The Big
Day is less than half an hour old as we carefully pick our way in the light of
our headlamps through the rocks and boulders scattered around the camp. We can see the actual trail heading up a short
distance away. Julio was hoping that the
night would be clear and there would be a lot of moonlight, but unfortunately,
this is not the case. It’s not
completely overcast though, and there is some light from the moon and the stars
but it’s not enough. We definitely need
the headlamps that each of us has. This first part of the climb involves some
pretty steep spots, and at places it’s like when we were on the Barranco
wall. About half an hour into the trek I
look up, and the sight in front blows my mind.
We are in a line of climbers making their way up and I can see a snaking
trail of lights from the headlamps of all the climbers in front of us. Counting the climbers and guides there must
be at least thirty people in front of and above us, and as I glance over my
shoulder, at least that many people behind and below us! We are climbing over a rocky trail
interspersed with volcanic scree, although most of the scree is to our right
and off the main trail heading up.
What
strikes me though is the relentlessly uphill nature of the trail. Over the first hour, we have not encountered
a single flat section. I figure we’ll be
cresting a hill at some point, but no – any time I glance up, all I see is a
winding trail of lights above me on the mountainside. It suddenly dawns on me that we are actually on Mt. Kilimanjaro right now, and my
heart sinks. Damn, there won’t be any flat stretches until we get to the
top. I think back to the map I had been
looking at before setting off: basically we are heading straight up the
mountain in a roughly northwesterly direction.
Kilimanjaro is actually a volcano with a flattish top that rings a
crater. I recall that the location on
the rim that we will be reaching is called Stella Point, but this is not the
true “peak” because the rim actually heads up slightly higher (about 165 meters) to the highest point - Uhuru Peak
- that is further north and west.
It’s expected to be about a 45-minute walk from Stella to Uhuru, but
that will be the only stretch that is even remotely flat.
Julio
had mentioned that it would take us about six to seven hours to get to the peak
and we’re barely an hour and a half into the trek. Another five to six hours of this? You have got
to be kidding me! The first thing I
resolve is that as far as possible I’m going to try and avoid looking up
because each time I do so I can see no end.
Second, I decide I will not look
at my watch. Unfortunately, I don’t do
too well at keeping either resolution, especially the first one. We inch along slowly: man, it’s polepole with a vengeance! The trail is crowded and everyone else is
also moving along pretty slowly. Almost nobody talks. Well, except the guides, several of whom are
either exchanging pleasantries with each other or actually singing loudly! Every now and then I see people getting off
the trail to throw up, while someone else from their team pauses to administer back-rubs and try and offer encouragement. About
two hours in I am starting to feel pretty warm and I take off my neck gaiter and
my fleece jacket and stuff them into my daypack, which already has my rain
jacket. Abdallah grabs my pack and
insists on carrying it. He only has a
light load with a flask of tea, some water and some other miscellany, and he insists
that he will carry my pack. “It will be
much easier for you,” he says with a grin.
I am in no mood to dissent and gratefully hand my pack over to him. Julio,
who brought almost nothing along, has already taken Don’s pack and so we both
have nothing but our hiking poles to carry.
We pause
every ten or fifteen minutes to catch our breath, get some water, perhaps a
snack (a Cliff bar or some trail mix or some energy beans). Again, we’re pretty quiet when we stop, and
Julio and Abdallah offer up encouragement.
Sometimes we get caught behind a larger group and to my mild irritation,
on a couple of occasions Julio inexplicably leads us off the trail to overtake
them – this after all of his exhortations to go slow and not be bothered by
people going faster than us! I really have
no interest in setting any time records, but perhaps he thinks we’re in good
enough shape to go faster. We plod
along. Our steps are increasingly
becoming baby steps and our breaks seem to be coming more frequently. At one point I glance at my watch and I’m
stunned that it’s been only twenty minutes since the last time I had looked at
it – I was certain it’d been at least two hours. I have half a mind to remove
my watch and throw it away. Neither
Julio nor Abdallah seem particularly perturbed by our pace, though. Don and I
have hardly exchanged five sentences since we left camp – we’re both in a kind
of trance!
At one
point, Abdallah and I pull ahead a bit as Don stops to get a snack and Julio
waits with him. I wish I could be as
disciplined as Don about regularly getting some sugar into my system – this is
important. I think I've been really good with drinking lots of water, but
somehow, the very thought of food makes me want to throw up. As we trudge on, I look up. Same damn line of
headlamps up above – there’s no end in sight.
The first word that comes into my mind is “unreasonable.” I mean, come on man – we've been climbing for
eons and we HAVE to be getting close to the top! The screams from my lungs are doing their
best to drown out the screams from my legs.
I glance at Abdallah and ask with great trepidation: “How much further
to Stella Point?” “Oh, we are close,
maybe an hour and a half or an hour and forty five minutes,” he says cheerily.
I am
stunned and completely overwhelmed. “Wait, I need to rest a bit,” I croak. This is without any doubt the lowest I have
felt on the entire trip. Another hour and forty five minutes of steep uphill? You cannot be serious – there’s no way in
hell I can do it, and I’m about ready to give up. I pause to take a deep breath and drink a lot
of water. My bladder is suddenly full
and I wander off behind a boulder to relieve myself. I deliberately fish around in my pack for
something to eat – some trail mix, some energy jelly beans, and a little vial
of one of those “instant energy” things that Don had given me. It is disgustingly sweet and I almost throw
up as I suck the contents down. Some
more water follows. “Ready?” asks
Abdallah. “We shouldn't sit for too long
otherwise you will start to get cold.”
This has been the longest break yet for me, and Don and Julio are
catching up just as I force myself off the rock on which I had been seated. They both sit down to rest as Abdallah and I
take off – Don doesn't ask me how far along we are and I certainly don't want
to say anything. He looks tired but he
certainly doesn't look like he wants to quit.
The next
hour or so passes in a fog. All I know
is that I have to keep going. One foot,
then the other. Repeat. Polepole. I have no idea how long this has been going
on when Abdallah points up and says “Look, Stella Point.” Huh? I can’t see any Stella Point. All I see is mountain. Then my eyes focus a bit and I see a small
group of people on what seems like a clearing in the distance high above, while
others are approaching them. There’s the
faint light of daybreak by now and the headlamps are fewer in number. My heart
begins to beat faster – we’re getting closer to the rim. I have no illusions and I know that even
though it seems pretty close by it will probably take at least thirty minutes
more. Sure enough, that is indeed the
case. Slightly after 6 AM Abdallah and I
finally crawl over the last rock and are greeted by a green wooden sign that offers
up congratulations for reaching “Stella Point: 5739M. A.M.S.L.”
 |
| Finally on the crater rim: Stella Point |
Don and
Julio are there a few minutes later and we all high-five each other. Suddenly,
I feel better than I've ever felt in my life; I am breathing freely, my legs
are fine and I’m even a bit hungry. Wow!
There are about ten to twelve other people there and we take our turn getting
several pictures in front of the sign. Don thinks this is it and we've made it to the
peak, but I explain to him that we still have another 45 minutes or so to
go. Doesn't bother him the slightest bit
though! At this point, I too know that
we will definitely be making it to the peak – nothing’s going to stop us
now. I almost feel like I could jog the
last stretch. Abdallah pulls out his thermos
and pours us all some hot ginger-tea, and we sip from our cups and glance down
in the direction of the mountainside on which we had come up. There’s a spectacular display of red and
orange and pink through the clouds below us, heralding the dawning of a new
day. I cannot find words to describe how
I am feeling right now.
 |
| Sunrise from Stella Point: Jan 2, 2013 |
Slightly
after 6:30 AM we set off on the last stretch.
Don and I feel great and we overtake several people. There’s one European climber who looks to be
in his late forties or early fifties and whose backpack is emblazoned with
dozens of patches – Machu Pichu, Tibet, Mt. Kailash, Fuji, some other
German/Swiss mountain. He’s obviously a
veteran. But he is not looking good. We
ask if he’s really been to all of these places and he waves his hands at us and
croaks “No, no – cannot talk!” A bit
further ahead I run into the Indian lady from Minneapolis that we had last seen
at Barranco. She too looks wiped out but
she is cheerful and smiles as I pass her.
I ask her about the rest of her group and she says the two from Bahrain
are a little bit ahead and her daughter is a little bit behind. Nothing about her husband though. “Well, we’re almost there; see you at the top,”
I say as I move ahead.
 |
| Finally there! |
Around
7:15 we see the end of the road. There’s
another big green board announcing that we are now at “Uhuru Peak, 5895 M.
A.M.S.L. – Africa’s highest point.” We
pause to shake hands and high-five each other, but this feels almost
anti-climactic after Stella Point! I think the best part of it is that I feel
absolutely no ill effects whatsoever, even though we’re at a place where the
oxygen level is less than 40% of what it is at sea level. I contrast this with my experience when I was
at Mt. Whitney some years ago – a good 5,000 feet lower than where we stand
right now and I was just so
sick. Clearly, we did a great job at
acclimatizing (and oh yes, the Diamox helped too, I am sure). Anyway, it’s an exhilarating feeling, and all
the discomfort on our way up seems completely worth it now.
 |
| No explanation required! |
 |
| Glacier |
 |
| Atop the summit |
There
are probably fifteen to twenty other climbers there and we get in line to get
pictures in front of the sign. Julio
grabs our cameras and argues with some of the other porters to keep the line
moving and to get their clients out of the way when we get our pictures
taken. There’s a group of Russians who
unfurl their country’s flag as they pose, and another group of East Europeans
who take forever as they get shots in every possible permutation and combination within
their group. Finally, Don and I push our
way up. I get a picture with the
Pittsburgh Steelers Terrible Towel and Julio is somewhat mystified by it as he
clicks away. Once we’re done with the
pictures we wander around for a bit. Julio takes us to edge of the rim and points
down at the crater below. There’s a camp
site there too at over 5,700 meters that he points out to us, and one of the lesser
known routes involves getting to this site (Crater Camp) and then scaling the last
couple of hundred meters of the mountain in one day from there. On the opposite
side from the crater are a series of magnificent glaciers that Julio points out
to us, and we take a few more pictures.
 |
| Julio and Abdallah |
A little
over fifteen minutes from when we arrived at the peak, Julio announces that
it’s time to leave. We take one last
look at Uhuru and then we set off on our way back. From here, it’s all downhill – literally as
well as figuratively! Our friend from
Minneapolis is making it to the peak just as we are leaving, and we offer her
our congratulations. Once again,
Abdallah and I walk on ahead as Don gets something to eat from his daypack and
follows with Julio. On the way back to
Stella Point I see a familiar face – it’s the friendly Norwegian lady from Voss,
whom I had not seen since the Barranco wall.
She sees me coming down and squeals and hugs me as she offers
congratulations. I return the compliment
and tell her she’ll be at the peak in about fifteen minutes; she looks very
relieved. Abdallah and I are at Stella
Point in a little over twenty minutes; less than half the time it took us on the
way up. We sit and wait for Don and
Julio who are there about ten minutes later, and we all set off for Barafu.
The way
down is not the same as the way up. It’s
parallel to the route we took coming up, but the big difference is that almost
all of it is down loose scree and not on rocks.
I am having a hard time as we come down.
It’s hard on my knees and my toes are just killing me as they knock
against the front of my boots. Julio
shows me how to come sliding down after planting my heels first rather than my
toes, and this helps a bit. I have to
admit though, that I am definitely NOT enjoying the trek down – walking down steep
slopes has always been one of my least favorite parts of trekking and today is
no exception. We stop a couple of times
to rest, and around 10:15 AM we take a long break for some more
ginger-tea. A guide from some other
group stops and converses with Abdallah.
I gather that he’d like some of the tea!
Abdallah tips his head back and swallows the contents of his cup, then
refills it from his flask and offers it up to the other guy, who gratefully
gulps it down with a couple of big swigs before saying asante and moving on.
By now
we’re done with the scree and it’s strictly downhill over rocks. There are several other people also coming
down and everyone looks pretty tired.
There’s an older lady we had seen on top who looks to be in
exceptionally bad shape and is being half-carried down by her guide. I’m amazed that all of us climbers look the
same way – much more deflated than we were up at Uhuru! I also realize that my chest cold that seemed
to have gone away the last couple of days has returned with a vengeance, and I
find myself coughing and spitting out thick, vile, yellow gunk at regular
intervals.
About
half an hour later we finally catch sight of Barafu and the tents scattered
around the camp site. Two of our porters,
Alex and Dickson, have trekked up to greet us with water in case we need some;
I guess Julio had been in communication with the camp over his
walkie-talkie. They take our daypacks
and lead the way down over the last thirty minutes or so. At around 11:30 we finally stumble back to
where we had started – almost twelve hours ago.
High-fives are exchanged with several of the crew members who
congratulate us warmly. Emmanuel has hot
soup and pancakes of some sort awaiting us in the mess tent, and we eat a
bit. Julio asks us how we are feeling
and whether we should go to Millennium or all the way down to Mweka after a
short rest. It’s not even close –
neither Don nor I have any inclination to walk an inch more than necessary
today. Don jokes that it’d be nice if we
had an emergency and we could get a helicopter to airlift us! Anyway, Millennium it definitely is. “OK,” says Julio, “Let’s plan to leave around
1:00 or 1:30 PM then. That’ll give you
an hour to rest and pack up.” We crawl
into our tent just as it starts to rain.
Suddenly, it strikes us both – today was the first day on the climb that
we had NO rain whatsoever. And it was on
summit day; we couldn't have asked for more perfect climbing conditions. I
mean, how cool is that?!
The plan
is to pack up when we get into our tents, but we are too tired to set about the
task and decide to lie down for a bit. Don
is fast asleep almost immediately. I
make a half-hearted attempt at getting my stuff stowed, when all of a sudden it
gets real noisy outside. I look through
the mesh flap to the inner tent where we have our sleeping bags and suddenly notice
that there’s some white stuff creeping in through the bottom near the outer
flap to the main tent. It’s ice. Well, that
explains the racket outside – it’s a full-fledged hailstorm! About ten minutes
later, the zipper to the outside is undone and in comes John – our senior
porter. He looks at me and at Don and
grins. Putting his palms together under
his ear he ducks his head and points at Don with the universal gesture for
sleep. Then, without warning he grabs a rolled up
umbrella that he has brought with him and starts whacking away at the roof of
the tent. I wonder if he’s gone nuts
before I realize what’s happening. The
ice is gathering on the roof and John is worried it might collapse
under the weight so he’s decided to sit on one of the dining stools inside the
tent and knock off any accumulation on the top.
He grins at me and continues his periodic whacking. Don sleeps soundly
through the racket and pretty soon I too nod off. God alone knows how long John was in there.
In what
seems scant minutes, I hear Julio hallo’ing us as he unzips the tent flap. I glance at my wristwatch all bleary-eyed and
see that it’s about 2:30 PM. Things have
cleared up and it’s time to leave for Millennium Camp. Don also wakes up and we wearily start to pack
up our stuff. When we’re done I step
outside the tent and I’m greeted by a stunning sight. It wasn't just a full-fledged hailstorm – it had
rapidly degenerated into a full-fledged snowstorm! There’s snow everywhere. If this storm had set in just a few hours
earlier we would have been sunk – no way that we could have made it to the
top. The porters quickly begin
dismantling and packing up our tents – it’s time to leave Barafu.
By now,
it’s cleared up and although there’s no sun, there’s no rain either. Don, Julio, Abdallah and I set off slightly
after 3 PM. We’re heading almost
directly south and we descend rapidly over the first half hour or so. Again, my toes are killing me and I curse
myself for not having bought boots that are another half-size larger. We walk across a relatively flat field of
rocks and as I look back and to my right we see Kilimanjaro again, shrouded in
mist. I cannot believe that just a few
hours ago we were standing on top of the mountain! The snow is all over the
place and it’s another spectacular sight – everything is black and white. Just rocks and snow. I pause to take a few more pictures.
 |
| Mountain desert right below Barafu, after snowstorm |
I have
not removed any of the layers I had worn on the climb and as we descend it
starts to get warmer and warmer. Things
look to be clearing up as well, so I hand Abdallah my windcheater as well as my
rain jacket. Well, of course, it starts
raining almost immediately, and I groan and reach for my rain jacket once
again. I’m tired beyond belief and my
toes are killing me, even though I’m doing my best to come down on my heels – god,
I hate going downhill! Tomorrow does NOT appear promising if it’s going to be
like this. Right now, all I want is to
collapse into my sleeping bag and sleep forever. Some green stuff gradually starts appearing
and I know we have descended significantly.
Slightly after 5 PM we pull into Millennium Camp, which is a tad below
3,800 meters (around 12,400 feet). It’s
a pretty site – almost like an oasis in the middle of a desert. Our tents have of course already been set
up. The rain stops just as we arrive and
Emmanuel has two bowls of hot water for us to wash up before dinner in the mess
tent.
 |
| Millennium Camp Site |
After we
eat, we decide that it’s time we broached the subject of tips with Julio. So far, he has evaded the question every time we've brought it up, but tomorrow morning is when the big “ceremony” is
scheduled to take place. Thanks to the
two American climbers we had run into at Weru Weru on the morning that we left,
we have some idea of what would be kosher in terms of amounts, but we don’t
know any of the other details. Julio
tells us not to worry. “Tipping comes from the heart” he says once more. Yeah, yeah, I know, but I wish he’d tell us
what exactly was involved. It seems that
Ahsante Tours has a very open policy in this regard and there are two options.
We can give a lump sum to Julio with explicit instructions on how it is to be
divided among the crew, and if we do this, when we hand the money to him we are
expected to announce clearly in front of the entire crew how it is to be
distributed (and preferably, put it down in writing). Alternatively, we can tip each crew member
individually and that way there’s no room for any misunderstanding – this is
certainly the preferred option. Don and
I have already decided that this is indeed what we will do and we ask Julio for
a complete list of the names of the crew members, which he provides us. “The crew will also probably sing a song for
you before the tipping ceremony,” he says with grin.
 |
Crew List
|
When we
get back to our tent we try and figure out what we should tip each person. I suggest that we start with daily amounts
based on what we had been told would be fair for each category of crew member,
and then compute a total across the eight days.
I suggest to Don that I give him half the total amount, and we then divvy up the total into individual tips and place them in Ziplock
bags for each crew member (luckily I have several of these with me). I go over what I think we should give each
crew member and work out a total. Don
thinks for a bit and then says “Jay, would you be offended if I added some more
money to what you suggest? I mean, I
think what you estimate is very fair and I certainly think that you should pitch
in with whatever you think is appropriate.
However, I’d really like to do a little more for them since they've all
been so extra-nice to me. In particular, Abdallah and Julio have gone out of
their way to help me on so many occasions.”
I’m a
bit taken aback, because I thought what I’d computed was pretty fair, but Don
is such a generous guy. Of course, I
have no objection if he wants to add on to the tip! So I gave him half of the total based on
(what I think is…) a generous base rate, and Don ups the amount by about 10% or
so for everyone, and even more for Julio and Abdallah. I calculate the total as well as the amounts
for each person, and in the light of my headlamp I stash the money he hands me
into separate Ziplock bags and use a smudgy pen to write down their names on
the outsides of the bags. I then sort
them into the same order as the list that Julio had given us at dinner and
store them in my fanny-pack, ready for handing out tomorrow.
By
now, we are both just completely exhausted
and even though I have two layers of warm underwear, I am too beat to bother
changing. The site where our tent sits
is not very level and I put my head down in the direction where it’s a little
higher than my feet. I struggle in vain
with the zipper on my liner and then with the one on the sleeping bag before
simply giving up and pulling the sides around me. Within minutes, I am dead to the world.
