Kilimanjaro

By Brent

Gap Year

We both decided to leave our jobs and take a year off. At the end of the year, we have the tentative plan to move to Madison, WI for Brent to enter a graduate program in environmental engineering and Dana to find a teaching job in the area. Between leaving our jobs and moving to Madison, we chose to travel around the southern hemisphere.

Our first stop is Tanzania, Africa to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a friend (Matt) who has been in the Peace Corps for over two years, and another friend who is living in Rochester, MN (Kevin). After that, we will travel around southern Africa before returning to the US for a month or so.

After some time in the US where Dana will work as a long-term substitute, we are headed to South America to take part in a program called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), which basically entails working on various farms in exchange for a bed and food, making travel much more affordable if not luxurious. Some of the places are not in fact farms, but rather restaurants or resorts, and there is at least one brewery in South America that is a part of this network.

Part I: Africa

 

Our first trip took us to Africa on a plane leaving August 9th and arriving at the Kilimanjaro Airport on August 11th (our 1st anniversary). One year into our marriage, and we are both unemployed, homeless, and in a country where neither of us speak the language!

We celebrated our anniversary at the airport in Amsterdam.

After a long flight, we arrived at the Marangu Hotel - home base for our guide service - and waited for Matt's arrival. Dinner that night was multiple courses - fresh vegetable soup, garden salad, chicken, vegetables, meringue pie, and hot tea.

Marangu Hotel Grounds

Day 1: Marangu Hotel to Mandara Huts 

 

The next morning we were given a briefing of what to expect with altitude and what to look out for on the mountain. There are two real problems, pulmonary and cerebral edema. Basically, as long as your breathing rate goes back to normal after stopping for a minute or two, you don't have pulmonary edema. If you're not stumbling around like a drunk with a massive headache, you don't have cerebral edema.

If you head down the mountain right away, the symptoms will go away quickly and you might recover in a matter of hours. If you keep going, you might come off the mountain on a stretcher, and it could take months to recover from it.

Also, if you throw up on your way up the mountain, don't worry about it too much. Most people who summit have some sort of issue with vomiting on the way. As long as you still think you can summit and make it back to base camp, keep going (making it back to base camp is the important one).

We also met our support team - 10 people to get the four of us up the mountain. We had four porters hauling our gear (one was also our waiter), a cook, two people carrying food, and three guides. Kevin made a 78-year old man carry his things up the mountain.

 First Day on Trail

We chose a route that had huts because it was cheaper (you don't need porters to haul tents), so we expected small stone shelters with no water, no electricity, and just crummy little cots. When we got there, we found a small village with Scandinavian A-frames. Drinkable water came out of every faucet, there were solar panels on the roofs of the buildings for electric lighting, and the toilets all had running water as well.

 Dining Hall at Mandara Huts

 View from Dining Hall at Mandara

After arrival, our guides gave us warm water for washing and as soon as a table opened, we were fed a multi-course dinner. Again, it was soup, some sort of meat with cooked vegetables, fresh fruit, and hot tea. We were always very well-fed during the trip up the mountain.

Day 2: Mandara Huts to Horombo Huts

 

The next morning we were woken up with hot tea and warm wash water. We packed our things, gave them to our porters, and ate breakfast. Breakfast was typically oatmeal or some sort of cereal, scrambled eggs (not egg substitute, but actual eggs that they carried up the mountain in foam padding), bacon, vegetables, fruit, and hot tea.

We walked through the rain forest for most of the morning before lunch time. Lunch was typically a few pieces of fruit, a sandwich, juice, a cookie or dessert bar, and a hard-boiled egg.

 Rainforest Section of the Mountain

Porters made us feel bad during the entire trip. They walked much faster than us all the way up and all the way down. We were carrying just day packs. They were not.

 Kevin, Matt, and Brent at Lunch

 Emmanuel (Assistant Guide) and Brent

 Matt, Brent, and Kevin at Horombo Huts (Alt. ~12,200ft)

Dana at Horombo Huts

By the time we hit Horombo, it was definitely harder to breathe. Our route gave us an extra day at this altitude to help with acclimatization. Some groups only spent one night here, but we did a short day hike the following day and relaxed before the summit push.

 View of River From Hut Door

Our Home for Two Nights

 View of Kibo Peak (Kilimanjaro Has Two Summits - Kibo is the Taller, the Other is Mawenzi)

Day 3: Acclimatization at Horombo Huts 

 

On our rest day, we climbed about 1,000ft to Zebra Rocks. In the afternoon, we basically sat around camp talking about the coming day and catching up with each other.

 Emmanuel at Zebra Rocks

Day 4: Horombo Huts to Kibo Hut 

 

The next day we took off up the mountain again and passed the last water stop - a sludgy stream where you would have to filter water in order to use it. Because of that, most guide services had porters carry all the water we needed for the hike to Kibo, the summit attempt, breakfast, and the first part of the descent from Horombo to Kibo.

 Mawenzi - The Shorter, More Technical of Two Peaks on Kilimanjaro

At lunch, a mouse drank some of Brent's tea. It was rather disappointing.

 Emmanuel and Dana

The group was very talkative and joking around until about 0.5km from Kibo hut when we all saw a guy coming down on a stretcher hauled by six porters. He was someone we had been hiking with earlier, but who had gone on while we rested the day before. We realized that it was actually something to be taken a little more seriously now that we were almost to the highest point in Africa.

 Gilman's Point is the Near Side of the Kibo Crater (Alt. ~18,650ft)

 Brent at Tea Time in Kibo Hut

 Dana at the Door to Kibo Hut

Kibo Hut turned out to be an awful, awful place. The guy coming down on the stretcher was one of several people we saw who were having problems with the altitude. Up until this point, all the huts are set up for four people - conveniently the same size as our group, so we never had any other people in our rooms. Kibo had ten people to a room, and it was unpleasant.

Day 5: Kibo Hut to Uhuru Peak to Horombo Huts

 

 Our Horrible Room

In the above photo, Matt is on the bottom bunk on the left side. A nauseous Chinese girl is in the bottom center bunk. There is an American man in the top left bunk showing serious signs of pulmonary edema. Dana's bunk is the top right, Brent's is the bottom right. Kevin's is out of the frame on the right side.

The American above Matt had gone up the mountain the night before and was supposed to be out of Kibo and at Horombo on the descent already. He didn't take his altitude medication with him because he thought he'd be back before he needed to take it. At this point, it's about 14.5 hours since he started his summit push.

His guide disappeared after leaving him at his bunk to recover before the trip down to Horombo, so we had to track down our guide, who then found a first responder, who then found the guide, and they decided they needed to get him up and off the mountain ASAP.

While that fun little adventure was going on, two Australian women came into the room as well. They both were feeling nauseous, and one actually left because the dying American guy was in the only bunk that was supposed to be open. She needed a place to curl up in a ball.

Brent and Matt went outside so they didn't have to be surrounded by people who looked and felt terrible. All four of us were nervous that we were feeling good now, but at any minute we could end up looking like the scene in our room.

 Enjoying the Weather at Kibo Hut

That night, the nauseous Chinese girl gradually started to feel better after drinking more water. The nauseous Australian women proceeded to belch horrible, wet, vomity belches all night. It's hard enough sleeping when you know you're attempting the summit in very little time, and when you have someone letting out horrible belches that make it seem like you're going to get puked on all night, it's even harder. Matt can verify that.

Sometime between 9:00pm and midnight, the nauseous Australian above the Chinese woman threw up. On the Chinese woman. And her coat. Matt was incredibly nice and started helping clean the coat, but it didn't go well and a vomit/water mixture ended up freezing on the coat. The Australian did nothing to help or to move herself to a position where she could at least get out of the room if she had to puke again.

Matt ended up lending his extra jacket to the girl with the vomit coat for the summit attempt.

The summit attempt is typically started around midnight to allow you to see the sunrise from the lower edge of the crater (Gilman's Point). It also keeps you from seeing how little progress you're making for the five hours you're climbing a scree (gravel) field and sliding backwards.

We made it up rather quickly. It took us only 4.5 hours instead of the 6 we were told to plan for. Since none of us had any major problems, that worked out, but going that fast increases risk of altitude problems. We were the first group to the crater rim from our side of the mountain.

During that whole hike, John (an assistant guide) was singing for us and at one point gave us some sort of energy bar that was desperately needed. His presence was one of the best things we could've asked for, even if it was depressing knowing that he was capable of singing while we were struggling just to walk.

At 4:30am we got to the crater rim and decided not to wait until 6:30am for the sunrise. It was about -10°F and windy. We ate a quick snack and then slowly took off for Uhuru Peak.

 View at 4:30AM - We're Too Early

 Matt Before Dehydration Kicks In

 Dana at Gilman's Point - Notice the Purple Lips

We made it to Uhuru Peak (highest point in Africa, highest free-standing mountain in the world) at 19,340ft. around 6:10am. It was still incredibly cold, so we took a few pictures and got the heck off the mountain. As soon as the sun came out, the temperature was great - actually too warm. Until that happened around 6:30am though, it was windy and cold for a long time.

 Dana and Brent Celebrating their Anniversary on Top of Kilimanjaro

 The Summit Group - John, Brent, Matt, Kevin, Emmanuel, and George (Dana is Taking the Picture)

 Glacier on Kibo Peak

 Two of Our Guides - John and George

 George and Kevin on the Descent from Gilman's Point

George on the Descent

The above picture was taken well under half way between Gilman's Point and Kibo Hut. The skyline is about where Gilman's is, and if we'd been climbing this during the day, it would've been mentally exhausting looking up and seeing that we were still this far away after 3 hours of hiking.

Coming down was much easier. What took us about 6.5 hours to ascend was covered in about 2 hours on the way down. The scree field was like running down a sand dune with the occasional large boulder that could take you out at the knees.

We got back to Kibo so early our guides gave us an extra hour to sleep before serving us breakfast at 9:00am. We then hiked back to Horombo Huts, had tea, and then took naps. We were woken up in time for dinner, ate, and then went to sleep around 7:30 that night. We didn't wake up until the next morning at breakfast time.

Day 6: Horombo Huts to Marangu Hotel

 

The rest of the descent wasn't especially eventful - we stopped at a crater on the way, had a wonderful lunch, and got certificates saying we'd reached the highest point in Africa.

Back at the hotel, we unpacked, showered, handed out tips, and shared a couple rounds with the support crew. It was a really good last day on the mountain. We also set up a tour of the village with George for the next morning.