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Published: October 19th 2006
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Woman in Arusha
Tanzania had the most beautifully colorful clothing I have ever seen. I wanted to move their instantly! Warning: its a long one! But you must get to the end-its the best part!!
Alright, I know its been ages since I’ve posted, and a while since the hike. Life has been super hectic here, I climbed Kili from the 18th-26th of September, and then erik was here visiting from the 30th to the 13th of October, and we were much too busy travelling and exploring for me to get to a computer, but that’s another blog!
I’ve received many emails asking for the story of the climb and pics, so here it goes. First and most important, we were successful! Both Brad and I made it to the top, which was awesome, and the journey made it all well worth our time and effort. We arrived in Arusha on a Sunday night, and started climbing on Monday morning. We were floored when we met our guide Monday morning and found out we would be the only two hikers in our group, it was like a private tour! Since we booked with an African outfitter, they could cater a hike to whenever we wanted to go, rather than have to wait for 15 other people to sign up to
On the way to the Mountain
some people travel in style join us. So I definitely recommend doing it with an outfitter over here! We jumped in the van and headed for the mountain, a one hour drive away. Driving towards the trailhead and seeing the mountain looming in front of us was incredible. Rising up from completely flat ground all around, Kili has an incredibly majestic presence.
At the trailhead we met our guides and porters. Our guide was Nelson, who had summited over 90 times, and been leading trips for ages. He was awesome. We also had an assistant guide Aaron, who was a guide/cook and fed us the best food I have ever eaten while hiking. Incredible. For each hiker there are also 3 porters, carrying bags, tents, chairs, tables, I kid you not. So we had 6 porters as well. But imagine a group of 20 hikers, they brought with them 60 porters, which is just ridiculous. While you are hiking, there are constantly porters passing you, carrying stuff up the mountain, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, booking past you. They put us Americans, all geared out, to shame. For the hard work they do, they are not well compensated, and get most of their
money from tips that hikers give, so we made sure to tip well.
The first 4 days of hiking, were relatively easy. You take the hike extremely slowly, painfully slowly, so slow you want to push your guide out of the way and run up the trail yourself. But its all to save energy for the summit. We passed through quite a few different climates on the hike, from rainforest to artic desert. It was incredibly beautiful and we had great weather every day. Sun or clouds, but no rain. Each night you camp at basically a village of sorts, made up of the tents of everyone else who is hiking. There were probably about 30 other people on the same schedule as us, so we would get spread out during the day, but all meet up at the campsite at night. People from all over the world, and all older than us. I was the youngest person to summit on my day, which blew my mind, because it was tough, and I can’t imagine climbing Kili at 50 or 60. I was majorly impressed.
On the second day we rose above the clouds and started to feel
Porters
These guys are dividing up all the stuff they'll carry. Its absolutely crazy and amazing at the same time. They work so hard. the slight effects of altitude. Although my lungs seemed fine, my muscles were much slower than they were at lower ground. We were both taking Diamox for altitude sickness and were saved any of the bad effects like headaches or nausea, which really helped us to eat, and sleep well in preparation for the big night. Getting above the clouds is stunning. You feel like you’ve met the end of the world. I really can’t explain it, you have to see it for yourself. On day three we rose to 4900 meters, about 16,000 feet and came back down to sleep. Your sleeping is fitful by this point, and it is unbelievably cold at night. Every one had stuffy noses and cold from such a temperature change. I was sleeping in about 18 layers every night. The 4th day we hiked up and down several times and it was probably the longest of our days. That might not seem like too much, but it plays a big part in the summit climb.
The thing was, prior to the summit night, the hike really was not difficult for either of us. Although you climbed all day, the climb was relatively
2nd campsite
We were above the clouds already after the 2nd day. That is Mt. Meru int he distance. gradual, and the pace slow. But no matter how slow you go, you can’t change the fact that you’re hiking for 8 hours a day and it wears your body down. You’re also losing water at a massive rate, once we were above 15,000 we were drinking 6 litres of water a day just to keep ourselves hydrated. I was peeing every half hour! So the summit: You sleep at 4600 meters that night. The summit is 5900 meters. In one summit climb, you climb 1300 meters, almost 5,000 feet. Basically, you climb for 8 hours on day 4, arrive at camp, eat your meal, go to bed around 7. At 11:30 you wake back up, put on all your gear, have some tea, and begin to climb. It is pitch black, and all you can see in the distance is the bobbing of the headlamps of those climbing ahead and behind you. Its an incredible sight, the lights breaking through the darkness. Although they are far away, you feel incredibly connected to the other lights attempting to make the same journey.
The summit was, hands down, the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. There
The trail
You can see how rocky the terrain is already. This group was hiking the same schedule as us and we would sometime pass them and chat were several times where I thought I couldn’t make it and wanted to go back down. If the guides and Brad hadn’t been there, I most certainly would have turned around. Imagine running two marathons, back to back, uphill, in below freezing temps, having eaten your last meal some 6 hours before, and with no food or water because they are both frozen. You get dizzy, you get headaches, you are soo tired all you want to do is lie down on the trail, right there, and just go to sleep. What really keeps you going is that by the time you reach 4, 5, 6 hours, you’ve worked so bloody hard you’re not going to turn around and go all the way back down. The sun rose about 7 hours in, and I blessed myself for not having been able to see where we were climbing all that time in the dark, it was almost straight up. As we approached Stella Point, about an hour from the summit, the scree had loosened and it was 3 steps up, 2 slides back down. Climbing was painfully slow, and my body was exhausted. From Stella Point to the summit, thankfully, it
There she is!
Obviously, Kili is a girl. levels and the last hour is celebratory as you walk to the summit and cheer those coming back down from summiting. Probably about 2/3 of the people summiting the same morning as us made it, we saw many come back down, probably due to altitude. Everyone is is an incredibly joyous mood while also being in so much pain, its quite funny to see so many smiling, hobbling people. Immediately after you take your pictures at the summit, you descend, going all the way back down to where you started in 3 hours, sking down the scree. They have to get you down fast because of the dangers of being that high. Only then do you finally get to sleep!
If you had asked me then, if I would do it again, I would say never never never again. With the benefits of selective memory, I now remember it simply for how amazing it was, the views, the experience, the people. It really was the most incredible thing. My first of the 7 summits! I would definietly like to do another, perhaps 10 years down the road. Not anytime soon. But I totally recommend it to anyone, its an
And again!
As you can see, there isn't much snow left. It gets a bit more than that, since we were in dry season, but global warming is really eliminating the glaciers. incredible experience to be up at 19,000 feet.
Check out the pics, they probably do more justice than my words ever can. IF you want to see more pics, check out brad's website at www.masakhane.org.
And feel free to write if you have any questions, want more details about the climb, I’d love to share. And most of all, thank you to everyone who supported me!
Love,
Lauren
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Erin
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CONGRATS!!!!!!!
Hey Lauren! I'm so proud of you, this looks like it was an amazing experience!!!!!!