5895m – The highest point in Africa
Sep 2007
While living in Dallas TX, I was chatting to a friend about what he had done in his last break, and was immediately intrigued. He had attempted a trip to Everest base camp, but had turned back around 5100m due to moving too slowly at that altitude. It was something I had never even considered possible, so immediately set about organising my own trip. To cut a long story short, I loved every minute of, and reached base camp on the 11 September 2006.
During this trip we all talked about our other hiking experiences, and there were two new ideas that got stuck in my head. One, to walk the Inca trail to Machu Pichu in Peru, and Two, to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. Fast forward to Sep 2007, and there I was arriving in Tanzania to experience my first of the Seven Summits.
Of course the first thing that happened was to be bitten by a mosquito at the airport. This concerned me rather a lot, as I had opted not to take any malaria medication, having heard nasty things about the side effects, and also rationalising that mosquitoes don’t tend to live at altitude.
I was climbing with my then girlfriend, and a colleague and his wife. We had chosen to do the Machame (whiskey) route as it was a longer itinerary than the Marangu (coca cola) route, and also would get you away from the established huts and into tent life with a bit more scenery.
The starting point is the Machame gate, near the town of Arusha. From there your first night is at Machame camp at 3000m, then Shira cave camp at 3480. Third night at Barranco, 3900m, then up the Barranco wall to Barafu camp at 4600m. This last jump of 700m is a lot to do in one day, and people were starting to feel the effect of altitude.
On the way we also had interesting discussions with those taking Diamox to help with the altitude. Everyone said that their fingers tingled, and that coke tasted funny (the two most common side effects!).
We started the summit attempt at midnight, and the temperature was about -6. I had taken a camelback for my water, and the hose froze leaving me high and dry!
About an hr into our attempt Janette, who had been moving very slowly, was starting to show signs of altitude sickness. She had no balance, was taking a few steps and then stumbling, but was adamant she wanted to continue. Not knowing how dangerous this was at the time, I continued to stay with her giving encouragement and sugar! It soon became apparent though, that she had to descend, and so we said our goodbyes and she headed back to camp with a guide. (Interestingly she improved with every step downhill, and felt fine again by the time she was at high camp).
This left me a long way behind the rest of our group, and so, being young, fit, and stupid, I started a double time pace up the mountain. I spent the next couple of hrs overtaking people on the congo line of climbers heading up.
I managed to catch up, but by the time I hit the false summit at Stella Point I was absolutely knackered! One of the guides gave me at trekking pole at this point, and I took the next 156m of altitude at a more sedate pace.
We reached the summit around dawn, and had spectacular views of the glacier. It was also time for the main entertainment, as the girls we were hiking with were attempting a Guiness record – the highest pole dance! They had climbed with a custom made collapsible pole that they held up with four guy ropes, each being held by a person. Each of them jumped briefly on the pole, much to our entertainment, but I never did find out if they got their record!
The descent for me was a little uncomfortable, as the ski clothes I had been wearing going up had been fine in the cold, but once the sun hit, I was roasting. I also made a bit of a wrong turn going down (I was running ahead in the scree), and ended up having to climb back up out of a gulley.
Once at high camp, we got all our gear together and began the trek down to our last camp, millennium camp at 3800m. As we began our descent I started calculating how far we had to go, and how long it would take us. By my calculation we weren’t going to make it in daylight, and we had packed our head torches with the porters who had descended ahead of us! So Janette and I had a discussion with the guide about where we were headed, then picked up the pace and were soon all alone. This turned out to be the right thing to do, as we arrived at dusk, whereas everyone else stumbled in well after dark. Of course it was a little embarrassing walking through the camp asking everyone if they knew where our trekking company was setup, but we made it in the end!
After the hike we took a day to checkout Arusha national park. This was well worth the effort, but in hindsight we should have taken more time. It would have been great to enter a park with predators – no lions for us!
One other thing that others did, that we regretted not doing, was to exit Tanzania via a trip at Zanzibar. By all accounts this beach town is well worth the visit.
Climb The Seven 