climbing kili

Travel Tales #3
Climbing Kili

We must have seemed like absolute cowboys to the other climbers. Everyone else seemed to have ‘the gear’ – expensive thermal clothing, aerodynamic walking poles, state of the art arctic tents. We on the other hand had mostly packed for the desert and the tropics, and had done zero training to climb Africa's highest mountain.

Since we only had one beanie between us, Nath made a turban for his head out of my sarong. Wayne, another backpacker we’d met in Uganda who was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with us, wore elastic sided work boots with holes in the toes.

The tent we shared was a mosaic of patch jobs, and looked like it belonged in a backyard under a clothesline, instead of a mountainside.

The first couple of days were through beautiful rainforest, and then into more open country full of low flowering shrubs.

It wasn’t until day three that the word ‘ordeal’ appeared in the pages of my journal.

We’d walked constantly uphill for most of the day, to a height of 4,600 metres where we stopped for a freezing lunch. Altitude sickness can kick in from 2000 metres, so none of us were feeling great, and the air was thin.

After lunch the going was all downhill, which was more difficult in its own way, and demoralising after the morning’s hard work.

It began to rain, so by the time we hit camp we were saturated, cold and exhausted. Nath had a headache, and I felt like crap.

That night I crawled into my sleeping bag with all my layers of clothes on to try and keep warm. Mid way through the night I woke up with a splitting headache that refused to leave me in peace for most of the night.

The next morning I sat with a cup of hot chocolate looking up at our route for the day. It looked vertical. Some climbers had left earlier that morning and were already halfway up the cliff face. It looked exhausting. Because of the thin air, I had been out of breath just walking back from the toilet.

As I watched the ant-like climbers, I wondered why we were doing this!

When we reached base camp at 4,800 metres, after another day of walking up and then down almost as far, I was wrung out. My lungs felt only half as big in the thin mountain air, which I gulped at like a fish out of water.

The terrain was barren. Just rocks, sand and dust. The almost constant cloud that hung heavily on our shoulders had receded, and we could see the summit peak above us and clouds simmering in the valleys below, always threatening to boil up and over us.

After an early dinner we tried to get some sleep. We would be up again soon enough to begin the summit ascent. Nath had a crippling headache and was nauseous. Wayne’s gums were bleeding. I wasn't feeling too bad. Apparently altitude affects men more than women for some unknown reason.

Although I was nervous and intimidated by the climb ahead, I was sick of being on the mountain in the constant cold, never quite feeling able to satiate my need for air, so I was looking forward to getting it done.

We began climbing the last 1000 metres at midnight. 'Harrowing' is the word I wrote in my diary to describe what was to come. I don’t think I’ve had call to use that word again since!

We set out in the dark with Abu (our guide) in the lead and trudged behind him for the first hour, ascending slowly and constantly.

It was freezing and I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. When Abu told us it was another four hours to the top my resolve began to wane. The climb was relentlessly up and over loose gravel the entire way, which made walking even more difficult. The icy wind and subzero temperature did nothing to improve the situation.

Each time we stopped for a break I’d lose more and more confidence in reaching the top. The high altitude made us all breathless and compounded the fatigue building in my legs.

I no longer cared about my frozen extremities. I began to feel faint and started stumbling. Abu grabbed my arm and didn’t let it go until we made the top.

I was beyond exhausted and had to stop every few steps. I didn’t think I would make it, even with Abu half dragging me.

A few times I broke into tears. Each time we stopped I had to psyche myself into going on, then focus on trying to take at least as many steps as the last time.

Five hours after setting out, we reached Gillman’s point. Abu hugged us all and congratulated us. We had made it up the mountain face and no longer had to scramble up a sheer gravel ledge.

I was so thoroughly exhausted and cold that I just wanted to go down. I didn’t think I could make the last 200 metres to the summit. But Abu once again grabbed my arm and I reluctantly walked on.

The last few metres were actually the easiest, just a slight incline along firm ground – no more slippery gravel. But my body was so tired and cold that I could barely manage to lift my feet to put one in front of the other.

It was an alien world up there. The lights from the towns below looked like tiny specks viewed out a plane window. Giant glaciers creaked and cracked around us.

Finally we reached the summit - ‘Uhuru Peak’. We were the first up that day. We smiled for a photo through cracked bleeding lips, watched a particularly stunning sunrise from above the clouds, then turned for home.

Five and a half hours up, 45 minutes down. We half ran, half slid our way back to basecamp, kicking up piles of dust as we went.

We passed a lot of other climbers on the way down. A couple of friendly Americans asked if we'd made it. It was at that point that I started to feel immensely proud of what we had achieved.

Back at camp, all exhausted beyond words, we crawled into our sleeping bags and slept like corpses. A couple of hours later we were awoken for an almost inedible breakfast of salty mushroom soup and stale bread.

Prior to the summit climb, with a lot more energy and a strong desire to escape the constant cold we had all agreed to the 'five day challenge'. The Machame Route - the trail we had taken up the mountain, usually takes six days. Instead we had dobbed ourselves in for a full descent the same day as making the summit.

As we set out, having already climbed for six and a half hours on little sleep and barely any food, I didn’t know if I was going to make it. We had another seven hours of walking in front of us.

We had no water left, so the first couple of hours were a thirsty ramble through a lunar landscape to a campsite where we were happily able to refill our water bottles.

From there we continued on through scrubby tundra, grasslands, and then back into the jungle for hours of stepping over tree roots. By the time we made it to the end, my feet were a carnage of blisters and I could barely walk.

The relief of making it down was almost greater than the relief of reaching the summit… almost!

Leonie x