Summit of a Lifetime

This past month I spent the three weeks of school vacation with my housemate, Kate, and her good friend Suzanne visiting Tanzania. Our long-anticipated trip was comprised of two equally exciting adventures – a week of climbing Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro, followed by a week a exploring the island of Zanzibar. We also spent a few days with friends in Moshi Town, located at the base of the mountain, and a few days in transit between Moshi and Zanzibar, via Dar es Salaam. It’s difficult to know how to begin this story, because it was such a phenomenal experience, and there is just so much to say about it! I will do my best to hone in on the most salient aspects of our journey in the words that follow.

What you should know from the start is that my ascent to the summit of Kilimanjaro, 5895 meters, or 19,340 feet above sea level, was by far the greatest physical challenge I have ever completed in my life. At the sake of sounding overconfident, the fact of this was largely unexpected; I had heard of high school groups and other individuals who had climbed the mountain before without too much trouble, so I assumed that I too would return with a similar outlook. What I learned by day two of the climb was that either these individuals were lying about the difficulty, or (more likely) they took the most popular and easiest route to the summit, called Marangu. On the Marangu Route, which can be completed in 5 days, the trek is quite gradual but goes more directly to the top than other routes. Climbers and porters stay overnight inside large huts equipped with bunk beds at the designated stopping points, unlike on my route, in which we ate and slept on the ground in our tents and sleeping bags. Kate, Suz and I, along with dozens of other people in groups climbing the mountain concurrently, took the Machame Route up Kilimanjaro, learning a few days in that while the Marangu Route’s nickname is Coca Cola, Machame’s is Whiskey, since every day brings a new struggle.

Machame takes seven days to complete due to the fact that it is very steep at points and incorporates climbing across a greater width of the mountain, which also makes it the most scenic of all the routes. Another benefit of taking Machame is that since the overall duration of the journey is longer and farther, you have more time to acclimatize to the change in altitude, which makes altitude sickness less severe for many people. Anyone who wants to climb Kilimanjaro must register with the national park and be accompanied by a licensed guide. The journey that Kate, Suz and I took up the mountain felt unique, as we had arranged to have a Tanzanian acquaintance who runs a climbing agency in Moshi take us with another friend of his (also from Moshi) who we had met in Rwanda a few months prior. The fact that we were climbing up the mountain with two fun people our age known through mutual friends made it seem more relaxed than what we observed of the large organized groups hiking Machame concurrently. But there is no sugar coating the fact that a seven day trek for three people was a huge ordeal – not only did we require our two guide friends but ten porters and a cook to carry all of the necessary food, gear and equipment for setting up camp, cooking, and making our way to the polar arctic conditions at the top. Prior to the night of the summit, each day we spent four to seven hours (with a stop for lunch) hiking across all different kinds of terrain in an ever changing atmosphere, starting in a tropical rain forest on the first day, moving on to a region of heather, mist and fog as we journeyed at the first layer of clouds, on to moorland – cool and clear, with intense sunshine, then dry, dusty alpine desert, and finally up to the freezing cold of the summit. Kilimanjaro is like its own planet – there were times when I felt so far removed from the in the world below, completely isolated for miles around from everyone and everything familiar to me, save for those hiking just ahead or just behind me, in a kind of solidarity toward this individual goal.

Each day we faced increasingly cold temperatures and increasingly thin air, adding layers to protect from the harsh cold, biting wind and burning sun that stung our faces. We experienced different kinds of physical challenges, up hills, down valleys and across ravines, climbing along steep, rocky paths with sharp drop offs that we pretended not to notice, climbing on all fours across giant rock formations, and walking across huge dusty regions that produced strange looking flora and fauna, and not much else. The mountain at times felt like a blessing and a curse. I felt blessed to experience so much beauty in nature and to realize my own physical strength for such an extended period of time, to feel like I was, pole pole (slowly) nearing this pursuit to the top of Africa’s highest, most majestic mountain. But I also felt dirty, was sick of being cold and felt physically and mentally drained. Although I took medicine to counter the effects of the changing altitude, I still experienced bad headaches whenever we ascended and descended several hundred meters on the same day, and I constantly had to pee. Kate, Suz and I joked before bed about the dilemma we faced multiple times a night, when we each would wake up and have to confront that horrible pain in our bladder and muster up the strength to move from the warmth of our sleeping bag cocoons to the bitter, relentless cold outside the tent. We joked – but it was actually really horrible at the time. Even weeks later it still makes me appreciate the joys of indoor plumbing and of living in a climate that is 75 degrees Fahrenheit year round. On the days in which we had the longest hikes, the three of us would play category specific verbal games to combat our fatigue, i.e. starting with one brand name (or food, or place) and having the next person say another that starts with the last letter of the previous one (Adidas – Speedo – Oakley – etc). This game continued until we were so tired that we started allowing words like Ilford, Ostrich, and Ostrich Jr. into the repertoire - - the folly of which we attributed our own altitude stupidity sickness (ass, for short).

The most difficult day of the climb was the evening of the fifth day, when we ate dinner at 6, slept until midnight and began climbing at 1AM to make the final ascent to the summit of Kilimanjaro. We had been physically and mentally preparing for this night all week and were extremely anxious about completing this, one of our longest and steepest hikes, in the freezing dark. Because we started later than all the other groups who were summiting concurrently, our guides and the three porters who accompanied us abandoned their “pole pole” motto and led us faster than we’d ever gone before, so that we would have the best chance of watching the sunrise from the summit.

The journey that night was a seemingly endless test of strength, endurance and willpower. The hike started with us working our hands and feet across giant rock formations, being careful to follow the steps of the person directly in front of each of us. I felt a little like Spiderman shooting up and across those rocks, but resented the fact that (much unlike any superhero) I was wearing almost every piece of clothing I had brought with me up the mountain, including two pairs of spandex pants and fleece waterproof pants, a synthetic undershirt and two synthetic long-sleeved shirts, a cotton hooded sweatshirt, my fleece jacket, a winter jacket, two pairs of gloves (fleece under waterproof), two pairs of wool socks, gaiters, a fleece neck warmer, a wool face mask and two hoods. But while the exertion required for the first part of the hike got me warm, I certainly did not stay that way much longer. As we climbed higher and higher into the freezing, thin air, my lungs ached, my eyes watered and my nose resembled a leaking faucet. An hour or so into the climb, I looked up to the sky and noticed a large set of stars in an S formation, but was unable to figure out how they were shaped so perfectly. Later, when we had caught up to the groups ahead of us, I realized that what I had seen wasn’t a cluster of stars but the line of peoples' headlamps as they made their way up the mountain.

We envied the other groups as we passed them stopping to rest or to have a bite of a granola bar; while our guides (who we soon referred to as our slave-drivers) would warn us that it was freezing time if we stopped for more than two minutes along the way. In a way they were right – if I removed my gloves and exposed my skin to the air for even one minute, it took at least ten for my hand to regain feeling and full mobility. But climbing in the still of the night had its benefits; the millions of stars above twinkled with a brilliance that was almost surreal. At 3AM, we stopped for a moment, looked across the expanse ahead and realized that we were above the level of the moon! And as the hours droned on and I grew increasingly weary and lightheaded, I realized that it was probably a good thing that we were hiking to the top in the dark – if we could actually see the distance and incline, we might have had second thoughts about attempting to summit.

There were many moments over the course of the night when my cold, exhaustion and lightheadedness would make me wonder why I was even moving forward at all. I would lose sight of the ultimate goal and everything seemed suddenly futile. But in those moments of doubt, I reminded myself that I am a strong and capable individual, and that the three of us, having come so far, were each part of an silent resolve to reach the summit.

When we did, the view and the feeling of euphoria were extraordinary. Our guides had pushed us to move as quickly as possible the whole way up, which meant that we passed nearly every other group along the way. We were the third party to make it to the top of Uruhu Peak that morning, 5895 meters above sea level, just in time to watch the sun rise and begin to shine on the polar ice shelves adjacent to us. The breadth of Africa greeted us from miles below, and when the time had come, we started back down.