Killy!

The Calgary stampede has 8 seconds of hell.  Well, Kilimanjaro gave us 7 days  and 6 nights of it!  Do you notice that the short name that is used for this mountain starts with the word "kill".  Well, it did not kill us and I am not sure it made us stronger. We took the longer route, called the Whiskey route, it is harder, more scenic and the chance of success was higher.  The first day was a walk in the park, literally.  18km of wide pathways through trees and forests with lovely flowers that only grow on the mountain.  Our porters had run ahead and set up camp, including our own private toilet.  This was a must have.  The public ones are a bit nasty.  Up the next day assuming the hike would not be bad, Ha!  This was tough slogging up and over rocks and trails of a sort.  After arriving at the next camp, our guide told us that we would go for a little walk to stretch our legs and look at a lava cave.  I am not sure what he thought we were doing all day but what the heck.  We went for a stroll and our guides built us a good luck inukshuk of sorts.

The next day was harder still with about 7 hours of solid hiking before we got to camp.  We went up to Lava tower which was over 4500m to help acclimitize and then down to camp.  Blech!  This made both Dwayne and I feel like crap and at that point wondered if we would make it.  Up the next day feeling much better.  Off for another 6 or 7 hour death march to the next camp. That stupid mountain still looked a long way away!  The last night before reaching base camp was an easy hike of only about 6 hours.  Did I mention all of these are uphill at some ridiculous angle?  Ok, so then we take a short 3hour stroll the next day to get to base camp at 4600m.

We have lunch and then rest for 5 hours.  Then dinner, then rest for 5 hours until 11 PM that same day.  We start our summit attempt at midnight.  Good thing we could not see how high we had to go as we would never have done it.  After 7 hours, yes 7 hours of uphill like you cannot imagine, we reach the peak at 6:57 AM!  Its cold with a nasty windchill but its sunny.  We lost one of our guides partway up as he got sick.  So, you can stay for 10 minutes and then you must descend.

 

 

 To say this was difficult would be an understatement.  There are scree slopes at ridiculous angles and it was harder than going up.  Down to base camp, pack up, rest for 2hours and then down to Mweka camp at 3100m.  You canot stay at base camp, you will get sick.  So another 7km down the pathway from hell.  It took us 5.5 hours to do 7 km.  To say we were exhausted would be an understatement!  Finally after 25km of hiking that day including a successful summit, we made it to our last camping night.  The next day was an easy stroll down another 7km.  However, all our legs were still wobbly from the day before ao it took us about 3 hours. BUT, we did it.  I am not sure why I thought it would be a good way to celebrate a half century birthday but I did and we did it.  Now off safaring.