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Published: October 10th 2007
Arrow Glacier at sunrise
Taken from Uhuru Peak, 5895m Hi all! We’re now back in Kilifi after our big trip. I’m going to do as Brigid did and write a separate blog for each part of our trip (and backdate them, sorry). Justin and Whitley arrived in Kenya on September 4th - David drove me down to meet them in Mombasa on the newly done up Malindi-Mombasa road. Thanks to the road works (which happened as the President was due to visit Mombasa, apparently), it now takes less than an hour (instead of over 90 minutes) to get there, and it’s a much more pleasant trip. It made for an interesting introduction to Kenyan roads for our visitors though as David - who is usually the most conservative driver in the country - was excited by their new condition and took the opportunity to put the foot down a little!
We spent a lovely few days in Kilifi showing Justin and Whitley around and just generally catching up. Well, lovely except for the dhow ride down the coast to Rolando’s restaurant where everyone except me felt horribly sea sick. The sea was pretty rough and they couldn’t get the boat into Takaungu Creek where we could moor safely, so
we had to drop anchor off the coast and swim to shore. It was only about 50m away, but the water was pretty fierce and Whitley, who isn’t a strong swimmer, was understandably very anxious. With a little help, he got to shore and collapsed on the sand, fiercely proclaiming that there was nothing in the world that would get him back on that boat. The guys from the boat had come ashore also - Hassan had stripped down to little yellow budgie smugglers in order to do so. He was most concerned that Whitley now had sand all over his wet clothes. The sight of Hassan in his jocks brushing sand off Whitley’s bum is one of the funnier things I’ve seen in a long time!!
We flew down to Kilimanjaro on the Friday, got a van to our hotel in Moshi and met our guide Eliawonyi who answered all our last minute questions. Elia is one of the most experienced guides on the mountain, having climbed Mt Kilimanjaro more than 100 times! He emphasized the importance of being aware of our ‘heightitude’ and that it was likely that some of us would be ‘sicking the mountain sickness’.
Also, he let us know who else would be part of our trip - there were 17 other people that he mentioned would be involved in getting us to the top, from assistant guides to porters to cooks and waiters - and even they had assistants!! (We felt 17 people and assistant waiters might be a bit excessive, but we later found out that there were only half as many people as they all had 2 jobs). When later I was having a laugh about Elia’s word usage, Simon chided me for being mean saying ‘at least his English is better than our Somali’. Quite!!! We were able to hire some gear at the hotel - down jackets for extra protection against the cold (have a look at the photos of the mammoth ones that Whitley and I got - I think Brigid got the only small one there!) and trekking poles, which were really really handy on our trip. We spent quite a nervous night in the hotel - not knowing how we’d cope with the altitude and the sheer hard work of the climb (especially Brigid, as this was to be her first ever hike!) - before setting
off the next morning. Brigid, Whitley and I had all started taking our Diamox - putting up with many a piss stop (it’s a diuretic, very annoying on cold nights in the tent) and intermittently tingling hands and feet (one night Brigid couldn’t sleep as her face was tingling so much) in the hope of staving off the effects of altitude sickness. Simon had brought Diamox, but had decided he wouldn’t take it unless he started to feel unwell and Justin was not able to take it as he is allergic to sulpha drugs. We’d heard that they wheeled people with severe altitude sickness down the mountain in barrows, and there was a lot of joking about which of us it might happen to.
So, our route was:
Day 1: Machame Gate (1800m) to Machame Camp (3000m)
Day 2: Machame Camp to Shira Camp (3800m)
Day 3: Shira Camp to Barranco Camp (3900m) via Lava Tower (4600m)
Day 4: Barranco Camp to Karanga Camp (4000m)
Day 5: Karanga Camp to Barafu Camp (4600m)
Night 5: Barafu Camp to summit of Mt Kilimanjaro, Uhuru Peak (5895m)
Day 6: Down to Mweka Camp (3100m)
Day 7: Mweka Camp to Mweka Gate
Arise, Sir Brigid!
Shenanigans at the hotel before starting the climb (1700m)
The first part of the walk was through beautiful tropical rainforest, stopping for a huge packed lunch. By the end of the first day we’d reached an area of more sparse vegetation and were above the clouds. We were all excited to reach the first camp feeling well and not too tired despite the 1200m climb. I’m sure we wouldn’t have been feeling quite so fresh if we’d had to carry our bags - thanks to the porters, all we had to carry was a daypack with water, snacks and wet weather gear. They, on the other hand, have one of the toughest jobs on the planet - carrying all their gear, plus our backpacks (15kg limit) plus tents, food for the week and various other cumbersome things like tables and gas bottles. A lot of them also do the job in hopelessly inappropriate clothing - ripped t-shirts and jumpers in freezing weather, and even business shoes. Despite their loads, they scoot up the mountain a lot faster than we could. Some of them had bizarre forms of self-encouragement, like the man who made whipping noises to himself to will himself up the mountain. When we arrived at
the camp, they had set up our tents (including a mess tent with table and chairs for us to eat in), cooked us some popcorn and set out bowls of hot water for us to wash in (talk about spoiled!). An hour or so after we arrived at the camp (late afternoon), the cloud around us started to clear and we had great views both down into the valley below and up to the summit (this seemed to be the pattern each day for our time up here - see photos). As soon as the sun set though, it got very cold and we retreated to the mess tent for dinner (very big, very good) and to play 500 (which we did most nights, and which saw Brigid at her trash talking best!). We emerged from the tent about 830pm to go to bed only to find that the porters were sitting around outside- we hadn’t realised that they were to sleep in the mess tent, and felt pretty bad about them being outside in the dark and cold!
The next morning we woke to a big breakfast that included eggs and sausages, toast (with accompanying spreads Blue Band
-the amazing non-refrigeration-requiring-but-disturbing-colour African margarine - and jam) and fruit. I’m going to try not to mention much more about the food as all our meals were generally the same (and each day Brigid tried to palm her sausage off onto someone else), but generally big and good (save for some things like the cupcakes that became so stale they were rock hard!). By an hour into the second day it became obvious that the walk was going to be pretty tough (day 2 was quite steep) - we were all starting to feel the effects of being so high when we were walking and our pace had slowed considerably. We arrived at Shira Camp in good time though and settled into camp for some more 500. Shortly before we finished walking that day, Whitley started to feel unwell and later on, was looking very shabby - was pretty wobbly and had a severe headache. We were worried about him, so gave him water and panadol and Elia sent him to his tent to have a rest to see if he improved. At that stage we thought he’d probably have to go back down (would have been easy from there
Porter up the hill
Thank you, porters!!! as rangers can bring vehicles up to that camp), which would have been disappointing. Later on, Elia called me to come to Whitley’s tent to see how he was feeling saying we needed to check on Fred. His getting Andrew’s name wrong lightened the mood a lot and there were lots of references to ‘house call on Fred’ for the rest of the day. Whitley elected to stay on for the night and thankfully was feeling a lot better in the morning. For the rest of the trip he seemed to be feeling shabby in the evenings, but thankfully not as bad as day 2. Apart from a bit of a headache on Justin’s part, the rest of us felt fine.
Day 3 was an acclimatization day, with a walk up to Lava Tower at 4600m and then back down to camp at about the same height as day 2. Poor Justin was really feeling it by the time we got to about 4200m and a bit later, shortly before we reached Lava Tower, he was vomiting which he continued to do a number of times while we were up high. It must have been awful to have to
keep walking while feeling so sick! The way down took us into totally different terrain, which had a real ‘other world’ feel with lots of big cactus-like plants and a lot of low cloud. Justin was still feeling sick with headaches at the camp that afternoon, but he (and everyone) cheered considerably when the cloud cleared and the summit of the mountain was visible, towering above us. It was amazing to see that, after 3 days of climbing, the top seemed no closer. It was an awesome sight though - the photos of us all standing on the rocks with the summit behind us are some of my favourites.
Day 4 was Simon’s birthday and the day we did the horrible, horrible Barranco Wall. Walking out of Barranco Camp takes you down a couple of hundred metres into the valley, crossing some icy streams. I slipped over crossing one of them, taking some skin off my hand, arm and leg, so there was a quick stop for a bit of patching up. Not long after that (which wasn’t great for the confidence), we reached the wall. Although not so imposing from the bottom, once we were on it, I
Justin cleans up
Hot water from the porters... aaaaaahhhhh.... was pretty terrified. It was an hour and a half of climbing up a rock face along a thin (often <1metre wide) path - often with jutting out rocks on one side and a sheer drop on the other. It is mentioned in the Lonely Planet as being ‘notorious among porters’ and for good reason - I would not like to be carrying the load they do up that wall. Actually, I’d like never to go up that wall again - I was pretty damn relieved when we got to the top (I think everyone was, even though they weren’t as overtly worried as I was - Whitley said after that he kept saying to himself, ‘don’t look up, don’t look down, don’t look at Kat!’). It was downhill for a bit after that, and then back uphill to get to our camp for the night. Justin’s headache that had started 2 days ago had still not subsided, which was worrying. Overnight at Karanga Camp, he also developed quite a rattly chest and was having some trouble breathing, so decided in the morning that it was best for him to walk back down rather than keep pushing on and have
Rugging up
Already chilly, night 1 to be carried out or worse. It was a tough decision for him and it was sad to see him go - especially as I think he was looking forward to this trip the most out of all of us - but it was a very wise move.
Day 5 saw Justin walk back down with our waiter to show him the way. The rest of us set off further up the mountain and, from where we were, were able to see them walking down for a fair way. We were all a bit quiet that morning. By about halfway on the walk that day we’d pretty much passed all the vegetation and were walking through rocks. We arrived at Barafu Camp about lunchtime - basically a few spots cleared in amongst big rocks, and some camp toilets with the most spectacular view of any toilet I’ve seen (over to Mawenzi, the lower peak of Mt Kilimanjaro, and down into the valley). We were all pretty nervous by this stage as we were due to attempt the summit that night. It was freezing too - we were in all our clothes in the middle of the day and still
not warm when sitting outside. Simon, Brigid and I were feeling well, but Whitley wasn’t (his heart was racing) and was going to make the decision about whether to attempt the summit after a sleep. After lunch, we retired to our tents to try to sleep - none of us did so very successfully - and at 5, got up for an early dinner. Whitley was feeling much better thanks to a little help from the Somali gymnastics team who he’d hallucinated were in his tent teaching him how to breathe (Somali things keep coming up… not sure why!)!!! After dinner, it was back to bed until we were woken at 11pm for the big climb.
After biscuits and tea and making sure we were wearing pretty much everything that we had, we set off at midnight with Elia and two other guides. A lot of groups had started before us and we could see their headlamps in a big trail up the hill. It wasn’t long before we started to pass them all - Elia set a cracking pace and we had to tell him to slow down a little after the first half an hour - because
Brigid above the clouds
Trekking poles seem a little bit long... it was a scree slope, for every step you took up, you’d slide down half a step - it was damn hard work. We’d also overestimated how many clothes we’d need on for the early parts of the walk and had to stop to take a lot of things off. We trudged up the mountain in the darkness, stopping every so often for a quick drink (initially from our camelbaks, and then from thermoses once the water in the camelbaks had frozen). By an hour or so into the walk, we had passed everyone and were now leading the way up the hill. We were really feeling it carrying our bags up the hill (Elia had told us to bring at least 4 litres of water each, so they weren’t that light) and within a couple of hours we had all gratefully handed over our bags (after they’d offered a few times) for the guides to carry. By two hours in, Whitley was really struggling (just generally feeling awful) and Simon was feeling nauseated. About that time when we stopped, Brigid said to me, ‘this is quite tedious. I’m bored’. Luckily the boys didn’t hear her say that, given how
awful they were feeling! We pushed on, with more water stops and then a stop for Simon to have some anti-nausea medication. It was a bit late though, and he vomited his way up the hill from then on. Thankfully Brigid and I weren’t feeling sick as it was physically and mentally the toughest thing I’ve ever done -. We all tried to keep our minds on things other than climbing but somehow the songs in our heads came back to walking (I had Little Bit of History by Bertie Blackman, which goes ‘putting one foot in front of the other’, and Whitley had Step by Step by New Kids on the Block. Brigid’s selection was a little more varied, but did include Eye of the Tiger!!). About 4.20am, Elia announced that it was less than an hour until Stella Point (about 5800m high, where most people stop to watch the sunrise). We were pretty buoyed by this, and even more delighted when ten minutes later he said there was less than 30 minutes to go. We reached Stella Point at 5am. Brigid and I were freezing cold and were shivering despite having rugged up again. Elia insisted we continue
on to avoid getting too cold - we asked him for a few minutes to let the boys have a rest, but we were quite grateful when he pushed us on as it was bitterly cold sitting still. The last bit of the climb was through snow and was far less steep. We approached the summit just as the sun was starting to rise and reached Uhuru Peak at 6.04am. There were huge smiles of relief from Brigid and I as we posed for some photos near the summit sign. Simon and Whitley could barely manage a grin - Simon was still vomiting and Whitley had just about crawled the last part of the journey. We didn’t stay long at the summit - the boys were obviously keen to get down and it was really too cold to stay more than about 10 minutes (it was actually pretty horrible taking our gloves off so that we could take some photos). The view from the top was amazing - we saw some brilliant colours as the sun rose over Arrow glacier. The way down was basically a run/slide down the scree slope, which is really quite ugly. The trip up is
done in the dark for safety reasons (least slippery time), but I suspect there is also something about not having to see how stark and uninviting the surrounds are! We were back down to Barafu in 2 hours (having taken 6 to get up there), passing a lot of poor people who still had a long way to go up - we were very grateful we weren’t in their shoes! Thankfully both of the boys were feeling a lot better by that stage.
After an hour’s rest (which flew by - in our exhausted state we took that long to get out of our warm gear, drink some cordial and eat some chocolate), Elia insisted we push on - day 6 involved a further 3 ½ hour walk down to Mweka Hut (descending a different way to the way we came). On the way down we found an old wheelbarrow (the altitude sickness ones) abandoned by the track, so stopped for some photos with it, much to the amusement of Elia. The trip down was very uncomfortable on the knees and toes. By the time we reached the camp at about 2pm, we’d descended nearly 3km for the day
and I had two black big toenails (one of which has subsequently come off). Not long after we arrived, we saw some porters hurtle pass with a wheelbarrow carrying someone down the mountain. The jokes about the barrows ceased to be so funny after that. We were all excited but exhausted, but managed to stay awake until about 7pm by playing endless games of 500 and laughing about how crazy the last 24 hours had been.
The next morning we got up early for the last 3 hours which took us out to Mweka gate. It was an uncomfortable walk in heavy rain- the first we’d had on the trip - over slippery terrain, and my toes were so sore, I was basically using my trekking poles as crutches. We were all extremely glad to reach the end, and it was lovely to see that Justin had come up to meet us at the gate. We signed the rangers’ book at the end of the trip and headed back to the hotel for much-needed showers, beers and some R+R.
The hike was fantastic, but so tough and something I’d only ever do once (although Justin and I are
planning other hikes already). Elia and the rest of our team were fantastic and there is no doubt that we wouldn’t have made it without their help! We’d all had people tell us before we came that climbing Mt Kilimanjaro was like a long walk up a big hill. I think we all found it much tougher than just that - particularly the boys - as Simon said, ‘if anyone tries to tell me that now, I’ll punch them!’
Well, congratulations to anyone who has read that whole thing - I just realised it’s nearly 3500 words! Just want to finish off with a few awards we gave each other on the trip:
First spew: Justin
Most spews: Simon
Most falls: Katherine (5!) followed by Whitley (3 or 4, I think)
Biggest Lazarus: Whitley (On night 2, I would have given him odds of 1000-1 on of reaching the top.
Mighty Mouse/Mountain Goat: Brigid, for no ailments, not a single fall and barely a complaint on her first hike!
*This is what Brigid decided, pre-climb, that she's say once she reached the top.
PS thanks to Justin and Brigid for the use of some of their photos in
Weird plants
Coming down into Barranco Camp, day 3 this blog.
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Craig
non-member comment
fittest of the lot
Well Done KH well done. I doubt very much whether I would be able to make such a trek. I'm not suprised Brigid didn't fall or get sick. You should know being short means the blood doesn't have to be pumped as far. And also the low centre of gravity thing. :0)