Kilimanjaro (Andrew)

So we're finally back! After 7 long days on Kilimanjaro, we are proud to say that we're all healthy and alive. Yay. Its been a pretty grueling experience, but we made it. (PS I've added some new photos throughout, so look for updates).

We started at 6,000 feet from Macheme Gate, along a 5 hour hike through a rainforest at the base of the mountain up to camp at 10,000 feet. The forest was pretty dense with lush vegetation, rather muddy, but unfortunately lacked many animals. After my initial experience with altitude sickness (Scott will vividly remember this on Mt Schilthorn in Switzerland), I was very happy to suffer no ill effects on this initial climb. We all seemed in pretty good shape after the first climb, which was not overly tiring, but a good way to get in shape. Unfortunately the whole area was covered in a dense fog (actually clouds).

It wasn't until the next morning that we could finally see Kilimanjaro. We joked that it didn't exist up until this point, because no one had seen it through layers of clouds. We travelled up to 12,500 feet through a rather cool ascension of rocky paths with large boulders overlooking the clouded rainforest and valleys of senecia trees and bushes below. After about 4-5 hours of uphill trekking we finally settled at Shira camp, which had a beautiful view of Kilimanjaro on one side, and endless layers of clouds below with Mount Meru (the 2nd highest peak in Tanzania) sticking out from the clouds below. I took a picture of our camp at sunset with this exact view. At night we gazed up at the stars, which was one of the most awesome experiences, especially considering that in the US there's too much light obscuring our view of the stars. We could clearly make out the Milky Way, Mars, Venus, the Southern Cross, and almost every star in the sky. It was pretty cool.

The third day was a lot harder than we expected. From our initial hike, the trees and bushes gave way to much rockier terrain with only scatterred shrubs, almost no animals, and extremely harsh winds. Although starting at 12,500 feet, we eventually made it up to 15,300 feet at Lava Tower (a huge foot shaped igneous rock formation - Gabrielle you definitely know this, you Earth Science whiz!) Apparently from there it was only a 4 hour hike to the top. While tempted, we heard 10 Americans died going up that way about 15 years ago, and decided not to repeat their error. Instead we moved on to camp at 12,850 feet. Our legs were very tired, but our resolve remained strong.

On Day 4 we conducted our most technically challenging climb of the week, scaling the Baranco Wall, which Justin and I seemed to enjoy the most, but Rachel was a little less happy about. Although we could easily have slipped and fallen to our demise, the views of the glacial river valley below were awesome, as they were filled with 3 waterfalls, and neat rock formations. We hiked for about 3 hours that day, going down a moderately treacherous valley and coming up it to reach our campsite at 13,300 feet. As with the past couple of nights, they all were Freezing! We all wore most of our layers to sleep, huddled up in our sleeping bags, not wanting to venture out of our tents but for food and climbing.

Day 5 saw all signs of vegetation vanish, as we ascended the mountain to find a martian like terrain covered with rocks, more rocks, and rocks that oddly looked like broken pottery. The only thing that was missing was the red soil. We reached Barafu camp at about 2pm, at 14,910 feet, nearly 4,500 feet short of Uhuru Peak, the top of Kilimanjaro. Unfortuantely, we had to go to sleep by 5:30 as we would be waking up at 10:45pm to ascend Kilimanjaro!! Granted I don't normally go to sleep until 12-1am anyway, this was pretty challenging.

We woke up, working on 3 1/2 hours of sleep, starting our climb at midnight. Covered in about 5 layers of clothes, we marched our way up the mountain. I though 6 and a half hours might pass by pretty quickly, but was I wrong. Walking through the dark with only headlamps, we used every ounce of energy we had to reach our goal. I was so tired from lack of sleep that I tried to eat anything to give me some energy boost, but they were often fleeting. The air, steadily getting colder, gave me brain freeze, which I was afraid might be an early sign of altitude sickness. About 4 hours into the climb, we were almost completely out of energy. With 2 and a half hours remaining, and much more climbing left to go we relied on sheer willpower to move us forward. I knew that once we reached Stella's Point (about 18,600 feet) and about 45 minutes from Uhuru Peak, I'd be able to make it on adrenaline alone. At 5:45am we reached Stella's Point to much joy. Walking on with the light finally revealing a now relatively flat rocky surface with little snow, but ice formations shaped liked shark teeth littering the ground. To our left lay a massive glacier (although apparently receding). Finally at 6:30am we saw the sign for Uhuru Peak, the tallest point in all of Africa at 19,340 feet. We finally made it! We jumped for joy, took photos, and congratualted each other.

After 20 minutes on the top, and soon developing a headache, we made our way down, and as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we needed to descend over 9,000 feet (about a 7 hour hike on top of our already 6 1/2 hour hike). This made for some extraordinarily sore knees, causing our muscles to tighten and our speed to grind to snail like pace. Finally at 5pm we reached camp at 10,000 feet, exhausted and ready to get off the mountain, but first sleep.

The next day we walked down the rainforest again, this time a little muddier. By 11:30am we reached Mweka gate and our long journey was over.