Our Kili trip was so awesome! It was hard…very hard; but so rewarding.
We took the Marangu Route (6 days). The first couple days weren’t very hard climbs. The guides made us go really slowly, but it was nice because we could enjoy the scenery. The first day’s entire hike was through lush rainforest: so gorgeous! We saw some Blue Monkeys and a Duiker. I heard a lot of birds, but saw hardly any. They liked hiding. But there’s just something so magical about the rainforest. I love it so much. It makes me want to crawl way back into the thick of it and sit down in all the ferns. It makes me want to find a comfortable place and wait to see what little critters will find me. I like seeing the little birds hopping closer and closer in curiosity toward the newcomer of the forest. …anyway, we weren’t going THAT slow. We had to keep walking.
We reached the first huts, Mandara Huts (elev. 8,888 ft), at 4 o’clock. There were quite a few A-frame buildings for hikers and one bigger one that acted as the dinning room. Our group of 15 stayed in the long narrow room directly above the dinning room. It was kinda cozey cuz we could all have a fun time talking as a group and we didn’t have to split up into different cabins, …but, it was a bit noisy having the dinning room below us (we could see the people eating below us through little cracks in the floor). It was at these Huts that we celebrated New Years. Well…we didn’t do a whole lot of celebrating, but some German hikers sure had a good time. As we were trying to fall asleep we could hear them singing songs with a ukulele (someone actually brought a ukulele up the mountain), and I even felt the cork of a Champaign bottle hit the roof just under me☺.
The second day’s hike was through beautiful Mooreland. I loved the pastel-ly colors (“saturated non-punchy colors” as someone said), the clumpy grasses, the scraggly, wind-bent trees with moss and lichen draping off them. It was really beautiful.
We spent the next two nights at Horombo Huts (elev. 12,340 ft). We spent the extra night so that we could acclimate by taking a hike up to the saddle and returning to the same huts that day. We hike to Zebra Rocks. Not far from here was where we had our first really good view of Kibo. We could see the peak all the way to the base. It was pretty impressive, a bit intimidating, but to me mostly a challenge. I was excited to conquer it!
The next day we hiked to Kibo Huts (elev. 15,400). I was starting to feel the altitude. When we were at the Huts, it was pretty bad. I was getting head aches, and feeling week and tired. Sleeping was almost impossible. We went to bed just after dinner and got up at 11 that night to do the final summit. When I was woken up I felt really bad. I seriously didn’t know if I’d be able to go on. I was so so so weak. It was hard just to walk out the door, down the hall and to the kitchen. I knew I needed to drink a lot of water, but I didn’t have any, cuz our guides were still filling up our bottles. Instead I drank two cups of tea and one cup of hot water. I started feeling better almost immediately.
We headed off at 11:35. We marched in single file behind our guide, Photo (such a nice guy!). I was excited at first, but that soon wore off.
The next eight hours was like hell! The higher we got, the worse it got. Altitude’s grip got stronger and stronger as we ventured further and further into her domain. She made it hard for me to breath. She weakened my legs, and drained all my strength. She put extra weights on my eyelids so that I had to fight just to keep them open. She made me dizzy and gave me headaches. Another of our mighty foes was the cold. She was brutal! She nipped at any exposed skin. She froze the camel-back hoses. She froze shut our water bottles, and put ice chunks in the water. She sprinkled frost on our backpacks. She froze the sweat on our brows. She forced our bodies to use the little energy we had to keep our bodies warm and functioning.
Reality faded …and faded. Everything became a dream. Nothing was real. Some of us had been dragged farther from reality than others. David and Ryan had it pretty bad. At times, David said he would reach for a rock to lean against, but it wouldn’t be there. It would be over here to the right of where he placed his hand. A lot of us were throwing up. We were all exhausted beyond belief. Like I said, it was a battle just to keep your eyelids open to see where you were walking. At times I would glance at the path in front of me, let my eyelids drop and take up to five steps before opening my eyes again to see where I was going. Even with my eyes open it was hard to walk straight. At times, I would sway back and forth; sometimes almost tipping down the slope. Luckily we had good (very good) assistant guides. There were 14 of us climbers, 1 guide, and 6 assistant guides. That meant that for every two climbers there was a guide. Whenever anyone looked like they were going to tip over, or fall down, or just too tired to carry on, they’d be right there to help you.
We reached Gilman’s Point (18,638 ft) just before sunrise. That is where we came over the rim and could see the hilly crater before us, as well as the jagged rim curving around to our left. I had expected a good rest once we got there, but we didn’t stay there long at all. We had to keep moving. We still had another hour or so of hiking around the rim to get to Uhuru Peak (19,340 ft), the rooftop of Africa, the highest point in Africa!
Although the incline of the rim was minimal, this last leg of the climb was the most torturous! I felt absolutely miserable. I literally felt like I was drunk. I couldn’t walk straight. I distinctly remember one time when I started leaning one way and couldn’t catch myself until I was three feet from where I was. I would take 10 tiny steps and then lean on my trekking pole in exhaustion. My body was yelling at me to stop and go to sleep. The slope just rose gently higher and higher. The peak was always over the next little rise. It was here, on this last 100 yds. to the peak that I threw up for the first and only time. It took so much energy to get it out, but I felt better afterward (NOT that I felt good. I felt better –just a little better- than I had before I threw up, but I still felt horrible).
Honestly, Uhuru Peak was anticlimactic. It was just on top of a little rise. (Gilman’s Point was the most climactic for me). But we were there. We made it. And there was the sign:
Congradulations:
You are now at Uhuru Peak, Tanzania 5898m. AMSL
Africa’s Highest Point
World’s Highest Free-standing Mountain
One of the world’s largest volcanoes
Welcome
I didn’t feel like staying up there very long. I really didn’t feel like taking any pictures, though I took my camera all the way up there. Out of obligation I took it out and took a few pics (I just took it out of its bag, stood in one place, swiveled around, and snapped about 4 shots. I know… not very photographer-like).
The view from the top was pretty incredible! It wasn’t crystal clear weather, but it was still really clear. We could see Mt. Meru, the Pare Mts., and a couple lakes. We could also see an impressive glacier wall just a little bit down from the peak. If I wanted to spend the energy, I could have walked down and touched it, but I was too miserable!
As soon as we started heading down, I started feeling better. The lower we got, the better we all felt. But it was still a long 3-hr. hike back down to Kibo Huts. Once we got there, we had lunch, a very short nap and then hiked another 3 hours back to Horombo Huts. Having only had 5 hours of sleep in the last 39 hours, we all slept VERY well that night at Horombo Huts.
God blessed us with amazing weather the whole trip! We didn’t get rained on the entire trip…except for the last hour of the very last day (just before the gate).
So…there’s a “short” account of our Kili Trip!
[I've been having trouble getting pics uploades because of our slow internet. If i can, i'll get some kili pics up soon]
