WE MADE IT !!!
On summit night, everything changes. We eat dinner and go to bed around 5:30. It's still light out; I can't sleep -- I'm excited, but very nervous. Around 11:30, we get a wake up call, and it's time for breakfast. It's cold, really cold. As I sit and eat porridge (again) in the middle of the night in the freezing cold, I begin to wonder whether I've lost my mind. Damien asks me what I'm thinking, and, to his dismay, I tell him.
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Around midnight we start off. We walk single file, and can only see the person in front of us. On the way down, we realize it was probably better that way, so we couldn't see that we had to walk on a very steep grade up loose rock and sand. Despite the cold, we progress well for the first few hours, but then the altitude starts to hit -- some of us worse than others. All of a sudden, I'm exhausted. Every time we stop for a break, all I want to do is lie down in the dirt and stay there until the sun comes up. Damien takes my daypack from me, and I don't even have the strength to try to argue with him. With my load lightened, I have a sudden albeit short-lived burst of energy. We plod along for another couple of hours with Damien singing in Swahili and trying to keep our spirits up. He keeps asking me if I'm happy, and I keep asking him where the escalator is. He looks at me funny, and I figure that he just thinks it's a stupid thing to say; later I find out that he has no idea what I'm talking about. With the guides' incredible patience and gentle prodding, somehow we keep moving. We reach Stella's point as the sun comes up. Randy races up the last ten feet or so and takes pictures as the rest of us trudge up. With a cup of hot tea, and some sunshine, I get a second wind. The end is in now sight, and after a short rest, we start moving again. It's another hour or so out to Uhuru Peak -- the top. After Stella's, the grade is very gentle and the scenery becomes spectacular. We feel like we're on the top of the world. We can see huge glaciers, but we can also see a stick that shows where the glaciers were last year -- over 10 feet higher than where they are now! Scientists predict that as a result of global warming the glaciers will be gone in 10 to 15 years. |
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Click to see bigger versions of these photos |
We all make it to Uhuru Peak, where there is much celebrating and hugging, and apologies for crankiness on the way up. We've climbed to 19,341 feet!! (5895 meters for the rest of the world.) We get in line for our photo ops, admire the view for a while, eat a lot of frozen chocolate, and head down
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The walk down is long and slow, especially for those in our group who have bad knees, but it's not nearly as slow as the walk up. We reach Barafu camp mid-morning and rest, actually crash, for about an hour before a tasty lunch of soup, pasta salad, and tomato and cucumber salad. I'm amazed at the food that our cooks can produce at 15,000 feet and after spending six days on the mountain. Now we have to pack up and head down another four hours to our last campsite. It warms up dramatically as we descend, and I'm practically sleepwalking by the time we get to the next camp. In camp, they sell cold drinks, and we all chip in to buy a case of beer to share with our crew. After dinner, around 7:30, we crawl into bed, leaving the beer for the porters to enjoy. Randy, a true Canadian, has never passed up a beer before -- I'm a little worried about him. We sleep long and hard, feeling very pleased with ourselves. |
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The next day we descend another five and a half hours, and 4600 feet, to the Kidia gate, where we sign the official logbook preserving our accomplishment for posterity. We say good-bye to most of the team, and, exhausted, head back to Arusha.
For some more Kili photos, check out Ross's website.
Saturday, July 13
Arusha, Tanzania: Moivaro
Coffee Plantation Lodge
We had planned to meet my mother (Ellen) and stepfather (Sandy) after the Kili trek, and they were going to join us for the last two weeks of the trip. Before we left Arusha, we had received an e-mail that Sandy had not been feeling well and would not be joining us. At that point, my mother had not decided whether she'd be coming or not. The plan was to meet at the hotel where my mom would be, if, in fact, she was there. We came down from the mountain, and arrived at that Moivaro Coffee Plantation Lodge, hoping that she would be there, or if she wasn't, that at very least the hotel would take credit cards.
Luckily, she was there, and had spent several days on her own getting to know Arusha, and taking a mini-safari in Arusha National Park. We show up, filthy, literally covered in mud and dust, and the hotel is by far the fanciest place we've stayed so far. As the name suggests, the hotel is an old coffee plantation. The grounds are beautifully manicured, the beds have big, fluffy down comforters, and there are tropical flowers on our pillows. Randy showers first and practically bursts into tears of joy. I wash twice, and still can't get all of the dirt off. After the hot showers Xð, a couple of cold beers Xð, and a nice meal, the pain starts to fade.