Conquering Kili!

Jambo  friends!  WE MADE IT!! Rather  than starting with all the summit  details,  we'll  give you a day  by day  summary of our trek.  Here  goes!

Day 1: Welcome to "dry season"
We were picked up from our hotel by our guide Amani  bright and  early.  He  started  to load our bags on to what appeared  to be a full local bus - little  did we  know,  the  bus was  filled  with our entire crew!  12  porters,  2 cooks and  1 guide.  So many men to get 3  little girls  up  one  mountain!! We  drove  2 hours to Kilimanjaro National Park and entered through the Machame gate  ready to start our climb. As we were waiting  for our crew to be  ready, we met  some other  people starting the Machame route that  day. A group of  doctors from the states  caught our eye, as  we noticed  they had brought their own PULSE  OXIMETER!! Julia and Allison tried  to befriend them in order to get our sats at  the summit. Once the crew was ready,  we  began our  trek with Amani. He  told us it would be about  4  hours of  walking, mostly uphill, through a rainforesty  environment. And then came the rain. None of us were expecting  this, as  its currently Africa's  dry season, but it poured on us for most of  the walk. We finally arrived at  Machame hut,  which sits  at  3000m  above sea  level (asl), and was our camping  spot for the night.

Day 2: Meeting the Irish       
We started  the day with another 4 hour,  but this time there was sun!  We left  the rainforest and broke  into rocky terrain. Along  the way, we passed a  number of trekkers, including  a large group of singing, boisterous  Irish people. They were a group of 44, members of an Irish NGO called  CONCERN doing  the trek as  a  fundraiser. They asked us where  we  were  from,  and misheard  "Canada"  as  "Kenya" - so for the  rest  of the trip,  the  three of us were  dubbed "the Kenyans". The walk  ended  at  Shira  hut,  which sits at  3800m  asl.  We spent the afternoon exploring our  campsite -  the clouds had finally cleared, and we caught our first glimpse of the Kibo peak of Mount  Kilimanjaro (the one we were  attempting  to summit).

Day 3: Up,  down,  up,  down. Repeat.
Today was a day for acclimatization,  which means a  LOT  of  up  and down. The morning  was  mostly uphill, and after about 4 hours we stopped for  lunch. As  we  ate, we heard  hail start to pelt our tent. Nonetheless, we bundled  up and continued  upwards to the Lava  Tower  (4600m  asl), which was the highest point  we would reach that day.  We  spent  20 minutes there  hanging out, acclimatizing, and taking pictures  after  the hail  subsided. Then came our first significant downhill. We went for about 3  hours before we  reached our campsite  for the night - Barranco, sitting  at  3900m asl, and at the foot of  the famous Barranco Wall. Amani looked at  us with a smile and said  "tomorrow you climb that!". Allison  was  excited, Julia needed to be  convinced  by Amani  that she would NOT fall off  the wall,  and Nicole  was  most  concerned  with  finding  a place to  pee (note:  at  this point, we  had  stopped  using "outhouses", and opted  more often  for  voiding behind large  trees,  rocks, or  anything that didn't move).

Day 4: The beginning of the longest day of life
This epic day started  with scaling the Barranco wall. We were comforted by the fact that the Irish had started ahead of us,  and were  periodically yodeling to the members  of their  group  still at  the campsite. The wall entailed an hour and a half of using our hands and feet to scramble up a mostly vertical wall - note  Julia  did  not  fall off!! At the top  we were  rewarded with a beautiful view of  Kibo peak, blue skies, and fluffy white clouds below us. Yes, another  photoshoot ensued - by this time, Amani  was a  seasoned  veteran with Nicole's  camera, after  days of  "Amani, can you just take this one picture for  us? Make sure you get ALL of  ________ in the back,  and ________ beside us.  Asante sana!". We  walked down, and then up  again,  and stopped  for lunch at  Karanga campsite where Julia and Nicole opted for a little power  nap  in  the  sun. For those doing Machame  in  7 days, they would  stay here for  the night.  Since we chose the 6 day option ( we  are  SO  intense),  our day continued  with a 3 hour climb to Barafu  hut which sits  at  4600m  asl  (aka  BASE CAMP!!). This  is the camp  from  which we would  attempt to summit  Kili in a  few short hours. We arrived at Barafu  around  4:30pm,  and Amani  put a rush on  our  dinner so that we would have time  to  nap  before our 10:30pm  WAKE  UP CALL to  begin  our summit attempt  before  midnight. Yowza. We  had dinner at  6, were in  bed  by 7. None of us slept much because Allison was too excited, Julia was nervous, and Nicole was wondering  how  she'd exit her summit outfit and  find an  appropriate place to  pee on  Kili. Fortunately,  none  of us had  experienced  any serious altitude-related  symptoms, so we  were feeling  confident we could make  it up. However, none of us could have  known what the next  12  hours  would  entail...     


Day  5: To the SUMMIT!!!
After a  little nap  and  a quick breakfast at  10:30pm, we  bundled up in basically everything we  brought and  departed camp by 11:30. Accompanied by Amani  and two of our porters,we set out in the pitch black  with only the stars  and  the light of our headlamps to  guide us. We  were told that we had  a  6  hour climb  to the  crater  rim (5700m asl), followed by another hour hike to the summit. Amani timed this so that we  should be hitting the summit  right at  sunrise - all we  had to do was  make  it! There are no words to describe this night, certainly no pictures to document  these hours, and  no  way to convey how truly physically and  mentally grueling it was, but here is our best attempt. In terms of  the terrain,  the first  hour was  steep  and rocky,  followed by 4 hours of freezing  cold (think -15) switchbacks,  topped  off  by another  steep hour  to  the crater rim. In terms of us,  Julia  had a body of  lead (most likely due to altitude),  which certainly didn't help her hoist herself up the rocks. Nicole was dragging a  bum  leg up the mountain  (she had to  literally pick it up, and place it on the next  rock), while simultaneously battling nausea  and the spins. What was  this, a terrible  hangover?! Allison was in relatively good shape, until the legitimate fear of losing digits to frostbite set  in around  crater time. Amani was our hero during this trying time, doing everything  from  carrying  our bags, to opening our water,  to  putting our gloves back on  for us.  We're  sure he'd  have  fed  us our frozen powerbars if we'd asked.

Things  got significantly brighter at the rim, as  the sun  began to rise, and  we realized the hardest part was  behind  us. We had only an hour of  gradual climbing  left  until we reached the summit and the famous sign  that marks it. Julia then exclaimed "this  is the best and worst day of my life!!" and  we  set off  for the summit. The  walk  was actually nice, and we could  appreciate  the beautiful sunrise  to our  right  and the enormous glaciers to  our  left.  Once again, Amani was  right -  this  was  the perfect time to summit. We reached  the  Uhuru  peak  sign, which marked  5895m  asl, at  6:30am - this marked  7  straight hours of trekking up Kili. We shared a group  hug (and perhaps a few  tears),  snapped some pictures  with the famous sign (kudos to Nicole for  braving  the cold and getting her  camera out!),  and turned  right around to get the hell off that mountain.

Although the weather was  warming up, and the scenery was still breathtaking, we  were significantly less pumped for the 3 hour descent  that  faced us. The highlight  of the way down was  passing our favourite group of Irish  who were still on their  way up.  They weren't  their usual boisterous selves, so  we decided to chat them up and cheer them on. The man  who had dubbed us "the Kenyans" made his way over to us for a  high five and thanked us for the encouragement.  We  were happy  we could give them  a boost, as they had made all of  our previous days brighter. We finally arrived  back at  base camp around 9am, were handed mango  juice (our favourite!),  and were  instructed to go nap  for a whopping 2  hours  (a  common  theme in the  last  two days). We were awoken at 11am  for  lunch,  before it was  time to hike AGAIN  for another 3  hours  in  the afternoon. Sore  and exhausted, we  arrived at  Mweka  hut  (3100m  asl) for our  first  real  nights  sleep in 48h.

What a giant day!!!

Day 6: Our crew can sing!
Contrary to what you might think,  6am  wake up STILL  feels early after a 7pm bedtime. This morning however,  we were  pulled  out of  our tent  by Amani's promise  that the crew would do a song and dance for  us post-breakfast. We  scarfed  down  our porridge from our favourite purple  pot (in  which all  good  food comes),  and ventured  outside for the show.  And what a show it was!  They sang a traditional  Tanzanian  song,  and  inserted details  about our climb into it (fear  not,  Julia has  a  video). Then we began our last hike  - two  and  a half hours downhill to our waiting  bus. We  picked up our official Kili completion certificates and some  souvenir  t-shirts and boarded our bus back to Arusha. It  was  clear  that our crew  had become more comfortable with us,  since  our bus ride this time  consisted of  a song and dance party to everything from Shaggy to Leanne Rimes to local Arushan  rap sensations. We  returned  to the hotel,  booked our flights to ZANZIBAR (leaving  tomorrow!!), and have never been more  ready for a  beach vaycay.

All in all it was an unforgettable experience -  definitely challenging,  but very rewarding. We feel lucky that we  were all able to summit and  stayed  relatively healthy. This is something we  will   certainly remember forever.  Now on to  ZANZIBAR!!