March 2008: Mt. Kilimanjaro
Mt Kilimanjaro, from the trail near Horombo Camp
In late February, I saw a notice in the UN Recreation Center that they
would be sponsoring a climb up Mt Kilimanjaro. I thought it
sounded fun, but I was a bit nervous about climbing so high so I wasn't
sure. I was also worried whether my strained achilles tendon
would be able to take such a climb. I mentioned the climb to Ruma
one day and she responded with "YES, YES, YES, YES!". So, we were
in. The timing of the climb happened to coincide with Spring
break for the girls, so that worked out well. We arranged to send
the girls to Lamu with friends Fazilah
& Bernhard.
The expedition took 7 days in total. There were 10 people in our
group; 6 guys and 4 ladies.
On the first day, Thursday the 20th, we all boarded a bus from the UN
Rec Center in Nairobi and proceeded to the town of Moshi,
Tanzania. There we spent the night in a small two star hotel
called the Keys Annex. At the hotel, we met with the head guide,
Godfrey, who gave us a briefing on the upcoming hike and gave us a
chance to ask
questions. The company we travelled with was AfriGalaxy Tours.
We left Moshi about 9 the next morning and proceeded to Marangu gate which lies at 1,970 M
(6,400 ft) by bus. Here, we met up with our guides and porters
and registered with the park service. For the 10 of us, we had 6
guides, and 19 porters. The porters carried our extra gear, and
foodstuffs. We didnt need to carry tents as we would be staying
in park cabins. After a quick lunch at Marangu gate, we got on
our way about noon. The starting point first leg was an 8
KM hike to Mandara Hut at 2,720 M
(8,850 ft). The trail runs through the rain forest which
encircles the mountain and was spectacular. I took lots of
photos, at least until Ruma eventually made me stop. We arrived
in Mandara Camp around 4PM. The Camp consists of a large dining
hall and a series of small A frames, which supposedly accomodate 4
people. Yeah, right. With all our gear, 3 persons per hut
was tight but four was far too crowded. Luckily for me, 6 guys in
our group meant two A frames with 3 guys per. The ladies were not
so fortunate as they were all jammed into one.
My two bunk-mates were Scott and Dave, both Navy guys attached to the
embassy in Nairobi. Scott and I slept on beds on the floor,
whereas Dave, for some reason, decided to sleep on the raised
bed. The problem with the raised bed is than in an A frame, the
raised bed is shorter than the other beds. Dave said he didnt
mind but in the middle of the night, he found out that he did
mind. All our gear was stacked on the remaining bed, so Dave
ended up walking over to the dining hall and sleeping on a table!
I didnt know this at the time but I found out later.
On Saturday, after a quick breakfast the next morning, we headed off
towards Horombo Hut which lies at
3,780 M (12,340 ft). We started the 15 KM hike in the rainforest
which surrounded the Mandara Hut but this quickly thinned out and soon
we found ourselves hiking through moorland. I really enjoyed this
as we could see long distances over the open alpine moors. The
moors were covered with lots of scrub and some interesting plants,
including Proteus flowers, which we saw in our trip to Cape Town, and the pre-historic
looking giant groundsel. This
was my favorite type of hiking. One sobering thing occured during
our hike: around noon, we encountered a group bringing down one of
their members on a stretcher. Apparantly he started spitting up
blood after summiting the previous day. Yikes! The
vision of that guy going down on stretcher haunted us the rest of the
trip - none of us wanted to be carried out like that!
After a leisurely day walking, we arrived in Horombo Hut around 4
PM. Horombo Hut is similar to Mandara Hut in that it has a large
dining hall and A frames. It also has some larger huts which can
sleep 6 persons. They tried to put us guys in one of these but we
refused; we would rather stay in two A-frames than all jam into one
hut. We did get the larger hut for the ladies, however, which
made them very happy. Saturday also happened to be my
birthday. In the dining hall, everyone in our group sang "happy
birthday" to me. Unfortunately, I accidentally tossed out the
cupcake Ruma had been saving since lunch which was to be my birthday
cake. My birthday wish was to summit!
On Sunday, we awoke to some bad news. One of our team members,
Ted, was ill during the night. Apparantly, he had been
experiencing heart palpitations during the night. He thought it
was altitude related so he decided to head down to the lower altitude
of Mandara Hut. We all agreed with his decision but were sad to
see one of our team members go. After breakfast, we started on
our 13 KM hike to Kibo Hut, which
lies at 4,750 M (15,520 ft). The first half of the hike was
through moorland, but getting sparser and sparser. Eventually, we
came over a ridge and we entered the apline desert. The
surroundings werent as pretty here, but we did have some good views of
Kilimanjaro. As we hiked up towards an area called "the saddle",
the winds really buffeted us. We put on our rain gear, which
served very well as windbreakers. The last two KM, we had to
climb a bit to Kibo Hut and Ruma struggled a bit here. As we
could see the steepness of the next stage, we wondered how she would do
the next day.
We arrived at Kibo Hut around 3 PM. It was snowing and very
cold. At Kibo Hut, the accomodation is one large barracks, which
is better because we were able to put all of us in one room.
Having 9 persons in one room significantly warmed up the room. It
was still cold, but much warmer than the rest of the building. We
jokingly called our room the sauna. Leaving the room to go to the
common area for dinner were debatable events. We wanted to eat,
and the soup was hot, but the dining area was soooo cold. In the
evening, the weather cleared up. We had some good views of the
peak (now looking very steep) and of Mawenzi, Kilimanjaro's sister peak
across the saddle. Around 6PM we packed up and then went to bed
to rest for a few hours. Our guides would be calling on us around
11 PM for the summit climb.
Our guides woke us around 11:30 PM. We had a quick breakfast and
tea, and then started out. It was the middle of the night, so we
were wearing our head lamps, but the weather was still mostly clear so
the moonlight helped. Only a couple of us actually used our
lamps. We could see all the way up to Gilmans point on the crater
rim about 3,000 ft above, a daunting sight. After three days of
relatively easy walking, this was the real thing. One really cool
thing was that we could also see the lights of climbers who set out
before us zig-zagging the mountain. Very cool! I was very
excited at this point. While I had been initially nervous about
the climb, once we committed, the nervousnous left and I started to
become excited. That excitement grew daily as we hiked. So
at this point, I was really ready, almost glib. That soon
changed. We started climbing all together with Godfrey, our head
guide leading the way. The pace was slow, but that's how it
should be. After about one or two hours, Elizabeth, one of our
teammates stepped off the trail and said she needed a break.
Apparently she hadnt been sleeping well and she had been caught in the
snowstorm the day before and didnt get much rest at Kibo Hut, so she
was very tired. She stayed back with one of the guides. A
short time later after a tea break, Michael, another of our team
members became ill and could not continue. Michael is one of the
managers at the UN Rec Center and is in very good condition. If
the altitude can impact him, it can impact anybody. I was much
sobered by this event.
About an hour later, we came to a large rock which was partly hollowed
out underneath, making a small cave. Godfrey announced that this
was the halfway point to Gilmans point. We stopped here for a
short break, as had some other climbers. There was one fellow
sitting on a rock in the cave with his legs crossed. I thought he
looked like Budda, sitting on the mountain.
As we got higher, the weather worsened. It began to snow and got
colder. Also, two of our members, Renate and Ruma started having
trouble. Ruma was feeling very nauseous and the thin air was
bothering her. We were only about 1 hour from the top at this
point so they both perservered, but it was a difficult time for both of
them. But after much work, I am happy to say that all 7 of us
reached Gilmans point on the crater
rim, 5,681 M (18,460 ft) about 7 AM. Here we took a short
break. Renate was cold and tired and decided to head back
down. Gilmans point was good enough! I thought Ruma should
probably head down as well as she looked exhausted, but she wanted to
try to reach Uhuru peak so we both continued on.
The hike along the crater rim was much flatter than the climb to
Gilmans point, but the moderate uphills still bothered Ruma. She
was still really struggling. I was filled with doubt as to
whether we should continue as we still had a long hike down and then
another hike back to Horombo Hut and she looked so tired. Our
guide Uswega kept telling us that the peak was "just around the corner"
so we kept going. After about the third time of this though, I
started getting upset. I wanted an accurate answer, not an answer
just to keep us going. We were about on the breaking point, when
we met our other team members, Dave, Scott, Chris, and Carolyn, who
were just coming down from the peak. They told us the peak really
was "just around the next corner" so we continued on and at around 9:30
AM, we reached Uhuru peak, at 5,895 M
(19,340 ft) the summit.
The summit is a bit anti-climactic. It's not much of a peak,
hardly higher than the surrounding areas. And since the top of
the moutain is so flat and so wide, you dont have great views off of
the mountain. But it does have some good views of the crater and
the surrounding glaciers. After a few photos of ourselves and the
surrounding area, we started the long climb back down. I might
have been a bit more euphoric and celebrated a bit longer, but I was
worried about Ruma and wanted to get her down. The hike back to
Gilmans was uneventful, but climbing down from Gilmans point was
tough! It was a steep climb up so the hike back down was steep
and tough on the quads. We used poles to lessen the stress on our
legs but it was still a 3 hour slog down the slope through heavy sleet
and snow. By the time we reached Kibo Hut, around 1:30 PM, we
were tired. The summit climb had taken us around 13 hours.
We met our other teamates who had also summited at Kibo hut. They
had arrived just ahead of us and were also wet and exhausted. We
all collectively decided that we had had enough for the day and would
spend the night at Kibo Hut, but apparantly, this is not allowed.
By regulation, climbers are not allowed to spend more than one night at
the high altitude Kibo Hut. We argued with the rangers for a bit,
but eventually we gave in. Part of the reason is that the next
day, we were expected to hike down all the way to Marangu gate, already
a long hike from Horombo Hut. Adding the 13 KM from Horombo Hut
to Kibo Hut would make it an extra-long hike. So, after having
some lunch and a bit of rest, we packed up and started off towards
Horombo Hut. As we were leaving, I just couldnt believe it.
It's 4:00 PM: here we are in the mountains in a snow storm and we are
tired and leaving camp on a long hike. And one of our
teammates has an injured leg. Sounds like a recipe for
disaster. We had our guides with us though. Luckily, the
trip down from Kibo Hut to Horombo Hut was uneventful, just long.
It took us around 3-1/2 hours to cover the 13 KM, adding up to around
17 hours hiking for the day. By the time we arrived, we were
utterly exhausted. I had a small bit of dinner, and went straight
to bed. Ruma did not even take the time to eat, she just went
straight to bed.
On Tuesday morning, I was very sore. I woke up early, but it took
me awhile to get moving, with many groans. I also found that I
had roasted my lips. I wore sun block on my face and put on lip
gloss, but apparantly, my lip gloss did not provide UV
protection. Oops. Ruma did not wear sunblock at all, so she
was also a bit burned. She looks a bit like a racoon now.
After a quick breakfast, we started our long hike out. It was
again through the beautiful moorland and rain forest, but it was hard
to appreciate it as much this time as we were tired and sore and were
ready to get back to Moshi and a hot shower. We reached Marangu
gate around 3 PM, received our certificates for the climb from the park
service, and caught a bus back to our hotel in Moshi. There we
had a glorious hot shower, and then our team had a raucious dinner at
the hotel. Really fun. I was so tired that I eventually
fell asleep at the table. Our team was really a great group to
hike with. I hope we can keep in touch.
On Wednesday, we caught a very early bus back to Nairobi. The
most interesting thing that happened on the way home is that near the
Kenya-Tanzania border, the road was washed out. A truck, and the
bus ahead of us both got stuck. Led by a goat herd, we drove
off-road for a while to find an alternate crossing point. We all
got out of the bus and hiked across the riverbed while the bus drove
across and happily, our bus did not get stuck. We also saw some
giraffe near the border.
We reached Nairobi around 3PM. Ruma, of course, got off the bus
early to "take care of a couple of things at the office". We
picked up the girls about 5PM from Fazilah's house. Fazilah
invited us for dinner and I was so tired that I fell asleep on the
couch. I was jet-lag tired.
At 7:00 AM on Thursday, Ruma left for Juba. Back to normal life
in Nairobi.
I zipped up photos from our climb and posted them to share with our
team members. If I get any photos back from them, I may post
additional photos.
View
photos from this safari
Download all photos in
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