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Published: July 26th 2008
The time finally came for our much anticipated Mount Kilimanjaro climb. However, it got off to a most inauspicious beginning. Ben came down with a cold and horrible allergies the week before the trip. Rytas, our friend from Chicago who is just beginning an around-the-world journey of his own, lost his luggage on his flight from Amsterdam to Dar es Salaam and got into Moshi the day before we left. Cutting it even closer, my elder brother, Ryan, got to the hotel less than 12 hours before we left for the trailhead. Darren, Rytas and myself got food poisoning the night before we left; instead of being well hydrated, as I had hoped, I was completely void of any water or sustenance on the first day of the trip (leading to horrible cramping in my calves). I also forgot my camera at the hotel and needed it relayed up to me on the second day of the trek. Finally, as if all those weren’t enough of an omen saying stay the hell off the mountain, my watch’s band broke thirty minutes into the trek. It wasn’t a good beginning; however, it only got better from there…
Day One 
Barafu Camp
The most surreal place I've spent a night.National Park Gate at Machame to Machame Camp (10,000 feet)
The beginning of the hike is through a lush rain forest. The path was muddy, the trees were covered in moss, and vines sagged across trees under the weight of wet vegetation. It was chilly and damp walking in the shade of the forest engulfed in a constant drizzle, but after an hour or two we warmed up. After a few hours you ascend out of the dense forest into a cloud forest with trees covered in what looks like Spanish moss of lesser height and green-age than the lower altitude forest. We spent our night there in a damp, mud covered campsite.
Day Two Machame Camp to Shira Camp (12,500 feet)
We continued ascending through the cloud forest for the duration of the morning after our eight a.m. start. It was a steep, wet climb over the rocks until we got above the clouds. Suddenly the ground got very dry, the winds picked up, and the sun was beating down heavily. The level of ascent slowed down and a short while after lunch we reached Shira Camp. Our level of dirtiness quadrupled this evening; the dry
winds blew dust over everything, covering our tents, clothes and bodies. From this point forth, our faces browned from the sun and dust we began to succumb to the filth of a seven-day hike.
Day Three Shira Camp to Barranaco Camp via Lava Tower (13,000 feet)
Beginning the morning at eight a.m. again, we had a six-hour day up to Lava Tower, above 14,000 feet, and then back down to Barranaco Valley for camp that evening. The morning was extremely dry terrain consisting of a wind swept, rock covered landscape. The only fauna was small ground shrubbery, small flowering plants, and lots of lichen. While I found it fascinating, most of the group began to lose their concentration and honeymoon with the hike.
After a lunch at Lava Tower, we began a descent into a completely different landscape. While it was a mountain desert, cloud cover engulfed it. There were large palm trees, and flowering small plants sucking in water from the fog, which provided a stark life-reassuring contrast to the completely bone-dry dirt below. We all agreed it was one of the most bizarre places we had been to. The wind wasn’t as intense here,
View from Barranaco
Not a bad view waking up in the morning. and the dust pretty much stayed on the ground making breathing quite a bit easier. While it was still pretty cool, everyone slept very well that evening after the long day’s hike.
Day Four Barranaco Camp to Karanga Camp (13,000)
This was the most fun day of hiking. We climbed an extremely steep wall, the Great Barranaco Wall, leaving camp in the morning. It involved a lot of scrambling over boulders and plenty of handwork. You continue to maneuver like this for the next three hours up over the ridgeline, out onto exposed cliff faces, and then back into the Karanga Valley. The cloud cover comes and goes and the temperature changes drastically from one valley to the next. At one point I would be over heating as we walked exposed to the sun, then next minute we would be engulfed in a cool fog and I would have to throw back on my rain coat.
We got up to Karanga Camp in the early afternoon for our day of acclimatization. A few other groups we had met along the way continued on this day to the next camp, making it a six day trek up
Rain forests
The bottom of the mountain is rainy and green, starkly contrasting the top of the mountain. the hill instead of our planned seven. While we were feeling well enough to make a go of it, we decided to let our legs relax. Splitting the climb to Barafu into two days gives you plenty of time to acclimatize, your body enough time to recover, and gives you a full tank of gas prior to your summitting. Or, at least that is how we rationalized it while whittling our thumbs in the tent. However, by this point we were getting a bit ornery from being constantly covered in dirt. My hair could have grown potatoes at this point it had so much dirt in it. I was becoming really annoyed at looking at filth covered people, our conversations had deteriorated into 10 year old humor (though that isn’t much different than normal), our card games became pretty routine, and the food, while still outstanding, was getting a bit carbo-repetitive. This is the point where we started yearning for chairs with backs on them, couches (which I haven’t seen for months), non-boiled beverages, and a non-preordained selection of food.
The camp itself was the point where the climb became much more realized for me. The terrain was clouded
View from Shira Camp
Another mountain chain off in the distance. over when we arrived, not giving a view of the surroundings until the late evening. Finally the sky cleared and you were provided a clear view of the summit above. Incredible. I woke up in the middle of that night to use the restroom, which is just the largest rock near camp, and had the most startling view of the mountain in the full moon’s light. It just loomed off in the distance looking like an enormous monster knowing that the people you were just hiking with that continued on are summitting at that very instant. It also clicked that in less than 36 hours I would be pushing my carcass up the side of that overgrown hill too.
Day Five Karanga Camp to Barafu Camp (15,500 feet)
We got to take a little later start this day, 9:00 a.m., for our hike up to Barafu Camp. You have left all vegetation behind at this point and cross vast distances of rock without seeing any signs of life besides the other hikers, porters, and guides. There are enormous rockslides of loose, flat, brittle, shale, large cliffs overhead, and long smooth valleys where glaciers have retreated (thank you
Facilities on the Machame Route
These are the facilities on the route up the mountain. Squaters with wooden or cement floors. It isn't a life of luxury... global warming). The air gets noticeably thinner, your heart rate increases and your breathing begins to get labored. We were in really high spirits though, knowing that the seven-day ordeal of dirt, light sleep, and camping was coming to a close. The camp is surreal. You are on a completely exposed ridgeline, with a thousand foot drop only a dozen feet from my tent. The clouds are thousands of feet below you and you have an unobstructed view to the summit thousands of feet above. The wind is relentless, dust is blowing everywhere, and, by this point, I had completely given in to the dirt encasing every element of my life. My hair was basically in dreads, my clothes were caked in brown volcanic ash, and I had given up any hope of keeping a clean sleeping area. We all tried to get some rest, but it was met with varying degrees of success. I hardly slept a wink and with the midnight wake up call for the summit weighing on my mind, I wasn’t pleased.
Day Six Barafu Camp to Uhuru Peak (19,850 feet) to Mweka Camp (10,000 feet)
We woke up at midnight, had a
bit of tea and coffee, and began our hike to the summit at one in the morning. The moon was near full, providing plenty of light and making our headlamps unnecessary. The ground is ashen dust with the occasional rock to provide some form of stability and you have to climb over boulders from time to time. At that time in the morning the air is extremely cold and, of course, the oxygen levels are extremely low. Your heart beat races and it is extremely hard to catch your breath. The last forty-five minutes of ascent to Stella Point, on the crater rim, is extremely difficult. However, we made it without any extreme altitude sickness like some of the other hikers suffered from along the way. We had a quick little celebration, our guides singing and dancing, us dancing lightly as we were already completely out of breath. It took thirty more minutes to get to Uhuru Peak. It was an incredible bit of time, with the sun rising over Africa behind us, our adrenaline racing, passing the ever-evaporating glaciers of Kili, climbing to the finish of our six-day ordeal. It was a breathtaking moment not only in the natural
beauty, but also in the sense of accomplishment and reward.
After fifteen minutes of enjoying the view and taking the requisite photos at the top to prove we made it, we began the day’s 10,000-foot descent. As I mentioned earlier, most of the hillside is ashen dust. As you walk down it you constantly slide several feet further than you intended to, making it pretty trying… if you go slowly. Ben, Darren and I found the key, after observing the porters flying down the hill, was to just lunge forward in leaps and bounds, leaning backwards, and to, basically, ski down the hill avoiding the rocks and ledges. We dropped the first five thousand feet to Barafu Camp in an hour and a half! It was extremely fun and was a huge high, especially after just having summitted. Ryan and Rytas followed thirty minutes later and we decided to relax for a few hours, from nine to noon. Of course everyone else was able to sleep except for me, but everyone was equally sore and tired when we got on the road after a light lunch. Luckily for everyone’s headaches and quads, Ben had some Aleve handy and we
View from Barranaco 2
Same view but with a tree. Woo hoo... continued down the next five thousand meters.
We re-entered the cloud and rainforests we had left behind on days one and two in the mid afternoon. The ground was completely muddy, the hillside was steep, and it was slow going. In a manner of speaking we appreciated the rain as it wet our dirty faces, but it was cool and slowed our progress when we were anxious to set our packs down. We finally made it to camp, grabbed a few beers from the park ranger’s station, had a bite to eat and slept like babies as soon as the sun went down at seven.
Day Seven Mweka Camp to the National Park Gate at Mweka (6,500)
We woke up early this morning as everyone, porters and guides included, were anxious to get off the hill. We ate a quick breakfast and got rolling down the muddy hillside. It took us three hours to get down, but we were able to busy ourselves with some actual conversation on jobs, the economy, the upcoming election, etc., as opposed to the top five lists, pop culture references, and fart jokes we had been rehashing for the last six
View from Karanga
The clouds were far below us at this point. days. Sore knees, hurting leg muscles, blistered feet and all, we pulled into the gate three hours after we started off. We jumped into the bus, rode off to the hotel, and have never been happier to get into a shower. I can’t tell you how brown the water coming off of me was, but Ben and I did clog the sink when we shaved! However, we left the mustaches for a day or two. Ben’s is a beautiful blonde Larry Bird looking thing; when Darren saw it for the first time he burst into uncontrollable laughter. We spent the rest of that day (and the next) cleaning, eating food, drinking beer, chilling out at the hotel’s pool, and generally getting back into creature comforts of society.
Overall Climbing Kilimanjaro was the best experience of my trip thus far. It was several times more expensive than anything else I’ve done, but it was worth every penny. The entire trip provides remarkable experiences from beginning to end. We met several really interesting people along the way that were great people to keep us company on our trek. There were three Canadian nurses that work in the Arctic circle,
a ginger couple that had just gotten married in which the man was a F-22 Raptor fighter pilot, and a Danish couple that were both consultants, one of which worked for Deloitte, the consulting branch of the company Darren will work for when he returns to the real world. You see incredible landscape and fauna that changes drastically as you continue climbing the mountainside. The campsites and places you stay are not like terrain I’ve seen anywhere else, and the struggle of making it up the hill provides a phenomenal sense of reward when you finally conquer it. And, of course, you have plenty of time to enjoy the company of the people you hike with. We had a hilarious time with one another, cracking jokes at one another, playing card games, discussing banal subjects (and some more serious ones), and generally enjoying one another’s company. We came up with some great nicknames for each other, so check out the captions on the photos on the second page of photos. (I’m not sure I’m happy with the one Ben and Darren came up with for me, but I know that my friends from college will tend to agree with it!)
Mt. Mwenzi
Not sure if I spelt it correctly, but this is off in the distance from Barafu. (Ben’s edit: We didn’t so much come up with it as compile a list of particularly humorous/creative curses hurled at us over the past 3 months into a nickname of sorts.)
From here Ryan goes home in a few days, Ben and Rytas go on to Arusha for some safari time, and Darren and I meet our parents for a safari of a different kind. We were about to book the budget, camping safari we are used to, but our parents vetoed that quickly. Instead we will be in luxury lodges surrounded by middle-aged vacationers in packaged trips. It is going to be an amazing time hanging out with our family, soaking in some spoils, and, at the same time, a huge culture shock!
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Cousin Kirsten
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so proud of you all!
Hi Cousins, So proud of you all for your amazing climb! The photos are gorgeous..thanks for continuing to share your wonderful journey of the world. Have fun with your parents! Love, Kirsten and kids