Our Kilimanjaro Adventure
The Vision and Preamble
Before we start this Blog we have to tell you
where it all started, where did we get this crazy urge to climb the highest
mountain in Africa. Also, for the record the 25thhighest peak in
the world at 5,895m, Only!! 2955m below Mt Everest summit, which tops out at
8850metres and 595m higher than Everest base camp.
Kili as it is affectionately
known is the highest freestanding mountain in the world and was first summited
by Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller in October 1889. Now as many as 30,000
visitors set foot on the mountain each year most attempting to reach the top,
Uhuru peak.
Alan spent his formative years in Tanganyika and
often was impressed at the marvel and splendour of Kilimanjaro when passing by road or by Air,
the latter he has done 4 times a year for the past 3 years and I guess it was
that, which got to him, Denise and colleagues in the African Operations team of African
Oxygen talking about climbing this “mountain of the people” described as such
because all you, allegedly need, is warm clothing, good hiking boots and one or
preferably two walking sticks and of course a good guide.
The talking about the climb probably started at
the beginning of 2006 if not earlier, but alas, it appeared that talking was
all we were going to do. As winter started in South Africa, Denise and I decided
that if we really want to go, and by the way that is very important, “really
want to go” we had better make our reservations, regrettably our colleagues and
friends could not make it or declined for reasons best known to themselves.
Discussions with Wild Frontiers in Johannesburg commenced and we opted for
September, which we were advised was a good time to make our attempt.
We then had to decide on the route we would
take as there are several, Alan has to take responsibility for the
route choice, Denise thinks it was because it was the hardest that he chose the
Umbwe Route, but in all honesty, Alan says it was because it was the shortest and the
travel blurb said it was the most beautiful.
The
truth is the route is the least used, least crowded. For good reason, it is
also the most difficult route on the mountain, it is a steep, constant, almost straight
climb to the top. Umbwe is mostly avoided because the ascent profile does not
give climbers much time to adjust to the altitude and as such the success rate
is very low, it goes on to say, it is for those who want a challenging climb
and are confident in their ability to trek over consistently steep slopes and
able to meet a punishing schedule, as well as for those who are experienced climbers at
altitude. All the recommended attributes were only discovered after we had booked our safari and we doubt we were qualified to attempt this route, other than living in Johannesburg and the fact that we had done a fair amount of training,
including some hikes in the Drakensberg mountains, but we certainly did not realistically fit
the profile. The success rate on this route is 60%.
I must at this stage confess that not all the photos in the Blog are ours, what happened was that on our return to Johannesburg, we were burgled and Alan's camera and laptop were stolen and a lot of our photos went with them, as they had not been downloaded on a portable hard drive. Fortunately colleagues from another division of Afrox who climbed after us gave us a download of their photos for which we are forever grateful.
Another confession is that this adventure took place in September 2006 and we are only now putting it into a blog as it is the best format to have a travel book printed from so that the memory can be easily accessible.
Above gives some idea of the terrain on the ascent
Where is Mount Kilimanjaro
Unfortunately, or perhaps I should say
fortunately, we could not attend a talk on Kilimanjaro arranged by Wild
Frontiers in June and could only get to it in August, well after we had to
commit to the reservation, I think there is a distinct possibility we may not
have gone on the adventure at all if we had made the June talk.
The
young and obviously very fit representative from Wild Frontiers had made the
trip 6 times by various routes claiming he was inherently lazy and told us the
more unfit and we think, he said, the older you are the more chance you have of
making it. His logic was that young fit people were always in a hurry and as a
consequence ascended too fast and got mountain sickness, severe headaches,
hallucinations, and often had to descend before reaching the summit.
That was not all, he continued, any reasonably
fit person who enjoys walking can reach the summit, after all the youngest to
make it was 9 years old, a lot of good that piece of useless information was
and the oldest was 79 years old, now we are talking. He goes on to tell us that
people have died on the mountain, but it is a very small percentage, 10 per annum!! The
biggest challenge he says, would be our mental strength, and here we were, thinking we were already mental. Sticking to the guide's instructions, was very key if we wanted
to succeed, one of the instructions being “pole, pole” meaning “slowly, slowly”
in Swahili, and we were to learn the wisdom of these words, but in truth, we do
not think we could have gone much faster anyway, Denise termed our walk the “Kilimanjaro
Shuffle” and when we got down to Mombasa after the climb we found we could not
emulate it, we just could not go slow enough at sea level.
Although we had started to train for our
climb having got some good advice from the travel agent on strength-building exercises. After the talk, we thought we had better do a lot more and so we were
doing aerobic and anaerobic work every day with some reasonable hikes at the
weekends, or so we thought. We can say had we not done what we did, we would not
have been writing this account and Kilimanjaro would not have been a successful
adventure.
One
fortunate outcome of our weekend walks was to find out that Denise had a
problem with her left foot, which after about 2 to 3 hours, was very painful.
So off to a podiatrist she went, who carried out a full analysis and for a
small fortune came up with inserts for her boots to rectify the problem. The
only hitch was, she had to go to work in her hiking boots if she was going to
get used to the inserts in time for our climb, I guess it could have started a
new fashion, it certainly took Afrox’s casual wear policy to a new level.
We were equipped with a list of all the
recommended equipment and told what we could hire from the travel agent I
list these in an appendix at the end, but we will add other items that would
have made life easier and delete nonessentials, in a nutshell, we took far too
much and we will tell you why.
It was great fun shopping for our gear, but the
right equipment does not come cheap, but we are very glad we did not cut
corners, it is just not worth it, warmth is key when temperatures get as low as
minus 20 degrees C and they can drop from 0 degrees to minus 20 in half an
hour, we were lucky, it only went down to minus 15.
We arranged our trip to coincide with a BOC Kenya Board meeting Alan had to attend in Nairobi at the end of August and we scheduled Denise to arrive on Friday the 1 September and have a one-night stay in Nairobi at the lovely Fairview Hotel.
After the Board meeting, we received lots of good wishes and lots of luck from fellow Board members some of whom wished they had arranged to attempt the ascent of Kilimanjaro
The day for Denise's arrival came and I was to pick her up at the airport after waiting some time, I seriously thought the “Gods” were sending us
a bad omen, when Denise did not come through customs in Nairobi for a long time and then I see her, going from one baggage carousel to another, talking to various
people looking very concerned and then disappearing from sight. Some 45 minutes
later she comes through looking very relieved, it turned out that her baggage
that included nearly all our climbing gear had been booked through to
Kilimanjaro Airport and she had to make “Special! Arrangements” at a cost of
US$4 to recover the bags, welcome to Africa Denise.
That night we started to
get excited or was it apprehensive, but a good meal out near the pool with a
charcoal brazier to keep us warm and we were ready. The charcoal brazier is like a potjie pot sitting on a stand filled
with hot charcoal coals, which proved to be very effective.
So here we are all present and correct packed and ready to embark on the adventure of our lives.
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