Kilimanjaro

Im in Africa! Its amazing here. There's a energy that Ive never experienced. A feeling of excitement and vitality that's pumping some much needed life back into me after a years hard work. After I arrived in Niarobi, I chartered a bus to take me into Tanzania to a small town called Moshi. Moshi is a small city surrounded by farming villages that has been pretty built up in the center thanks to the thriving trekking trade. There, I got a hotel, and the next day, after a meeting with my guide, began the task of climbing Kilimanjaro.

Kilimanjaro is an incredibly symmetrical and picturesque mountain that towers above Moshi. It barely looks difficult and I cant say that I really thought the trek would be a challenge. Now that I am off the mountain, exhausted and spent, I feel like i need to say that I completely underestimated Kilimanjaro. Its looks are deceiving.

Where from the ground it looks to be just a steady, smooth uphill climb that eventually reaches a slightly bulbous peak....I now know that Kilimanjaro is not a smooth gradual dayhike, but rather, an endless climb of up and down (mostly up)covered with its own mountains and valleys on its craggy surface. Daily, I found myself walking baby step after baby step making my way towards each camp.

With my walking stick, we climbed each day higher and higher. The Views were amazing. No matter what day- looking down, you see miles upon miles of east African plains, looking up was the beckoning peak. Sometimes bathed in red evening light - sometimes covered in mountain mist that seemed to move in with incredible speed. It was beautiful, peacefull, and freezing cold.



The Toilets. The Toilets were disgusting. holes in the ground full of waste, and you were lucky to have a door.

Also the other thing I need to mention is the porters. No matter how much I write how hard it was to climb Kilimanjaro, I really have no place to complain, because as I walked up slowley with my daypack, I was always accompanied by a group of porters that carried tents, food, and general supplies in backpacks three times the size of muy own, and often with low quality gear that makes us westerners look like pathetic whiney children. The porters of Kilimanjaro are amazing to watch, and talk to. They deserve real respect.



Summit Day:

Summet day wet down like this. When we arrived to camp, we were on the side of a windy rocky outcropping. There were tons of camp groups, and just as we arrived, two porters were carrying a young woman down who was suffering mounting sickness. People coming down from the mountain looked destroyed. There were blasts of wind blowing away tents and porters were chasing after them. I ate lunch and went to my tent to sleep at about 3pm. I didnt sleep a wink -

At about 1130pm, I got the wake up call. It was freezing and put on about 8 layers of clothing - I stepped out of the tent to see millions apon millions of stars. The combination of being so high, with pretty much no light polution from the surrounding african villages at the bottom of the mountain made it the most star filled sk I had ever seen. I drank a cup of tea, grabbed my walking stick, turned on my headlamp, and we started climbing.

The climb was rediculous. Up...and up for hours upon hours. in complete frozen darkness, we climbed up the loose volcanic gravel zigzaging under the stars and in freezing temperatures. I was shaking.. the more I sweat, the more I froze. I was in this wierd state of wanting to sit and rest, but if I stopped, I would start getting chilled to the bone, and so we walked. Slowely and at pace. People were being carried down the mountain from altitude sickness..and you would see sicky faces lit by thrir own headlamps and it was a scene of some wierd scifi war space scene -

When I looked back from time to time, there was the craziest view of an extreemly long trail of hundreds of headlamps of other groups in a line behind us making their way up. It was such a strange sight because you could almost make out the entire path you had made and that was all you could really make out of howe much progress you had made because it was so black, that you feltt like you were on some sort of terrible headlight lit, uphill, mountain treadmill. You really had no concept of pregress except for the light trail. It was completly sureal.

So the end is pretty much how youd expect. I reached the top at 6am. Ten minutes after i got there, the sun rose up slowley and gave view to an amazing panoramic vista that was so breathtaking, you almost forgot the paint and cold you felt. The view was flooded with pinks and purples and I swear you could almost make out the curvature of the earth from up there. The Glacier at the top, though much smaller these days apparently, was cracking and crumbling as the temperature rose and it echoed across the beautiful crater and down to the valley that was slowley waking up for another day in east Africa.

This was the highest I had ever been, and Im glad to of been lucky enough to of had this experience.