For those of us living on the African continent, I think we can be classified as overachievers in the “do one thing a day that scares you” department.
Before I go on, I would be remiss in not mentioning the generosity of our climbing group. If you were paying attention to part one, you know that I lost my camera the day before the climb. This fact was going to necessitate a super-verbose blog entry where you’d just have to take my word that we made it to the summit. And really, no one’s gonna believe you made it unless you produce the money shot: a portrait of you looking like the Michelin Man with only chubby, wind-whipped facial features exposed in front of a silly sign documenting exactly where you are. I really wanted my Michelin Man souvenir photo- and luckily for Sara and I this was still going to be happen.
So big thanks to Team Australia- especially Lachlan, pictured here on the morning of Day Five holding the frozen water that filled the washbowl outside of the toilet. Lachlan lent us his camera for the duration of the trip, and it really lifted our spirits- especially after having been so carelessly mishandled just the day prior.
Acting silly on day two- and enjoying the fact that we can document our refined mountain behavior withour loaner camera. Note that it was still warm outside, and I hiked in a tank top.
Day Four
“Just be like U2 and Walk On…” – Lachlan
Stopping for GU, I’m all wrapped up to protect myself from the wind.
On day four we hike through a tundra-esque moonscape of rocks, superfine dust and aircraft fuselage as we drop in elevation to 3700 meters. The thought behind an easy morning of climbing is that this will boost our white blood cell count before we start our charge up the mountain in a day’s time.
Not much out here, and the trail finally provides a fair indication of exactly where we’re going.
As usual the porters are blowing by us with our stuff, but we continue to trudge along slowly as we hang a right off the above trail to rest for the evening. Now that we are in an exposed area, it is much windier, and I have put on my windbreaker and gloves while trudging along on my hiking poles. We spend our afternoon of downtime at camp by alternating between naps and cultural exchange hour at the mess tent. The dining table has become a place where our group enjoys mulitple rounds of a fantastic British game called “What’s in the Bag”. This game is a bit like Cranium, and it has expaned our collective cultural horizons by teaching one another that “ranger” is Aussie slang for a redhead, and that Sylvester Stallone got his start in porn. Critical life details, I assure you.
And yes, we are still up on high- less greenery up here for sure, and an excess of that bright shiny thing in the sky…
The sunsets are pretty beautiful up here as well, and this token snapshot is the best I could do to capturing the night skiy. Just multiply what you see here times one hundred and you’ll get a better sense of our view.
– Bathroom Break –
If you’re like me, you muse about the silly imponderables that are contained within such significant udertakings. On this kind of trip I’d be wondering, “what did you guys do when you needed to use the bathroom?” Here’s your answer while in camp: we had our very own porta-potty. While a nice luxury, I must say that every night became a battle of wills as I pitted my brain against my bladder to uselessly try and convince myself that I didn’t need to leave the tent at 4am to use the facilities . It’s so darn cold out there at night, and I really hated slinking out of my sleeping bag to pay a visit to the tent of odoriferous emanations.
– End of bathroom break. Sanitize your hands and crawl back into your sleeping bag so you can enjoy twenty minutes of catching your breath in the thin mountain air before falling back asleep with your head largely suffocated inside the sleeping bag to stay warm. –
Day Five
“It looks like a volcano” – Sara
Honestly, days five and six kind of run together in my mind- for reasons that will soon become apparent. We set out from camp in the morning and have a challenging uphill climib to our next camp site at 4722 meters. It’s even more windy up here, and we are now on the side of the moutain itself. Today would mark the end of any kind of flat walking activity, and we are already weary of the constant necessity to keep your eyes focused on your footing, and just trudge along pole pole (Swahili for “slow”- what, you didn’t know that they spoke Swahili in Tanzania?).
And have I yet mentioned that it is cold outside? Coming to Tanzania in July qualifies as wintertime, but up here in our mountain resort, I think i is always winter. Especially when the sun is scarcely around. On the morning of our fifth day in the frosty outdoors we set out on a course for the big moundy thing.
We make good time in arriving at camp, and the porters are still setting up the site. We absolutely love it when the green Team Kilimanjaro tents finally come into our view, and this time was no exception.
I haven’t been giving enough props to Jonas, our team leader. This guy is awesome, and here he is simultaneously supervising the set up of camp and watching over his naive mountain cimber group. Each day and night, Jonas ensures that we are prepared for our day of hiking activities, then in the morning he stays at camp to ensure things are executed properly, and then catches up with us on the trail. His relative silence and seemingly ubiquitious presense makes me think he is some kind of Tanzanian Gandalf- coming and going at will, and always the keeper of our trusting souls. He even brought Sara and I to the Tanzanian police station after getting mugged. Team Kilimanjaro, if you are reading this, give Jonas a raise.
Or view from camp. Wow. We just walked up this thing…..and we’re still not there yet…
Once we get to camp we are treated to a lunch of soup with grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. This is probably one of my favorite meals, so I am exceedingly happy. We eat our lunch and then retire to our tents to try and sleep until supper. It’s a little tougher to get good sleep up here, especially now that we are up so high. No one is suffering much in the way of altitude sickness, which is a good thing since everyone in our group gets on so well, and we really want to see everyone complete the ascent.
It’s still day five and we get up a few hours after lunch for an early dinner at 4:45pm. We eat early (and are not that hungry) because our summit climb (lovingly referred to as “Day Six”- or one damn long day) starts at midnight. Still, we try to eat, pop another diamox and then head back to our tents to layer up in preparation for midnight push to the top of the mountain. I think at this stage we are all a little nervous and kind of questioning the sanity of our actions.
We paid money to go and do this??
No going back now- we’ve been mugged, poisoned by Ethiopia and have a lot of people counting on us to get through this thing. The only way down is up, and with that I’ll finish or climbing adventure in the next blog entry.