The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Proof that we reached the highest point in Africa!

It looks like the moon!

The sunrise over Stella point

Well, we made it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro! And it wasn’t as easy as it sounds! We started at the Machame gate, the beginning of the Machame route. From the gate until the sixth and final day, it poured with rain, hail, and snow, leaving us frozen for the majority of the trip. The first day was spent weaving our way through forest (in torrential rain) up to a level of about 3000m above sea level. There were sections that were relatively flat, and there were also stair sections that left us feeling sorry for our eight (yes, eight) porters, who had to carry everything up on their backs and heads. Our first night was spent in Machame Camp. We had some good views of the surrounding forest, and our camp was right on the border of the moorland region. Our guide, Eligius, was really fun and we had a good time talking with him in the evening over a huge amount of delicious food that was cooked for us. The portions they gave could have fed a family of five, but they were still shocked when we couldn’t finish them! The next morning, still soaked, we headed up to Shira Camp, at 3,900m above sea level. The trekking was very enjoyable despite the rain, and we took refuge in several caves we found along the way. The biggest cave, Shira’s Cave, was located just further up the mountain than our camp, so we did a little trip out there to take a look at it. Due to our frozen state, we piled on all the clothing we had (it was still only raining at this point, however) for our walk. Eligius nicknamed us Mama and Bibi (grandmother) because we looked like such idiots in headscarves, huge woolen jumpers and waterproof trousers. Fair enough.  Day three consisted of a not-too-difficult climb to Barranco Hut, made more difficult by an acclimatization detour around the 4,600m above sea level detour to Lava Tower. Most of the day had been spent walking through what looked like an endless moon landscape – piles of scree and rocks shrouded in a heavy mist was pretty much our only scenery for several hours. It didn’t take much imagining to pretend we were on the moon, and we had a good time reenacting Neil Armstrong’s famous speech, much to the confusion of Eligius. Lava Tower was, in fact, just another big rock that was covered in mist. It was snowing and hailing so hard that we had to huddle under a different rock to eat our packed lunch. On the way back to Barranco Hut, we took a path that had been replaced by a freezing cold stream even though it looked as if we could have walked on perfectly dry land on either side of the path. We thought that maybe the guide had decided to test the waterproof-ness of our boots. Well, they ended up soaked, along with the guide’s, and stayed that way for the remainder of the trip. It was that night that our guide decided he wanted to try and sell us for some Konyagi (a hard alcohol they drink here).  After we had been offered around to various other guides and companies, and we were unwanted with our wet shoes and grandmother-esque clothes, Eligius resorted to just paying for the Konyagi himself. It seemed rather an extensive joke, but most Kiswahili humour is lost on us! The morning of day four was spent scaling the Barranco Wall which involved rock climbing and some pretty dangerous games of Twister on daunting rock faces. It also involved many flailing walking poles, especially from the French group behind us who hadn’t quite mastered the whole hold-them-both-in-the-same-hand thing. It took us a couple hours to reach the top of the wall and by that time we both had very sore legs. Eligius had vaguely told us that from now it was another six hours of up-down-up-down-up-very up, as if we were somehow going to remember the amount of up and downs. It basically meant another four hours of walking in moon landscape up a gradual scree slope that killed your calves. It was also getting slightly harder to breathe as Barafu (snow) Hut, our next stop, was at 4,600m asl. Once we passed Karangu Camp, one that we were not staying at, it was supposed to be another three hour walk from there. We walked for two hours up the same landscape. To distract ourselves, Elena created a bucket list in her mind, and Camilla was trying to find countries, vegetables and colors that started with every letter of the alphabet. It was a challenge to keep coming up with things to think about, and so at one point we pulled out the ipod and sung along to Christmas songs. After two hours of walking, Eligius thought that it would be funny to tell us we still had another four hours to go. As we said – the humour is lost on us! We arrived at Barafu Hut, and true to its name, it was snowing. A lot. We sat in our tent for a little in the puddles that had gathered, freezing to death, then decided to move into the lunch tent. We were lucky that we had a table and fold up chairs, and we drunk chai and ate popcorn. We went through 50 tea bags in six days that’s how full of caffeine we were. We took an early night to bed as we had to wake up at midnight. After only a couple of hours of frozen sleep, we woke up, drank more tea and had some porridge then put on literally every piece of clothing we had. We were both wearing at least twelve warm jumpers and five pairs of pants. We wore our headlamps, and in the middle of the night while it was snowing, we started our ascent to the summit. It sucked.  Every couple of steps we had to stop and try to regain our breath, and we hadn’t been drinking enough water. Elena felt dizzy and was having trouble not fainting due to dehydration. Camilla had altitude sickness and was feeling like a truck ran over her, and was also having trouble not falling asleep. On top of that, Eligius had it in his mind that we had to overtake the other streams of headlights who were going too ‘pole pole’ – slow.  We actually enjoyed their pace, but had to keep up with Eligius. As we were nearing Stella Point, six hours later, the sun broke through the clouds and the snow turned bright yellow. It was gorgeous and lifted our spirits just enough to get us to Uhuru Point. Uhuru (freedom) point is the highest point in Africa at 5,895m asl, the highest peak you can reach without oxygen equipment, the world’s highest free standing mountain’s highest peak, and basically just awesome. We spent a while there with the sign, taking pictures and trying very hard to breathe and not freeze at 7:30am. We then started our long descent down, still feeling very sick, and not wanting to spend another eight hours walking. We did, however, and arrived in Mweka Hut (3,100m) with bruised feet and droopy eyes.  The next day was our official get-us-the-f-off-this-mountain walk to the bottom of Mweka Gate. We’d had enough. We were cold, still wet and our legs were so sore we couldn’t walk up the steps to the registration hut. After three hours of hiking, we made it to the bottom and had a Kilimanjaro beer with our guide and porters. We’d done it! We received some pretty spiffy certificates and got a ride back into Arusha, where we showered, ate pizza, then got onto a bus headed back to Morogoro.