KILIMANJARO

KILIMANJARO

Uhuru, the highest point in Africa

With Andrew’s arrival in Kenya, the final piece of the puzzle was in place for our long awaited journey down to Tanzania to tackle Kilimanjaro. Kili marked a special point in the trip as it was essentially the trigger that got the whole idea of Pat and my journey rolling several years ago. I had mentioned my desire to climb it in passing conversation when I had been in the States with Pat a few years back and yada yada yada, here we were in Africa ready to tackle the bastard.

Andrew and I at breakfast the morning we headed off on the hike. Kili in the background to state the bleeding obvious.

An eight hour bus trip (a mere blip on the scale of lengthy bus trips I have endured on this trip) took us over the border into Tanzania and ultimately to the town of Moshi at the foot of the mountain. When we arrived, it was relatively clouded over and we were not even sure as to the exact location of the mountain. I had heard that Kili is more often than not obscured from view but in what I took as a sign of good things to come, the clouds parted whilst we were enjoying our first rooftop meal and her full glory was presented to us. A very exciting moment.

Our approach was as usual to arrange everything on arrival and so we began our tiresome task of finding a suitable and cheap trekking company to take us up. Now Kili is obviously a massive cash cow for Tanzania and Moshi basically revolves around business associated with the mountain. You cannot walk for 10m before some tout is in your face trying to sell you a “cheap” trek and trying to drag you along to his pokey little office next to a whole bunch of other pokey little offices all selling the same thing. The three of us had split up to sift through the various options and we quickly whittled down the options through a process of elimination that was particularly easy in some cases. One tour group even presented us a book of previous clients’ comments for our perusal and the very FIRST page was a review absolutely slamming the group in no uncertain terms, i.e. words to the tune of “do NOT go with this company, we had a shit time”. I’m not sure whether that particular tour company couldn’t actually read English or whether they just had really poor marketing skills and low self-esteem.

Pat, myself and our guide for the trek, Eugene.

We eventually settled on a very professional company by the name of MEM run by the charismatic and self-made millionaire Mohommad (who had the strange tendency to spread marmite, butter, chocolate, jam, cheese, peanut butter and honey on his bread at the same time - private joke). His was no hole in the wall office – by the looks of it and his fleet of first rate safari vehicles, he had sent many, many people successfully up the mountain. He also gave us pretty good price despite not being the absolute cheapest we found. Now let me tell you a little about the price of climbing Kilimanjaro….

Our crew from MEM with pimped up landcruiser in tow.

We knew that climbing the tallest mountain in Africa would be expensive especially considering it is in one of the most stable and well established tourist areas in Africa. Now I´m fully aware my timing with most things is pretty bad, i.e. comic timing, timing with the ladies, timing a cricket shot etc. but it seems I’m even worse at timing a holiday to Tanzania. You see a measly TWO WEEKS before our arrival in Tanzania, the greedy bastards in the government DOUBLED the park fees. No CPI increase, or a gradual 10% increase, but frickin’ DOUBLE. And these are no Lamington National park fees of $5 for 6 months or anything, I’m talking US$50 a DAY!! Meaning they became US$100 a day just for park fees!! So some simple maths will tell you that for a 6 day hike, we were paying US$600 just to be on the mountain before we had even considered paying for guides, cooks, porters, food, tents etc.

Pat and I at one of the early camp sites. Mt. Meru in the distance.

Thank God for low African wages (I’m a bastard I know) as it eventually came out to be US$800 total (of course it’s a given that you tip an additional 10% on top, there have been stories of the guide deserting trekkers at the summit if they didn’t cough up immediately). We made it as cheap as possible by carrying our own personal gear but even still, the three of us roughing it as best we could still dragged up a support entourage of seven; a guide, an assistant guide (completely unnecessary), a cook (entirely necessary), and four porters to carry the food and tents. And we even went without fold-up chairs to save cash! That little luxury would required an extra two porters.

Speaking of luxuries, the toilets, apart from this one (arguably the most angelic looking lavoratory I´ve ever seen) were you´re typical holes in the ground, only the holes in the boards through which your cargo was delivered got smaller and smaller as we ascended. Great aim was required and alas many hikers prior to us were severely lacking in this skill.

A painful experience to fork out that much cash (approximately 100,000 Tanzanian shillings – pretty much needed one of those shiny metal briefcases to carry the money) but all was soon forgotten – nearly – when we hit the trail….

Nice view to wake up to tis for certain.

I shall tell you know that this entry will be unashamedly long and contain a fair bucket load of photos. The reason being that from the moment we started trekking to its conclusion 6 days later was arguably the highlight of my trip and I wish to convey properly just how brilliant the whole experience was. I’ve basically included extracts from my journal as
a) each day was different and a highlight in itself; and
b) it will be a lot easier to just type something I’ve already written.
Anyways, here goes. I hope you don’t get too bored reading my attempts at descriptive prose...

It was a great relief to discover that although perhaps a shadow of their former selves, the glaciers at the summit had not melted entirely and were still pretty frickin massive.

Matt's Log : Day 1

Scenery typical of the first day´s ascent.

If we weren’t excited about climbing Kilimanjaro when we first woke up that day, we certainly we after our rooftop breakfast which was consumed along with the clearest views of the peak we had yet seen. We were picked up outside our hotel by a pimped up MEM super land cruiser and after joining up with our guide Eugene we were on our way to Machame gate, the beginning of our chosen Machame route. The Machame route is probably the second most popular route of ascent on Kili behind the Marangu or “Coca-Cola” route as it is known due to its highly comercial nature. The Machame route is a little more difficult, less direct route covering a wider variety of terrain that attracts more "refined" trekkers, earning it the moniker of the “Whiskey” route.

More day one...

The start of the trek actually begins at some 1800m (Moshi is located at this height) so despite being famous as the highest free-standing mountain in the world, it is actually a bit of a cop-out to start nearly a third of the way up. I wasn’t complaining by any means however, we still had over 1200m to climb through warm and humid rainforest. We were clearly still below the cloudline at this point in the trek as we were dumped upon fairly heavily for several hours but the misty remnants of the rainclouds led to an eerily beautiful environment as we pushed on through the dense ferns and moss-covered trees to a clearing that was our first camp at some 3000m. A very pleasant discovery that was to become commonplace over the next 5 days was that of our fully set-up tents with steaming hot cups of milo with biscuits and popcorn awaiting us upon arrival. Any pre-concieved beliefs that we were undertaking an extreme and hard-core adventure were quickly dashed at this point.

Camp one enjoying our popcorn and milo. Notice the distinct lack of chairs. Yep, we were totally roughing it.

Day 2

Above is some of the typical moorland we encountered on our second day. Below left is our great mate Fidlas with hot tea in tow.

Such expectations were dashed even further when we awoke to the site of our fabulous cook Fidlas presenting us with muchly welcomed cups of tea whilst still in curled up in our sleeping bags. In addition to this, a mammoth feed was already laid out for us when we finally emerged from our cocoons, at which time our tents were already being dismantled and carted off to the next campsite by our hardworking porters. Hardly extreme mountaineering.

Above and right are more scenes typical of day two.

We had to ascend some 800m this day and we quickly started to leave the rainforest of the first day well below as we moved into the more sparsely foliated vegetation of the moorlands. Lots of rocky outcrops along the way which provided great vantage points to look down over all the terrain we had thus covered, cloud permitting. It amazing how quickly the clouds can roll in up at this height, completely blocking vision beyond about 30 or 40m and seemingly dropping the temperature 10 degrees in an instant. Conversely the gaseous clouds that Pat seemed to be producing regularly as a result of our curry rich diet and altitude had the tendency to increase the temperature in our tent by a similar moment just as quickly. This however, in the process of course made the tent entirely uninhabitable.

Below is the final stretch before Shira Huts, our camp for the second night.

Our camp for this night, Shira Huts at 3800m, was on a large plateau that presented magnificent views down onto the great plains below and Mt. Meru, a +4000m peak in the near distance. We also caught our first clear uninterrupted views of Kibo summit which was again inspiring and daunting at the same time. Kili has three distinct volcanic peaks by the way, Kibo which contains the overall summit of 5895m (Uhuru) and also the smaller Mawenzi and Shira peaks.

Below is our camp at Shira Huts

Day 3

Heading off from Shira Huts on day 3.

Mornings are absolutely brilliant due both to the massive feed that awaits us as soon as we wake and also the perfectly clear skies allowing you to fully appreciate the spectacular surroundings. Another highlight of each morning was our ritual of pulling out the ipod and cranking the Toto full bore. Nothing got us more pumped for the day ahead than a rousing rendition of "Africa", arguably my favourite song. Today we faced another 800m ascent up to the impressive lava tower only to fritter our hard work away by descending back down to the same altitude of 3800m from which we had started.

The impressive Lava tower

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Below left is the descent down from Lava Tower, a complete waste of an 800m ascent. .

Some very barren and rocky terrain from Shira huts onwards, particularly on the approach to the lava tower as we were then well above the cloudline and hence there was no vegetation whatsoever. Very exposed as a result and we faced some pretty frigid wind at this point.

Below is a typical example of the "meat and potatoes" plant unique to East African alpine habitats

On the steep descent down from the lava tower ridge we came across an entirely different set of vegetation with many trees entirely unique to high African peaks (essentially Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya) that can best be described as being somewhat similar to a man´s "meat and potatoes" arrangement. Can´t remember exactly what their latin name is but such a description is adequate I believe.

Our camp at Barranco huts, my favourite of the trek.

Our camp that evening at Barranco huts were particularly stunning and probably the most beautiful of the trek. They´re nestled in at the foot of Kibo and enclosed either side by cliffs leaving only one opening facing away from the mountain, a mighty drop down to the rainforest and town of Moshi below. Brilliant.

Day 4

To continue we had an enjoyable scramble over one of the aforementioned cliffs (see above) enclosing Barranco Huts. From the top of this cliff that we ascended you could see down into the massive gorges that ran like tendrils through the rainforests thousands of metres below but from here on, that was about the only vegetation we were to see for some time. Very much alpine desert for the next few hours until we hit the very deflating Karanga Valley, a gorge across which we had to descend several hundred metres very quickly before painstakingly gaining it all back.

The daunting prospect of losing our hard-fought altitude crossing the Karanga valley.

Many people actually camp at the other side of this valley but seeing that we were obviously hard-core and extreme adventurers (and unable to afford another US$100 for the extra day) we pushed on through a particularly featureless and somewhat taxing stretch through a rocky wasteland until we finally made it Barafu Huts at 4600m, the point from which we were to make our summit approach. Very relieved to arrive after a long 7-8hr day of steep hiking.

Above and below shows the desolate rocky landscapes crossed to reach Barafu Huts after crossing Karanga Valley. A tough stretch.

Below left is Simon, an ultra-marathon runner aiming to set the record for the fastest round trip to the summit and back, some 8 or 9 hours. Ridiculous. He once missed out on the 100km marathon record by a measly 2 minutes.

Problem is that you generally arrive here late in the afternoon and to make it to the summit for sunrise, you have to set off before midnight meaning that you have very little opportunity to get any sleep and hence any acclimatisation benefit is entirely negligible. Basically it means that to make it to the summit, you have to ascend over 2100m from your last good night´s sleep with a small, almost useless break in between. To put this in perspective, we were regularly told by authorities in Nepal to never ascend more than 400m in a single day, and here we were pushing over 2 vertical km. This is the single reason why Kilimanjaro has so many climbers who fail to reach the summit. So much altitude in so little time is brutal as I was to find out.

Day 5 - Summit Day.


Below, if you happened to injure yourself, your $20 insurance covered you to be evacuated off the mountain in this. I´m sure it would have been an entirely comfortable journey. I mean look at the suspension!

We "woke up" at a little before midnight, but I for one would hardly have considered myself to be sleeping at any point. I think we were all a little bit nervous considering the task that lay ahead of us, especially as I was feeling ill from flu-like symptoms and Andrew had a cracking headache before we even departed. In addition, despite not being able to get any sleep, we were all dead tired (and absolutely FREEZING) and had at least 8 hours of slog ahead of us before a chance of any more sleep.

There is never much to remember about hiking in complete darkness, it is essentially a matter of switching your brain off as best you can and keeping one foot moving over the other as your world during that time is basically the little patch in front of your feet illuminated by your head torch. It was a particularly clear night however so we were fortunate enough to see the town of Moshi all lit up on the plains below, and the stars were incredibly clear, engulfing the entire sky. The blood red half-crescent moon that rose behind Mawenzi peak to the west was also most striking.

The first few rays peaking out over Mawenzi to the right.

The first two hours of ascent were not too bad, we made solid progress on the solid ground and the oxygen still felt relatively plentiful. After this however, the ascent took the form of endless switchbacks cutting across the steep slope over loose crumbly scree which led to two-steps-forward-one-step-back type progress. From this point I just tried to get into a good rhythm with my breathing to allow myself to concentrate on something other than how long we were taking to get anywhere. One particular glacier always loomed large above us, glowing in the moonlight many hundreds of metres above us as a constant reminder of just how far we had to go. I swear to God that after every hour of frustratingly slow slog, that glacier never seemed to get closer.

The colours although not given justice in this photo were stunning as the morning sun struck the glaciers.

To make matters worse, if I ever lost concentration and broke my strict regime of breathing through my frozen nose and exhaling painfully cold and dry air through my hoarse throat on EVERY step, it felt like I copped an imaginary rubber mallet straight between the eyes. Amazing how quickly and intensely altitude induced headaches can come about but thankfully it was just as amazing how quickly they could disappear by stopping for a few moments and getting your breath back.

Sunrise!!

After 5 hours of constant mind-numbing slog we finally made it to the crater rim and the end of those cursed switchbacks. I´m certainly glad that nobody told me when we set off that that glacier that had towered over us all morning was still several hundred metres below the summit otherwise I think I would have just stayed in bed. By this stage I had lost all feeling in my feet, hands, and most of my face despite nearly 4 layers over most of my body.

Above is the crater floor well below us. Below is the highway leading to the summit. You can see the sign...

Thankfully the summit (or what we thought was the summit) and the first few rays of dawn were starting to poke over the horizon, which from our high vantage point clearly showed the curvature of the earth. From here on in we basically trudged along a well-groomed highway along the crater rim which fell away hundreds of metres on our right to the crater floor. On our left were massive glaciers that are no doubt shadows of their former selves (we had heard unfounded rumours that they had all melted) but still incredibly massive and beautiful features.

Glaciers, glaciers, and more glaciers. Stunning. That´s Eugene above.

I was starting to feel a significant loss in balance and ability to negotiate any cluttered paths by this point and so it was with great relief that the famous Uhuru sign came into view just as the red and orange band of light began to splash colour over all our surroundings. I can´t quite explain it but upon recognition of the sign from a few hundred metres away, I experienced an emotional outburst of euphoria that I´ve seldom if ever experienced (Brisbane Lions first flag springs to mind). I was actually wondering at some points in the trek whether I would really enjoy that moment or whether it would be entirely underwhelming. I can tell you with absolute certainty that it was magic. It might have been the pain I was in, or the altitude but there were nearly tears for crying out loud...

Above is me taking my celabratory shot of whiskey and the three of us below all smiles despite the difficulty in moving anything on our faces.

Very exhuberant celebrations then followed with my fellow climbers and whiskey shots were taken to celebrate our achievement as it the custom on the Machame route. Was surreal to be standing upon a point that towered above all others as far as you could see and the beauty of all that lay around us was simply breathtaking (actually the taking of breath may have been more due to the fact we were standing at 5895m...). The glaciers which glowed several colours in the dawn sunlight were most impressive.

Pat and I after fulfilling our main ambition of the whole trip. Below is Eugene taking his whiskey shot. He was quite a fan we found out when we took him for drink upon returning to Moshi....

Our time up at the summit was entirely brief, no more than 15 minutes, but it was long enough to take copious shots (as you can no doubt tell) despite our frozen fingers, and more importantly it was enough time to squeeze in one rendition of Toto at full bore whilst attempting to fully soak in the glory of my surroundings. A futile task but still a magic moment that I shall remember for a long time. Listening to "Africa" will never be the same...

Three shots of me listening to what I´m sure is the best rendition of Toto´s "Africa" ever... sure as Kilimanjaro rises like and empress above the Serengetti....(or is it Lepress?)

A gruelling descent followed which made clear the scale of our 6 hour ascent and I´m certainly glad I couldn´t see how far we had to climb when we headed off. We were completely knackered when we got back to camp but it was only a fitful sleep for an hour or two before we had to pack up again and undertake a further 3 hour hike downhill to our last camp. We figured we had spent 18 of the last 27 hours hiking but I can tell you it was all worth it for those 15 minutes...

You have no idea how much I was leaning on those poles. I was wells buggered.

The descent. The scree was so loose you could basically ski down it like it was fresh powder. Much easier going down that´s for sure, sure as Kilimanjaro etc...

Day 6

The thousands of steps we descended were agaony but the surroundings were worthy compensation.

My legs have rarely known such pain. Thankfully we only faced a gentle hour or so hike down to the exit gate (still had to pay $100 for the day though) through some of the most beautiful terrain of the trek. Lush rainforest once again with some crazy monkeys to boot. Was a great relief to finally give the legs a break when we finally made it down to our MEM landcruiser awaiting us. A few particularly tasty beers were enjoyed back in Moshi with Eugene and Fidlas but we had little time to soak in our achievement, our next African installment was to begin the very next day. It was unlikely however to live up to that which we had just done, surely the highlight of my trip so far.... and by the way, despite my grievances, it was worth every shilling...

Til next time.