The final ascent and a very slippery one
Midnight arrived all too soon and bleary-eyed we assembled for our
final ascent to the peak of Kilimanjaro. As we looked up the mountain, we could
see the lights of climbers high up on the Machame route and others who had used
Barafu Hut as their final base camp and had got away earlier than us.
We are again warned that we should go “Pole Pole” slowly, slowly,
as though we had a choice and were in danger of sprinting up the final leg. We
were also reminded that if at any time we felt sick, bad headaches, or hallucinations we should ask to come down the mountain and one of the guides
would accompany us. I said to Denise it is only 1195 meters “what could go
wrong”
This part of the climb, in the dark, was quite daunting, but we could
see the dancing lights of the climbers ahead of us, but at no time did they appear to get closer.
It was a test of our concentration and putting one foot ahead of the
other was hard. Alan was the first to feel the effects of altitude sickness and
desperately needed a drink of water, alas his water was frozen, but Denise charmed a fellow climber who gave us water from his bottle, I still do not know why
his had not frozen as well, but what a relief. Alan was not going to give up as he was thinking to himself, how he had pulled up with 5 kilometres to go in the
Comrades Marathon, that sad thought kept him going and he must have walked
through the worst. There is a lot of loose shale-like rock and we often slipped
and fell. The other plus was being able to motivate each other to continue.
Our first target is Stella Point and we are told that if we reach
there we need to go no further as we would be credited with having reached the
top. We had been climbing for some 5 hours when our guide said "Here comes the
sun" It was a sight for sore eyes, but when asked how much further, our guide
tells us we still have another hour to Stella Point, the beauty of the sunrise
was not fully appreciated nor was another hour scrambling up this mountain. However,
we pushed on and at this stage, Denise is starting to feel the effects of
altitude sickness, now it is Alan's turn to cajole and encourage her.
It is well after sunrise when we finally reach Stella Point and we
have to decide whether we should continue to Uhuru Peak, I argued that we had
come so far and we would not have a second chance and it looked quite an easy
stroll along a ridge with little climbing to do, in fact, a climb of 170 meters
and a distance of just over 1 kilometre, Denise was feeling unwell and said we
had conquered the mountain, but bless her she agreed to continue.
Now we were seeing a
number of other climbers, some looking like hell and others like they were on a
pleasant hike in the Lake District of England, we fell somewhere in between. In all honesty, we looked like
glazed toffee apples with our faces covered in a mixture of snot and sweat.
This last leg took us nearly one hour, at the coast it would probably take us 10 minutes.
The views are spectacular and we share some as follows:-
Close-up of the Fire Pit
The edge of the Fire Pit and Crater
The Glacier
Another View of the Glacier
The Glacier Wall look at the People walking in front
With a monumental effort, we reach Uhuru Peak the highest point on Kilimanjaro, credit to Denise she walked through her altitude sickness, in fact, she was urging other climbers to keep going. You have a very limited time at the summit as there are many climbers who want their photos taken and our guides were concerned about our resilience to the dreaded altitude sickness and we had a tricky descent to cope with.
Alan and Denise at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro the Roof of Africa
Uhuru Peak
Denise With definite proof she made it
We passed quite a number of climbers as we started our descent and our guide said we were a bit behind time and would stop at High Camp instead of all the way to Mweka, which we were to appreciate. The going was not easy, but at least all signs of altitude sickness disappeared after 30 minutes. However, we were faced with the jarring of the knees and ankles as we descended and our lesson here is that if you have any issue with any of your joints the descent will find them and Alan wished he had a prosthetic knee in the right leg as well. It was a long day, we picked up the gear we had left at Barafu Camp and pressed on with little rest.
After some formalities and negotiations with the authorities at High Camp, we were allowed to stay. We were not privy to what they explained to get us to stay the night, probably said Alan was dying and he looked it and felt it.
We had a good meal although it took a lot of cajoling to get Alan to eat, all he wanted to do was sleep, but the guides said it was important that he eat something.
It was a long day and we were delighted that it was over and tomorrow we would be back in civilisation.
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