of steep rocky hills followed by 400 to 500m sparsely vegetated plains. At the crest of each rocky hill, the vegetation seemed to thin increasingly more and so too did the oxygen. For the first time, I began to realize that in order to maintain a clear head I needed to limit my movements to only the essentials. Any series of quick steps or rapid gestures, to get in position for a photo for instance,
resulted in lightheadedness. I decided to begin concentrated on taking long deep breathes that would allow for the most efficient use of my lungs.
Thanks to an email I received from my brother before heading to Nairobi, from the very first day I was cognizant of the signs of altitude sickness and the suggested means to increase the amount of oxygen in my blood steam in order to reduce the effects of soroche. Although during our ascent on day 3 I could have made it to Cave 3 Camp without employing any special breathing technique, I began training myself to breathe and move to the rhythm of my breath in order to prepare for the summit day when I suspected that I would have to involuntarily breathe and move as my ability to think would become hampered by the lack of oxygen. In fact, what I ended up doing was using the old trick from my university yoga classes of clearing my mind of everything and focus only the breathe. Believe it or not, this worked like a charm.
At roughly 1P, we reached Cave 3 Camp (4,330m some 14,200ft), my favorite of all our camping sites. The
camp was barren like the moon with only grey and black volcanic rock to rest on. The site itself was built on top a huge river of sediment running down the Kili's edge and there was little sign of life anywhere except for some very sparse half dead looking yellowish-green scrubs and a scavengerous raven that walked around the camp waiting for a scrap of food to hit the ground. The air had noticeably thinned and the crest of Kili's volcanic crater rim was now clear to see and near enough that summiting began to seem within reach. On the very left side of the rim you could begin to see a large glacier atop the volcano. This entire environment combined with the bitter cold air and ultra blue sky above gave me the sense that I was now truly on a different planet. I could hardly image that only 48 hours earlier I had been walking through a lush rain forest and now was in one of the most inhospitable environments to life imaginable. No water, limited oxygen, and a world made up of three colors grey, white, and brilliant sky blue.
After a quick lunch and another
short, and most likely ineffective, date with a bowl of "water for washing," we started on a trail that led up the side of the volcano to a place called the School Camp. As we did on day 2, this short hike was another attempt to acclimatized at a higher altitude to prepare for the next day's ascent. However, this time I was so enthralled with the view of Kili's crest and the martian like landscape I couldn't help but to to push our assistant guide farther up the mountain than he had originally planned. I brokered a deal with him that if he would take me to a specific ledge, I would move quickly back down to camp in time for afternoon tea. We both held to our part of the bargain, but little did I know that when he said quickly, he basically meant jogging. By the time I reach our camp, my head was spinning so fast I need about 5 seated minutes to recover. Tea, dinner, and a couple book chapters led me to my last full night of sleep before summiting Kilimanjaro.
Continue to Part 2 Other Cool Links to Interactive Kilimanjaro Adventures:
Cultural Reflections on Tanzania NY Times Reporter Fights to the Summit of Kili Today Show Reporter's Unsuccessful Summit Attempt *A link to all the Kilimanjaro photos will be included in part 2 of the Kili climbing blog.*
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beebwa
non-member comment
Nice blog
Thanks for a nice blog. It1s a thorough description of the difficulties of summitting Mt. Kili