My trip to Kili started with the typical Tanzanian travel frustration. I had planned to take the bus to Moshi, but a friend from work knew a person who was driving to Arusha, so I was supposed to get a ride from him, then take a shorter cheaper bus ride to Arusha. However, my ride was over three hours late, so then my friend arranged for me to ride with another person, but his car battery had just died, so we finally ended up beginning our journey about five hours after I would have left on the bus.

When I arrived at the hotel I was surprised to find that both the route and the number of days I was climbing had changed. I had been planning on climbing the Machame Route in six days and found out that the next day I was leaving to climb the Rongai Route in five days. I was a bit worried because I had heard your likelihood of success increases dramatically from a five day to a six day climb. Because of the change in route I didn’t know anything about where I was climbing, much less that Rongai is essentially in Kenya and about a four hour drive from Moshi.

We arrived in Rongai and after lunch and another hour of fiddling with equipment and other delays we were on hour way. There were four other American women about my age who joined us for the first day of the climb, then were slowing down to make it a six day hike. The walk was surprisingly easy and we arrived at camp a little before 7 pm. The camp we stayed at was at about 2700 m (about 9000 ft). It was starting to get chilly and by the time we ate dinner at 9 pm, it was downright cold. I’m sure it was much more of a shock for the rest of my group than for myself, as they were all staff from the Highview Hotel in Karatu, Tanzanians born and raised. I was excited to climb with them because I felt a little weird about the traditional Kilimanjaro trip where you talk a little to your guide and mostly with whatever other random white people are climbing in your group. Climbing with the group from Highview and knowing a little bit of Swahili helped me have a much richer experience, becoming great friends with all of the porters, cooks, and guides.

The next morning, I awoke to incredible views of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and after breakfast we headed out for our day’s hike. We hiked for three hours, stopped for lunch, then hiked for another three hours. We finished the day at a camp at about 3900 m (about 12,700 ft) and I continued to be surprised both by how easy the climb was and by how cold it got at night.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you about the worst part of the trip. I took a special type of diuretic to prevent altitude sickness while I was headed up the mountain. The medicine was fine and didn’t have any ill effects except for the expected having to pee more. I had to get up at least once, sometimes twice a night to go to the bathroom. Because it got so cold at night, this was always at least a 20 minute process. The first ten minutes devoted to determining how much of a necessity going to the bathroom actually was (it was always an absolute necessity), and the next ten minutes devoted to putting on my coat, and hiding under my sleeping bag until that got warm, then putting on my boots and headlamp and navigating my way to the pit latrine. This certainly disabused me of any notion that I might enjoy snow-camping. (Maybe when I can attach a heated bathroom to my tent).
The next day was a short climb. We walked for about three hours up to 4700 m (15,300 ft). I’m surprised to find that I’m not feeling any effects from the altitude at this point. I was expecting my head to be starting to hurt. I did notice my appetite had decreased significantly and I was trying to force myself to eat as much as I could stomach. The other interesting development was that it was cold enough that I didn’t want to drink anything cold. I also didn’t want to drink any tea because it might make me pee even more, so I decided to mix my Gatorade powder in with the hot water. Hot Gatorade is a better drink than you might imagine, but probably not something I would recreate in warm weather or at sea level. Because we were leaving to summit at midnight, I took a nap right after lunch, then went to sleep for the night right after dinner.

I woke up to prepare to summit at 11 pm. I drank as much Hot Gatorade water as possible until it was time to go. It turned out that was a bit of a mistake. We set out at midnight and I was a bit nauseous until the water exited my stomach. We started our climb, four guides, eight people from Highview Hotel, and me. A couple people started feeling dizzy and nauseous and one of the guides took them back to camp and we continued onward. Then two more people were feeling bad, so another guide took them back. One more person started feeling really nauseous and decided to turn back with another guide. At this point I’m starting to get worried about how this climb is going to go because there are four of us and one guide. One of the four girls is having a lot of trouble staying warm and has been dizzy since just after we set out, so the odds of her being able to continue are looking slim, and the last guy in our group isn’t looking too good either. We have made it about 750 of the 900 m up to Gillman’s point, the first point along the crater that you reach and the horizon is just starting to lighten. I’m feeling great, the nausea has passed and I have a little flash of headache every now and again, but really I’m mentally preparing myself for having to turn around because the guide will have to go back with this sick person. She finally decides that she wants to go back, so the guide asks me what I want to do. I figure I don’t have much choice, they won’t let me continue on on my own, but I give it a try and ask. “Can I wait for the next group coming up and walk with them?” He looks down the mountain, doesn’t see any head lamps, and tells me that anyone who was behind us has turned around and returned to camp. “Can Esther and I keep going?” Esther has been feeling great the whole climb to this point, and has been rousing us up from breaks to continue onward. “Esther wants to go back, too.” That shocked me, so I tried one last thing. “Can I keep going on my own?” And the guide said, “Sure”, though I was even more shocked by that, I said okay, and turned to continue onward. The guide planned to take them back down and come back up to meet me as quickly as he could.

By the time we got all of that figured out, the sun was starting to rise, I climbed for a little bit, then took some sunrise photos. A little later, much to my relief I reached Gillman’s Point at 5695 m (about 18,500 ft), rested for a while, then continued on to Uhuru Peak. From Gillman’s Point to Uhuru Peak the climb was much easier than the climb to Gillman’s Point, all of the ascents were short and the sun was coming out and it was warming up so resting was no longer more painful than continuing to walk. I really enjoyed this solitary winter wonderland in the middle of Africa. About an hour and a half after Gillman’s Point, I reached Uhuru Peak 5895 m (19,344 ft), snapped some photos of myself, then turned around to return back. I met with my guide again at about the point I left him, about 750 m above our camp.

Upon return to camp several of the guides and porters greeted me and gave me hugs and helped me carry my things. I’m pretty sure if I had looked any more tired they would have just carried me to my cot. After an hour nap and lunch, I hiked another six miles down to our camp for the night. This was the most difficult part of the trip for me. My legs were extremely tired, mostly from the descent and I was quite sleep deprived. I got to camp and fortunately dinner was already ready for me, unfortunately, I still had no appetite from the altitude. Then, I pretty much went to sleep for the rest of the night.

The next day we woke up early to head out of the park. My twelve hours of sleep had revived me and I was feeling good again. We left the park at about 1 pm and headed back to Karatu. Our trip back to Karatu was another adventure for another time. A trip that should have taken 4 hours took about 10 hours, but we made it and I got to eat a ridiculous amount of kaichumbali (a vegetable salad with tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, onions, and carrots) on the way.

As an epilogue of sorts, Saturday night Katherine and I went to a party for Highview Hotel, part of the celebration was for those of us who climbed the mountain. One of the highlights of this was our assignment to the VIP table, which involved us having to switch seats four times in five minutes to adjust to the moving location of the VIP table. The other highlight was the magistrate, who had had a few too many dragging me up on stage during the hotel owner’s speech. I wriggled away as quickly as possible. Also, today I heard that I am now famous beyond Karatu, as the crazy running white girl, I was on Tanzanian television last night for this trip up Kilimanjaro. It’s pretty funny, but not that exciting because I think all you have to do to get on the news is pay the news people to come cover your story (I think Zara Tours, the company I went with, paid ITV to come).