Kilimanjaro Success 2013!

Kilimanjaro:

The Great Adventure of 2013 

For the full photo album, go here:

Kilimanjaro 2013!

Facts first: Kilimanjaro is the tallest freestanding mountain in the world and the tallest mountain in Africa at 19,341 feet or 5,895 meters. It is a dormant volcano. Almost every kind of ecological system is found on the mountain: cultivated land, rain forest, heath, moorland, alpine desert and an arctic summit. Approximately 25,000 people attempt to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro annually. Approximately two-thirds are successful. Altitude-related problems is the most common reason climbers turn back.

I DID NOT TURN BACK!!!

Ah, yes, the story of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. What an amazing experience, it was.

You pay per how many days you want to take to climb the mountain. The most common is 6 or 7. It is good to take your time to allow for acclimatization. I had signed up for a 6 day climb, but I ended up doing it in 5 days! Everyone was impressed, including me. 

So, Day One: Hello Jungle. 

It is so lush and just dripping with layers and layers of greenery. It was also the rainy season, so pretty much every day we hiked in the rain. It ranged from misting, light rain to downright downpours with whipping wind. We got wet. Some days soaked, but being able to warm up with chai and put on dry clothes at the end of the day made it all worth it. 

End of day one! I am not sure how long we hiked. 4 hours? 5 hours?....It was not bad. I felt tired, but not exhausted. You feel the kind of exhaustion that you get from physically exerting yourself. It my favorite type of exhaustion because you feel all tingly and good and accomplished and lying down feels absolutely fantastic.  

                             

They feed you so much food. My guide said that as long as you have an appetite and are able to eat, eat as much as you can because you don't know when you might not be feeling so well. So...eat I did! They always start out with some hot chai and a snack like popcorn or nuts. 

I love popcorn!!! On a silver platter too!

After a little break, the second course is always a yummy soup. I had cream of celery soup, potato soup, carrot and ginger soup and pumpkin soup! They were all delicious. 

After soup came fried fish, potatoes and a hearty vegetable sauce. I could not finish it all, but I gave it my best shot. 

My cook and one of the porters! Always smiling. 

The one on the left is Jackson. He was a porter, but he was also my waiter. He brought me everything. The man on the right....I can't remember his name, but he was also a kind spirited fellow. 

Last but not least, my guide, Brighton!!! Such a fantastic fellow. He has been trekking Kilimanjaro for 8 years. He called me his Queen and he treated me like one too.

So after a nice sleep in a gigantic, puffy sleeping bag, we are off! The second day was very vertical with lots of rocks. The greenery was lovely.

The porters are really amazing. They carry very large loads and they practically run up the mountain.

For some reason I really like this picture. I call it my sassy umbrella pose with a huge ass crow-like bird in the background. The one thing that I found frustrating is that most of the time we were surrounded by really thick fog. I could sense that I was surrounded by such an immense, beautiful landscape, but I just couldn't see it! It was like the mountain was teasing me!

This was our path. Such moody weather. Some times I felt like I was in the Lord of the Rings! Except, without the whole evil eye of Mordor watching over me and living in fear of Orks. 

We got above the clouds! I was nieve in thinking that it would mean that it wouldn't rain anymore. Wrong. Very, very wrong. Beautiful though. That is Mount Meru in the distance, which was a bit of a trip because we would walk by Meru everyday on our way to school. 

Day 2 down and the chai is fantastic. Dry clothes and a hot beverage makes for a happy lady. 

We maybe hiked for 5 hours that day....I never really paid attention to the time. I just kept putting one foot on front of the other. One great piece of advice that my dad gave me was to always look where you put your feet. This was in regards to a construction zone setting, but pretty much applicable to all life situations. Except for sleep. I don't think you need to watch where you put your feet when you sleep. 

The peak of Kilimanjaro decided to show itself on the morning of the 3rd day. So beautiful. 

The clouds parted so that I could see Shira needle too. This was looking out the door of my tent. Pretty nice view. 

A little early morning yoga to get ready for the day's trek. 

The landscape on the third day was spectacular. On day three, they work to acclimatize you, so you hike high and sleep low. We hiked up to Lava Tower which was 4600 meters. The hiking was rough, though, on the 3 hour ascent. The weather was bad. The rain was coming down hard and the wind was coming from all directions, plus it was cold. I did my best not to complain, however, it was nice to know that I wasn't crazy or a wimp when my guide admitted that the weather was really bad. He was always 100% positive and optimistic about everything, so if he acknowledged the weather...then I knew it was real. 

There is no way to portray the scale of this landscape. It was incredibly immense though. This was on the descent towards camp. The whole valley opened up to these large, cascading rivers pouring over and carving through rocky caverns. 

These "trees" were gigantic also. I just felt like I was transported to another land. 

We arrived at Barafu camp after about 6 or 7 hours of hiking. I have to say that was the hardest day yet. The combination of climbing high, gaining altitude, weather and then climbing downhill on wet rocks for many hours put some exhaustion in the old body. It was still fun though. Brighton and I got along great, so we just kept the whole thing playful. He was very attentive to me. 

In this picture he is pointing to the "breakfast wall" at our camp. That is what we had to climb the next day. It sure is something to be able to see what you will literally have to conquer in the morning. I was a bit intimidated, but excited for the challenge. 

The sunset was amazing...

Brighton, my fearless leader.

I love this picture of the mountain.

And.....off we go. The breakfast wall was a piece of cake!

Woopie!!!!! I made it to the top! Well, of one giant piece of rock at least. More to come. 

I absolutely loved this...to indicate that you are going the right way, people have built little piles of stones along the path. The visual is just stunning to me. Just a silent indicator made out of the natural elements of the area, but yet a very human presence. It struck an odd feeling of comfort inside of me. Almost a sense of being taken care of and also an indicator that so many people have passed this way before. A shared experience. 

  

So this is day 4 now....This was our last camp before summit. You start the climb to summit at about 11 pm or midnight. I was not able to sleep beforehand and we had come off of a fairly brutal, 7 hour day of hiking, but I had adrenaline! You climb through the night with a headlamp, while gaining altitude. I believe that we went from about 4600 meters to 5895 meters. I was so pleased with how my body handled the altitude. I never felt nauseous. I had occasional headaches, but they weren't bad. What I did experience on the night of the summit was a bit of hallucinatory, delusional type visuals. It wasn't uncomfortable or disconcerting, just a noticeable change in my physical state.  

So there are no photos of the summit, mostly because it was dark and I was going mildly crazy...My guide was great. He helped me keep my pace and stay focused. I had never thought of myself as competitive before...but I may need to think again. Over the past few days, I was the first to arrive at camp before all the other climbers. I was also occasionally passing porters. I wasn't even trying. I was just going with what felt right. My guide was very impressed. So that got me thinking...maybe I could be the first to summit. So I decided that's what I wanted. 

When we started out around 11.30 or 12, looking up towards the mountain, all I could see was a slow, bobbing line of headlamps. So surreal. We hit the mountain. Within 30 minutes to an hour, we had passed everyone on the mountain! I kept telling myself..."this is not a competition. Listen to your body. Don't push yourself. The goal is to make it to the top..." I still really wanted to be the first though.

The climbing was hard. I think it was mostly the challenge of the altitude. Many times all I could do was cycle my breathes in time with my extremely slow foot steps and concentrate on my body. There were a lot of silent self pep-talks in my head. This was the first time I felt truly challenged. It was physically hard. However, I think that it was almost a bigger mental challenge. You just had to keep going. One foot in front of the other. Stay focused. Stay strong. 

So, after 6 hours of hiking through the night and watching the moon cross over the sky, we were the first ones to reach Uhuru peak right as the sun was coming up!!!!!

Me and Brighton!

Now for some lovely photos of the sunrise and the glaciers....

And....I'm down!

The sun is coming up....

Annnnnd......I'm back up!

Absolutely gorgeous

I feel lucky.

VICTORIOUS!!! 

Back in the states, my friends own and operate an amazing studio called Four Gates. I do kettlebells, yoga and dance there. The people are amazing and the workouts make you healthy in mind, body and spirit. I climbed the mountain with the spirit of Four Gates!

Pamoja tunaweza!

Together, we can. 

So that is about it for the photos. After summiting, we had about a 3 hour hike back to camp. That was the most exhausted I had been on the climb. Normally I didn't like stopping for breaks, but I stopped many times because I was just physically exhausted. Having had no sleep before the summit, I had essentially done 13 hours of hiking! So we got back to camp and I took a half hour nap. Then I had some chai, and some food...and we talked....about our itinerary and expectations. I was feeling better. 

We had to break camp and move on. Most move on to the last camp and stay the night there. I wanted to see if I could hike all the way down the mountain in one day. So, we got on our way. I felt so good, I was practically running down the mountain at times! I think it was a combination of delirium, sleep deprivation and adrenaline running through my veins. 

So we told our crew to hold up at Mweka camp until we got there. That is where we were scheduled to camp, but we were going to see how I felt. When we got there and I gave them the thumbs up to keep going, they all got the biggest smiles on their faces. They were happy to be done. It was raining again and this meant that they didn't have to set up camp in the rain. 

The last leg was all downhill in the jungle. It took about 3 hours. We got to the bottom at about 6 or 7 p.m. We had left camp after summiting at about 11 a.m. By that time my knees hurt so bad ad my feet felt like they were bleeding--they weren't, but I had developed some gigantic blisters. So every step hurt and it was one of the first times I asked Brighton, 'how much further?'...

When I got to the bottom, my whole crew was there cheering for me: "Hongera! Hongera sana! Una simba! Nguvu sana!"

Which means, congratulations very much. You are a lion. You are very strong!

So, I summited and hiked all the way from Uhuru peak to the bottom in one day!!!

I'm still having a hard time believing that I did that. Many people, including my porters, guide and owner of the company that I climbed with were very impressed. So, I guess I feel like bragging a little. It was an amazing experience and I am so glad that I was able to do it. 

Sometimes it is good to push yourself to your limits. I am not sure if I reached my limit, but I definitely proved some of my own strengths to myself. 

It felt really, really good.

Now I will just have to come back and climb in the dry season so I can see what scenery was hiding behind all of those clouds!

Love,

Sadie