Kilimanjaro summit!

Start: Barafu Base Camp; 4,620 meters

Summit: Uhuru peak; 5,895 meters

Ascent time: 6:20

Descent time: 2:00

At 11:30 pm, the four of us stumbled out of our tents, had a snack, and were on our way towards the highest point in Africa. The moon was out but it was still unbelievably dark and, more importantly, cold! I wore almost every single piece of clothing I had brought on the hike: leggings, thermals, pants, and rain pants for bottoms and thermals, a wicking T shirt, a light jacket, a heavy fleece and a rain coat on top. I had on a balaclava, a toque, my headlamp, and my raincoat hood pulled up to keep my head warm and for my hands I had on my trusty Swiss Air socks and thick mittens, plus a hand warmer in each mitten. There was hardly enough room for my feet in my hiking boots with two pairs of wool socks and liner socks on! In my backpack, I had over a liter of water, a couple of ClifBars and other snacks, my camera, hiking poles for the descent, and, of course, Mini Bear.

It’s hard to say how many people made their way to the summit that night, but it was probably in the ballpark of sixty hikers plus guides. We all looked pretty ridiculous wearing so many puffy layers, but I got a kick out of seeing a couple of the guides wearing reflective vests over their outermost layer. They looked like rogue crossing guards, leading their charges way beyond the other side of the road.

Since so many people were setting out for the summit, the trail was crowded initially but it thinned out quickly enough. For most of the hike, my group played leapfrog with a handful of other hikers.

Because it was so dark out, I couldn’t get a sense of what the trail was like, other than to assume it was uphill. Only when my eyes followed the snaking headlamps up the switchbacks could I tell how steep the looming climb was.

During a quick break, I rested against a big rock and was suddenly dizzy beyond belief. I was worried that altitude sickness was finally hitting me, but it turned out to be nothing more than a touch of the dizzies and I was fine from then on. Our foursome split up before too long and Shailey went with Captain G at her own pace while Viraj, Kerry, and I stayed with Jimmy.

Even though I had had a healthy appetite over the past week, I was famished on the summit hike and demolished two protein bars in the first ninety minutes. Since I was using a Camelbak to drink water, I had been told to blow air back into the tube after each sip to prevent the water from freezing. It was really hard to take a deep breath and exhale fully at that altitude, so it was just a couple of hours until the water in my drinking tube froze. Fortunately, Kerry had enough water that he was able to share.

Over the next few hours, Jimmy let us take four breaks. When the three of us would whine for more breaks, he’d say we just had to go a little further but of course we just continued to plod on, pole pole. In fact, our pace definitely slowed as the hours passed and Jimmy ended up carrying some of our backpacks. I was strong enough to wear my backpack the entire hike, unlike in the Himalayas last year when my guide wouldn’t even let me carry anything on summit day.

To keep my brain focused on anything other than the cold and strong gusts of wind, I mentally recited poetry, including “Roses are red” in Uzbek and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116; sang act I of Rent and highlights from The Sound of Music and Oklahoma; counted every one hundred steps alternating between Uzbek, Spanish, and French; named countries and their capital cities; practiced counting to ten in Swahili; sang any song I knew on autopilot including 80s hits, pop songs, punk songs, and even a couple of hymns from boarding school; and, for the final hour or two, I heard a coxswain in my head yelling out commands as if I was rowing in a 2,000 meter race.

I ended up being warm enough for the most part but I was incredibly exhausted. It’s not that my muscles were tired, I was actually sleepy and was a slightly concerned I might fall asleep on my feet if I let myself close my eyes. Around this time, we reached Stella Point (5,685 meters), so I knew we had no more than an hour to go until the summit. This idea woke me up and not much later, the sun began to rise. Seeing the first hints of pink and orange in the night sky warmed my soul and that’s when I knew for sure I would reach the summit. The trail was much more exposed from here on out and we encountered a biting wind like I’ve never experienced before. If I was still thinking about sleep, this wind swept those thoughts out of my head. It was like being slapped in the face with a week old, unrefrigerated dead fish. There was no way I would be able to fall asleep with this wind!

When I was close enough to the summit to see the sign, I broke out into a run. With all my layers and heavy boots and the thin air, it probably didn’t look like a run, but it certainly felt like it!

Kerry, Viraj, Jimmy, and I posed for a few photos.

Jimmy took a couple of photos of me with the glacier in the background.

The view was nothing less than stunning but neither my fingers nor my brain functioned properly and I didn’t bother to take any scenic photos, so I’m especially glad Viraj had the presence of mind to take a few!

As we turned back to return to camp, we passed Shailey and G, only twenty or so minutes behind us. We were thrilled she had also reached the summit, but we weren’t able to linger at the summit and take photos with her unfortunately.

I got out my hiking poles to use on the descent and, almost immediately, I cried out, “Wait!” with a giggle and a hint of panic. The toggles from the drawstrings on my rain pants had gotten tangled up in each other, the equivalent of trying to walk with your shoelaces tied together. I know I’m my father’s daughter but it’s moments like this that I can’t deny I’m my aunt’s niece! To think, I had managed to summit the tallest mountain in all of Africa, only to kill myself tripping over my rented pants five minutes later! Jimmy untangled me and we carried on.

Since it was no long dark, we stopped for a quick picture at Stella Point on our way back down.

The descent was awfully steep in parts and the terrain was loose gravel and dirt so I was constantly sliding and trying to stop myself from running due to simple gravity.

 

It took us around two hours to reach camp. By then, the sun was up and it was roasting inside my tent, so I stripped off my multitude of layers and put on shorts and a T shirt and took the most satisfying nap I can remember!