Kili!

Headed off to Kili on the afternoon boat on Thursday full of nervous excitement, the challenge really does start here! After a long day’s travelling got down to Heathrow for the first stumbling block….the hotel we were staying in had cancelled the room in error! After a fairly heated exchange with the hotel we had to go straight back to the airport and slept on the less than comfortable floor…not a good start! Luckily (!) our flight was at 6:30am and we had to check in 3 hours before the flight even though check-in didn’t open til 5:00am….headaches already.

Flights over including a brief stop in Amsterdam weren’t too bad at all and we got to Kilimanjaro and transferred to the lodge near Arusha on Friday night. Absolutely shattered we hit the hay immediately and on our free day on the Saturday we went out to explore the local town. Unfortunately the receptionist’s English wasn’t great and she told us left instead of right so we never found the place!!!! We spent an hour and a half walking round dusty roads getting extremely funny looks from tiny shops looking for a thriving metropolis before heading back to the lodge and meeting up with the rest of the group when they arrived at 4ish. On first impressions, the group seemed like a good bunch of guys with 6 English guys, 3 English women, a couple of Cypriots and a Latvian called Eddie! After the initial briefing and questions and then dinner spent the night watching Rob Green throw the ball in his own net for England vs USA! An early start would be needed next morning to head an hour over to the Machame gate at Kili and start our climb so we hit the hay early, excitement taking place of my initial nerves after the flights!

First day on the mountain was a fairly easy climb after registering at the gate (which is already at 1,800 metres up!). We climbed steadily but not too steeply for about 6 hours to the first camp at 3,000 metres, which was a bit of a shock when we realised that we were already twice the height of Ben Nevis and only half way up the mountain! We also had our first glimpse of the summit, which seems an incredibly long way off! You could already feel the difference in pressure, with 30% less oxygen in the air I had a bit of a thick head but nothing too troubling. First night was mainly getting used to camp life, washing our feet in a bowl and slightly more unusually having a fantastic 3 course meal that the chefs made. One thing we have to get used to is the guilt of having the porters carrying everything and setting up camp etc….I’m not used to being waited on! They leave later than you in the morning in order to break camp, carry your equipment past you on the track and then have to get to the next camp earlier than you to set it up! They take fitness to a ridculously new level and between 14 of us we had 34 ‘crew’ ranging from chefs, porters, summit porters and guides.

The second day was a shorter but steeper climb up to 3,850 metres, and involved a bit more scrambling across rocks. We were up by half 6 to grab some breakfast so that we could be trekking by 7am. In total we were only walking for about 5 hours but it was far more enjoyable than the previous day, taking us above the clouds to some unbelievable views of cloud cover. We settled in at our very exposed camp (Shira camp) and braced ourselves for a windy night! We had a fair bit of time to kill at this camp and due to the extra height we’d gone up to everyone was nursing headaches as a result of the pressure change. We decided to make the best of it though and after a brief visit to a nearby cave we spent the afternoon before tea playing cricket on possible the most uneven wicket ever played on! Was a good laugh and got us to know more of the group better, with Giles, Chris, Sam and Zoe taking part to represent England against us manxies (the flag of which was soon hoisted next to our tent)! We grabbed another brilliant dinner and hit the hay, I was still nursing a bit of a headache and I think it was getting me down a bit, acclimatisation was not coming easy and I had a long night ahead!

Another early start on the next day, and after a very disjointed sleep simply due to the volume of the wind I was feeling a bit like the living dead, I think Mark was also having trouble sleeping and we certainly weren’t fresh to start the day! I choked down some of the porridge to keep up my stamina (which tastes awful) and the plan for the day was to ascend to 4,600m and have lunch there, before heading back down to 3,950m to camp in Barronco valley. The ascent up to 4,600m was fairly gentle but I was definitely feeling it and my head was throbbing on the way up, I even started to feel a bit nauseous, another classic sign of altitude sickness. One of our group, Mike threw up on this ascent and although not uncommon, it came as a reminder to do all the right things to mitigate the effect of the altitude (e.g. drink at least 3 litres of water, eat to keep up your energy etc). By the time I got to the top the symptoms tended to disappear though and I was feeling ok, though a little sunburnt!!!! It was a bit demoralising to then descend 650m but it all helps the acclimatisation so we headed down and camped at the Barronco camp at 3,950m and I was feeling a little back to my old self though pretty shattered after 7 and a half hours hiking! We grabbed some tea and headed to bed at the standard 8pm….as it gets dark early there isn’t anything to do in the evenings! After the bad night’s sleep the night before, Chris lent us some earplugs so I thought I’d give them a go…..they were incredible, I slept like a baby which was great because little did I know that it would be the last sleep I’d have for a while...

We had to move the next day by 6:30 so had an early breakfast before facing the ‘breakfast wall’, the pretty steep cliff face we were going to traverse! Thankfully the sleep gave me some energy and I thoroughly enjoyed tacking the wall! Zoe from our group actually worked for the trip organisers (The Adventure Company) and was writing a Health & Safety summary of the trip….let’s just say I’m not sure the wall passed with flying colours! We scrambled up the wall (watching porters tearing past carrying huge loads) and after a little more up and downhill we came to a camp where we grabbed some lunch. Looking at the summit it did look much closer and we’ve had to do the toughest walk all the way around the mountain so I was hoping the final ascent wouldn’t be too bad! We then ascended fairly steadily but tediously for hours and hours across sparse dusty rock fields and the camp seemed to just take forever to arrive. Finally after about 7 hours we arrived at our final camp, 4,600m high and just the assault on the summit to come! As it is pretty difficult to sleep at this altitude, we rested and checked our kit to make sure we were all prepared for the final ascent. A brief panic with finding my headtorch was in order but it was eventually located in the lining of my bag! At dinner that night there was a definite tension in the air, we were heading up at 11:30pm for 8 hours of uphill before the top. Thankfully I had acclimatised a little better and wasn’t feeling the effects, but it was in general a nervy time waiting for the off!

Popped a couple of painkillers at the start as advised, which was a bit of a shame as I’d wanted to do a ‘pill-free’ climb, but the guides know best so we followed them to the letter and headed off up the mountain. After a couple of hours of steep climbing it was getting tough and I think this was the first point that I genuinely thought there was a chance I wouldn’t make it. I plugged the ipod in and listened to some terrible music as the only playlist I had was the horrendously cheesy Blackpool hockey tour music! To keep my ipod warm I had it buried under about 4 of the 6 layers I was wearing so there was no chance of skipping tracks….nightmare! The temperature was dropping faster and the ascent turned into a monotonous trudge, with people being pulled out of the group who were really struggling and going up separately with porters. It was relentless and the only thing that was keeping me going was simply focussing on the feet of whoever was in front of me. I found that rather than worrying about how long we had left, how high we were, how I was becoming more and more spaced out and how much energy I didn’t have it helped to have one point of focus, simply focus on the feet! Abstract thoughts are something you don’t have time for, focus on the feet and they will get you to the top! Almost the hardest thing was actually the rest stops as it gave you a moment to realise that your brain isn’t functioning great!

After 5 hours of solid ascending, my ipod ran out of battery, ironically on ‘Eye of the Tiger’ which I thought would psyche me up! The ‘zoning out’ then became a touch more tricky but as we were getting closer it was just a thought of ‘ok this is bad, but this will only be 3 hours of my life and I will have the rest of my time to remember this’. I have to say as well that I was thinking about the support we’ve received since we decided to do these challenges, and every pound that has been donated to the charities is because we said we’d do this. The feeling at the top will supersede any pain I’m feeling now and this is what the events have boiled down to, so there’s no chance I’m quitting! I’ve found that if you decide you are going to achieve something then the pain of actually doing it becomes an annoying inevitability rather than a reason you won’t be able to do it! You just have to convince yourself you will do it.

Approximately two hours from the top was probably the hardest bit, I started hallucinating that I could see a little black dog next to me, which in actuality was the shadow of my trekking pole. However this fooled me three times and each time I jumped a mile away from the dog and then got cross with myself for that bloody pole fooling me again, I knew it wasn’t a dog…until it was again! It’s so frustrating but with only 30% of the oxygen you’re used to your brain really is tricking you all over the place! I even saw Marky B go up in smoke at one point when he pulled a scarf out of his bag...weird stuff! Focus on the feet! One hour to go and the sun started to come up, a big relief, we got to the top of the ridge and all the guides start congratulating you, slapping you on the back and there is a great feeling! They then turn round and say it’s just another hour to the summit….why?!?! By now my brain wasn’t engaged and I was genuinely worried about frostbite on my fingers! The gloves I had brought weren’t up for the job and at -14C I was permanently shaking and hitting my hands to get the blood flowing! Still we could see the end was nigh and ploughed on, buoyed by the fact that there was no way we were stopping now we eventually arrived at the top!

Everybody was pretty euphoric at the top, and it was simply an incredible feeling! The rest of the group were at the top together and the feeling of achieving what we set out to do so long ago was tremendous, all that training had paid off, we were there!! My brain wasn’t quite with it and I realised I am a bit of a control freak because as great as the feeling was I just wanted to get back down! The only way I can really try to describe how I felt is that I was watching myself as a third person, it seemed almost dreamlike and I didn’t like the feeling at all. We took a few obligatory pictures that I treasure so much now, because it reminds me of what I went through to get there. At 5,893 metres high, the world seems a very different place and after half an hour or so at the top we headed back down as quickly as we could!

We headed down from the summit and the oxygen in the air was already more noticeable straight off the top. After a little while descending we came across huge fields of skree (loose rocks) that people were almost skiing down on their shoes. This was one of the most unpleasant parts of the trip, with the sun now out and still wearing six layers on top and dressed for sub zero temperatures, there was 5 hours of dusty loose slippy rocks with everyone falling over and generally hating it! I know this is coming across like a massive whinge but we hadn’t slept all night, were baking hot and had to basically slide on our feet for 5 hours…..moods were not exactly sky high and I still feel sorry for our guide Filbert who had to put up with Giles and myself going very slowly moaning and complaining bitterly most of the way down! Hot and bothered we finally got back to the camp to find we had a couple of hours rest followed by a 4 hour walk down to the altitude where we could safely sleep (3,100m)!

I don’t remember much of the walk down due to still being completely spaced out and stumbling about but we got to camp at approximately 4pm, where we crawled into our tents and I slept straight through dinner until 6:30am the next morning! It was a blissful oxygen-filled sleep and after all the difficulty of sleeping in a tent this time it felt like a four poster bed! Waking up early we headed off after tipping our porters and guides, donating a lot of kit and saying goodbye, we trekked another 5 hours back down to the gate where we were greeted triumphantly by souvenir sellers all over the show! A successful period of bartering started which I absolutely loved and I even managed to trade my hat for one of the sellers straw hats with no money changing hands...jackpot!

We drove back to the lodge absolutely exhausted but elated, there is still a feeling from my point of view that we’ve only done 50% of what we’ve set out to do but I also feel that we’ve done the most ‘non-manageable’ part of our challenges. Although I think the parish will be every bit as tough if not tougher, the variable of altitude sickness meant that Kilimanjaro could have been impossible but we’ve conquered it meeting some amazing people on the way! A bed was my reward when I got back to the lodge and I made the most of it, followed by a top dinner, a miserable England draw and a very random night out with the guides, Will, Sam and Zoe from the group! First beer for over two months felt like a celebration too!

Five days rest until the Parish...

Dave.