It has taken me a few days to get my thoughts together to sum up the 6-day once in a lifetime experience that was summiting Kilimanjaro. I am still processing the whole event. My earlier post with a day-to-day description of the hike serves as a pretty accurate travelogue so I’ll just go with some random thoughts/details:
Our group was made up of 10 people with 1 to 3 degrees of separation. Our connections could be broken down into three basic groups: med students, people who studied abroad together in Cape Town, and currently living in Lesotho. I really enjoyed getting to know everyone. We laughed A LOT, even when it hurt from lack of oxygen.
Thanks to Andrew who has been living in Moshi we had an awesome guiding company – Gladys Adventures – and lead guide – August. I can say without exaggeration that I would never have made it to the top without August. He stuck with me in the back and encouraged me to keep going. If you are considering climbing I would absolutely recommend both Gladys and August.
Days 1-4 and 6 were totally manageable hiking days. I would love to do another multi-day hike and even up to the altitude of Kibo Hut (aka Base Camp at 15,400 feet ASL). I can say with a lot of certainty, though, that I have no intention to summit a 19,000 foot mountain again in my lifetime.
I knew logically that being above a certain altitude would make it difficult to breathe but had no idea how that would actually play out physically. WHOA. At Kibo Hut it winded me just to climb out of the tent. Summiting would not be nearly as difficult if you were getting more oxygen with every breath. August has gone to the top 275 times (and one time in 14 hours round trip as part of a porter/guide race), I can’t even fathom that.
One thing that I consistently read about before going was that the guides would encourage you to go “pole pole” (which means “slowly slowly” in Swahili.) This was definitely my strategy and I feel that it helped me get to the top because 1) was used to being in the back of the group so I didn’t feel pressure to go faster and 2) I was able to go at a very consistent speed and not burn out. I didn’t feel significantly worse at Uhuru Peak (the very top) than I did at the first major summit point (Gilman’s Point) while others in my group were definitely struggling more.
7 out of our group of 10 made it to the top. We lost one to bronchitis at Kibo Hut, one to altitude sickness during the first couple of hours of the summit and one fiancée of the person with altitude sickness.
Summit day is the most physically demanding thing I have ever done in my life. Due to nerves I had about an hour of sleep, we started hiking at nearly midnight and I got back to Kibo Hut at 11:30am. In those 11 hours we climbed about 6.5 miles of distance (round trip) and went up and down 4,000 feet in altitude.
Summiting during the full moon was so cool. I could have done most of the trail without a headlamp, but used one just to be cautious. Because of my balaclava I couldn’t look up very well, but there were moments where I’d get glimpses of what felt like a spotlight shining down on me but was really the full moon. Very cool.
Our camps on Days 2, 3 and 5 had the most amazing views of the tops of the clouds. The sunsets in particular over the clouds were stunning. I’ll also never forget the moment on Day 6 when all of a suddenly the clouds were above us again. Indescribable.
I’ll leave the random thoughts for now as I have at least one more post to come to discuss “Things I wish I knew before climbing”
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