Wed 19 Sep
I still don’t think enough research could have prepared anyone for how tough the final ascent and descent would be, and if I had known then what I know now, it would have made little difference.
At midnight after a comforting cup of hot tea, we set off with several guides and porters accompanying us. Our pace was deliberately pole, pole, slowly, slowly. The ascent was about 6-7hrs long. The first part of the slope had a gentle incline but after the first hour trekking the gradient became much steeper, and the higher we ascended the more strained our breathing became. We followed our guides in a zigzag pattern to prevent us ascending so rapidly but it was still quite challenging. After the first hour one of the girls had a headache that wasn’t letting up and she was quickly frogmarched down to Kibo.

We stopped for several times during the first few hours and the relief was immense but we couldn’t enjoy them too much as we would have risked getting frostbite. Our pace was steady and very slow and we could see the headlights of other trekkers snaking their way up the slope just in front of us. My mind started to wonder and the first couple of hours were spent battling the temptation to turn back and it wasn’t made any easier by passing other climbers who had stopped and were gasping for what seemed their to be last breath. I then tried to concentrate on remembering various songs, memory games and poems but ran through most of those quite quickly, the thin air was doing something to my brain chemistry at that point and I then tried to focus on my walking and keep a steady rhythm going which proved as challenging. The trek up the scree seemed endless and it was always on the tip of my tongue to start asking, “Are we not there yet……?”, it wasn’t helped either by the porters continually saying to us, “only another 3hrs to Gilman’s point”. They were also leaping about like mountain goats and singing nursery rhymes like Baa baa black sheep… while we were staggering along barely coherent and just about managing to breathe. The worst song which was our main soundtrack going up was “If you’re happy and you know, sing Yahoooo”, the temptation to chuck whoever was singing that down the slope was overwhelming and difficult to resist!
I had this light on/off headache most of the way up and a couple of people in the group had to throw up. We were quite lucky that none of us had any worse symptoms than those.
We eventually made it to Gilman’s Point and the relief was bittersweet when we were informed that we had about another couple of hrs to go to reach Uhuru (Freedom) Peak, but balanced by a welcome cup of sweet warm tea. When we were making the most of our mini break we saw a forest fire in the distance and we later learned when we were back in the hotel that the Rongai Route was temporarily closed for the next group of climbers. After the tea we were back on our way and the sun was starting to peep out on the horizon. We walked around the crater and were hugging the edge at times, as one sudden stumble could send you hurtling down the side in the blink of any eye.

The sun was gradually rising and we had to stop to appreciate the moment, as the colours seemed to be taken direct from an artist’s palette. This was followed by a quick pee break, which again made it all the more surreal, and the highest point I hope I ever have to urinate. I’m approaching the highest point in Africa, taking in breathtaking scenery, sometimes hanging on for dear life and have the bladder of an incontinent old man because of acclimatization.
We were pretty worn out at that point but our spirits were lifted as we saw a small group of people in the distance approaching Uhuru point and adrenaline carried us forward those last few metres, which made us temporarily forget our difficulties breathing. The porters started to hug us in congratulations and our dazed bodies tried to absorb the fact that we had finally made it. It was surprising the amount of people that were already there, each one waiting impatiently for his/her ultimate Kodak moment. I still remember this woman who was there with her two daughters and who was causing a mini traffic jam by holding up the queue as she insisted on taking several photos with the two girls with the cover of a Hello magazine showing Princes William and Harry, together and then individual pictures with the magazine cover. Royalty was getting a piggy back at our expense. After that it was time to get ruthless and we started to get out photo moments captured, we only had so long and physically we couldn’t afford to hang around.

Now, with memory being great at editing and ironing out most of the sheer hard slog of the climb, it was and is both humbling and exhilarating to have gone in the steps of the many people whose stories I’ve read on various sites and helped in preparing my own climb and I have now added my footprints to theirs’ at Kilimanjaro.

Seven of us out of the initial group of ten had finally made it all the way to the top. While the others in the group were getting their photos taken I was able to grab a few more photos of the stunning landscape and drink in more of the uniqueness of the place. Once everyone was ready and our batteries recharged by the euphoria of the moment, we were more than ready to make our way back. All our moods were lighter and everything was going well until we reached the slope to start the descent. I remember thinking that it was surely better not being able to see make out what the hell we were climbing when we started out in the dark 7hrs earlier, that our senses were quite numb and we really couldn’t comprehend it all. But now looking down at the 45 degrees gradient, it seemed initially impossible to descend such a vertiginous drop, never mind the length of it. The frost had gone so our feet were sinking into the scree but this was to our advantage. After watching a few porters go down, it seemed the way to crack the descent was to go at it downhill skiing style. It was difficult initially to get a rhythm going and it was hampered by the pertinent fact that a sudden lurch forward could send you hurtling down the slope faster than Humpty Dumpy fell of his wall. But what goes up has to come down and I kept telling myself that every step down meant my lungs were going to love me a bit more after what they had to go through. This was at the expense of my knees which were contemplating a divorce from the rest of me.

I got started and some people have written about this being one of the best and easy parts. WTF?? It took at least a solid 3hrs and that’s a conservative estimate as we all kept stopping and starting so we could catch our breath, silently beg our knees to hang on and pray that this would all end very soon. The walking poles really came into their own here and I couldn’t have done it without them, especially for the additional support they offered.
After finally making it to the bottom, my feet were just about able to stagger back to the tent. We briefly lay down for just under an hour and then had lunch, fortunately the girl who had to suddenly come down when we were an hour into the trek had recovered and was over her altitude symptoms.

After lunch we had to quickly pack as were to leave Kibo and make our way down the Marangu route. Our campsite that night was going to be at Horombo at 3720m. This was quite a hard trek but tempered by the realisation that we were almost finished and hot showers awaited us. As it had been quite a long day we turned in quite early that evening though a couple of the guys had an unexpected four legged visitor in their tent when a mouse decided to keep them company. After some energetic scrambling around they managed to convince the mouse to find its own shelter for that night elsewhere.