Kilimanjaro

On Thanksgiving Day, Heidi and I summated Kilimanjaro (Uhuru) around 6a.m. The picture above is us at Stella Point, about an hours walk from the Summit. The first picture is us at the Summit, sharing a pumpkin clif bar on Thanksgiving. Before the summit was also quite an adventure.

When I arrived in Tanzania, I took a shuttle bus to Arusha, found a backpacker hotel, and found an internet connection around 10pm. Coincidentally Heidi (my friend from the US who I was meeting to climb Kilimanjaro) was online and in Moshi, a town about an hour away. I ended up going out that evening and heard of a good place to go out Saturday, so I emailed Heidi that evening to come meet me in Arusha. This was logistically difficult to organize as neither of us has a phone, but ended up working out when Heidi arrived late the following afternoon. I had been talking with several agencies, and we eventually agreed to leave for Kilimanjaro, the Machame Route, the following day with a group of 3 others, including a 19 year old Australian (Bernhard), two Belgian/Brazilian sisters (Jana and Jaci). We ended up paying $850 each after extensive negotiations, and left the following morning. We also spent the entire trip with an English guy named Chris I met at the backpackers hotel, who was hiking solo with another outfitter. We all ended up becoming good friends.

I will write more details as I have time but have to get offline soon. Essentially, we joined a 5 day hike, did the first two days extremely quickly, and ended up leaving the park the day we arrived at the summit because everything was so wet and cold and we all just wanted to leave.

Will write more later



Kili trek.. in heidi’s words..christoph’s good looking travel partner..
It already seems like so long ago.. now that we are in Dar es Salaam and it is hot as f^&*..
First I will say that Christoph and I are pretty excellent travel partners. He pushes the limits.. for instance, we almost went scuba diving today with a deaf fisherman, who only speaks Swahili. Then there is me standing next to christoph, saying no way. We did have a great time at the fish market, though. Christoph bought this guy and his friend.. who could speak English.. a coke.. and kunyagi.. gin.. and we all sat around.. surrounded by fish being bought, gutted.. the foul smell.. and flies. A lot of flies.
Back to Kili… I met Christoph in Arusha.. he says.. “do you want to climb kili tomorrow?” We had both just arrived.. I said.. sure. Conveniently, there was a guy waiting for us at the hostel reception.. he guided us across the street to his friend who is a tour operator. Everyone has a friend to direct you to for a safari. After talking to this guy and getting his price.. and finding out we would be joining a group of 3 others.. which included two Belgian girls.. about our age.. and christoph trying to find out if they were good looking.. if they were close to my size.. etc… we decided to do it. The guy .. we call him Baba.. have no idea what his name is.. he wears a full suit. He gives us a green checklist of stuff we need.. and writes down what we don’t have.. although this list is completely useless we later find out. He then proceeds to drive us to 2 different atm’s b/c we need to pay in cash.. and we have none. And there is a limit on how much we can take out.. our cards work at different atm’s.. all part of the adventure. We are only able to pay part of our debt.. we pay in Tanzania shillings, Kenya shillings, us dollars and traveler’s checks.. and christoph had 50 euros. The next morning we also go to the atm to get more money. Our departure time is 9 am.. we walk into the office at 5 after.. we maybe depart an hour later? Either way.. time is relative.. I think we got to the gate.. after stopping at 3 different supermarkets, picking up porters along the way, stopping to buy meat.. which is hanging from a hook in the open air.. put into a plastic bag for us… I tried not to look.
I just read our route description.. Day 1.. an early start.. ha.. I think we actually started hiking at 2 pm.. Machame Gate, 1500 m. We had 7 porters, a cook, waiter, 2 assistant guides, our guide Gilbert.. all 11 are essentially porters, aside from Gilbert. We didn’t figure out these actual numbers until the end of the trip.. we just knew there were a lot of guys.. carrying a lot of shit.. dressed in very unsuitable clothes for trekking. We had our daypacks with water, clothes and snacks.. I can’t go anywhere without food.
We hiked through rainforest.. in pretty warm conditions.. for about 3 hours and 45 min.. with an assistant guide.. Gilbert nowhere in sight. Elevation is still fairly low, so we had a good pace.. a lot of up.. we reached Machame Camp (3100 m) just before dark. We did some yoga.. and waited for our tents to be set up. We realized we had a cool team.. Bernard, Jana, Jaci, Christoph and myself… our attitudes and positivity were similar.
I think we finally ate dinner at 9 pm and crashed. Up at 6 am with hot tea or chocolate in our tent.. and hot water for washing. Then we pack up and are going by 8:30 maybe? We realize we don’t keep a very good schedule. We hike out of the rainforest and are now above trees.. on a winding trail.. a lot of up still. We have some gorgeous views until everything clouds over. We had a view of Kili also on this first morning (see pic)..
We get to Shira Camp (3800 m) at noon.. just over three hours. We still feel good.. and estimated times for both days are 5-7 hours hiking.. we determine we are the allstar team. We nap in our tents.. the guys throw rocks outside.. that is about all there is to do. Christoph won the rock throwing competition. We didn’t have playing cards.. so we play the fish game.. brought to us by Chris.. a british guy who we met at the hostel before we left and was also trekking, though with his own guide and porters.. but essentially with us. There is also a group of American women.. and a german group at the same camps. The fish game.. think of a fish or a fish product.. everyone else has to guess what it is by asking yes or no questions. Yeah, it sounds lame.. but it was actually really fun.. until a couple hours later when we were thoroughly sick of it. We have great sunset views of Mt. Meru (see pic).. and enjoy coffee/tea in our mess tent and then dinner. The stars are amazing..
The Americans came by to say hi.. and we realized our attitudes were way better than theirs.. Christoph and Chris walked by their tents later that night to share kunyagi.. we had a bottle of it and juice and I told Christoph we weren’t carrying that for another day.. water was more important.. so he had to get rid of it that night. Americans were asleep.. so they gave it to our porters and I think 1 L of it was gone within minutes. Day 3.. 6 am wake up again. It is clear when we wake up.. but quickly, within the first hour of hiking.. clouds over completely.. and not long after that, starts raining. The environment is all rock and very little vegetation.. felt like mars, maybe. Pretty soon, we are all completely wet.. some of us have raingear.. others of us (Christoph) don’t.. some of our raingear isn’t really waterproof.. either way.. Christoph is whistling most of the way.. and spirits are high. We reach Barranco Camp (3950 m).. maybe 5 hours later. We are wet and cold and all huddle into the cook tent (the only one up so far) and eat our packed lunches. We played cards that night.. Americans had cards.. played cheat.. I think it was still raining at this point.

Day 4.. this is the crazy day.. it is clear when we wake up at 6 am.. we have some good Kili and glacier views (see pic).. and then are off.. it started raining within 30 minutes.. all of our raingear on. We are soon wet again.. hiking is hard.. a lot of steep rocks to climb up. We reach our lunch point and we are cold and wet.. yet eat lunch.. my fingers are frozen at this point.. and start off again on a long, slow sludge up and up. We reach our camp Barufu Camp (4600 m) approx 8 hrs later. It finally stopped raining on the last bit and we dried out slightly..we reached our tents and collapsed for an hour or so before dinner at 5. After dinner, we had a talk with Gilbert.. how are we going to summit if we are wet? The summit is very cold.. etc. We convince him we can get enough dry stuff together. If it is still raining at midnight, we will wait to start until 5 am b/c then it will be warmer. I think we are all a bit nervous, but know that we can do it. We now try to sleep to start at midnight for the summit. On our way to our tents, we meet two people who have just come down.. they started at 11:30 am.. it is now 7 or 8 pm.. they are thoroughly exhausted and talking about how hard it is and puking, etc… not the best thing for our moods.. right before we lie down to get up and summit.. up until now we had been very positive, now a little bit of anxiety.

(Written by Christpoh, as this Kilimanjaro posting was a team effort)

On the 5th day of what was supposed to be a 6 day trip, we started fro the summit of Kilimanjaro by being woken up at midnight. This was quite pleasant really as we had popcorn and tea delivered to the tent. I actually didn’t sleep much as I had to get up to pee (this involves barely putting one leg outside the tent to avod freezing, thank god I am not a girl). I was also pre-occupied with everything but climbing (family, house, school, etc…) After the snack, I pulled on some pants over my thermal underwear and put my remaining dry clothes and some water in my backpack. I kept my camera in my sleeping bag all night, and also kept it in my jacket as the batteries were low. The climb started at approximately 12:45a.m. and was fine for the first few hours. Shortly before leaving, we ran into a group that had just come down, and told us of puking, taking several breaths between each step, how it was horrible, etc… One of the tour operators had mentioned that very situation as the reason why it was prohibited for the groups coming down the mountain to use the same trail as going up. We didn’[t take the advice to heart because so far we had been by far the fastest group every day by several hours.
Starting involved little steps (imagine walking toe to heel consistently), and we were in decent spirits. At a few instances, it was possible to see the constellation Orion and the stars, but mainly it was a bit foggy and dark, as we walked with our headlamps. Our guide mentioned that the key to success was slow and consistent, going as long as possible between breaks. We basically didn’t stop until the top, with the exception of a short bathroom break. I literally felt like falling asleep while walking, and had the guide hit me with a stick at one point and told me not to. At around 6:15a.m. we arrived at the top completely exhausted. By the top, I mean Stella point, which is a ridge after a really steep climb. The hour before reaching Stella point was horrible. Everyone had headaches, which I though was similar to a really bad hangover. Everyone pressed on, though some of us wanted to stop there, but it was only another 45 min. to an hour to the peak, and it looked much flatter. After a few photos and hugs, we all managed to continue. Reaching the peak was nice because we walked by the crater, there was snow everywhere, and we could see the glacier. The view was poor, but our spirits were high. Once we reached the point, Heidi and I shared a pumpkin Clif bar, had a few pictures taken, and there were congratulations all around. Bernhard, the 19 year old Australian of the group had boasted of getting naked at the top, and I had promised to join him did he actually do it. I was sure he wouldn’t, but he did manage to peel off his layers to his “singlet” so I had to join him to that point (pictures to follow). Shortly after began our descent. This involved a lot of sliding down in gravel, and then taking short naps. Again,. feeling extremely tired had me walking with my eyes closed occasionally, even running into Jana at one point. After a couple of hours and a quick descentw while snowing, I arrived at camp to find our tent collapsed. This was great, as all our things were in there, and it was now covered in snow. I didn’t really care at the time, as I just wanted to sleep. We were woken up around 11a.m for lunch, and told it was time to hike another 3 hours to Mweka Camp (1500 meters below at 3100 meters) the final camp. This did not sound exciting at all as we were all wet, extremely tired, and in poor spirits. In general, we were all in excellent spirits the entire trip, but at this point, after an hour of sleep maximum, collapsed tents, snow and rain, no dry clothing, and cold food, we were ready to just get out of the park and to a hot shower. We discussed the extra length, and agreed to try and hike all the way out of the park instead of one more wet night and getting up for another 2 hour hike tomorrow. This news both surprised and excited our guide and porters, ans it meant getting home a day early. Everyone had a spring in their stop on the way down, and I even found myself singing and whistling Bob Marley with Oruro, one of our asistant guides as we practically ran down to the first camp. I arrived at the camp approx 30 minutes before the rest of the group and had an interesting conversation with the porters, listened to music, and started to freeze. After finally getting to the camp a couple of hours later, we were all exhausted, and ready to get home. Swe signed out of the park, got ina van, and headed back to Arusha. We were able to stop for a quick purchase of snacks and beer to celebrate on the way back, but most of us just slept. Once we arrived, we tipped the porters a bit ore than 10% of the total trip cost, cumul;atively as a group, and took showers. We all went out for a group dinner before retiring to sleep.



It was a great trip, and we all ended up with a great new group of friends. At the moment we are all still together, with the exception of Bernhard, and heading to Zanzibar tomorrow. I will write more later and add more Kili pictures.