Final Ascent

Day 5 of Kili: 20th Sept 2006

This day deserves a special mention. Please note that each and every one of these photographs were taken with extreme effort - will explain...

So we've been tramping and camping for the past 4 days. Things have been good - we walk from 830-2pm each day then camp and conserve our energy.

So on Day 4, we climbed what we thought was a hard climb up to Barafu Hut, 4600m above sea level. As you can see from the prev pics, its pretty cold up there. we had dinner, took some photos of sunset and rested.

Until 11:30pm.

We were woken up at 1130 to have our final tea and biscuits (milo for me) before our ascent. Jenn was in hyper mood, talking to herself and laughing at her own jokes however you could tell her brain was not function cos she spilt milo on herself (she later stored the pants away and they really smelled rotton! who knew that old milo is disgusting)

Anyways, after that we started climbing. in the dark. I had a shaky start cos i got separated from the group, and i had no torch, so i frantically ran across the rocks towards the light, destroying my walking stick in the process.

And from there it was seriously, step by step.

Our mission: from 4600m to 5300m (i think) - stella point, and then from 5600m up to 5895m - Uhuru Peak.

So from midnight, we climbed till 6:00am.

With little breaks in btwn.

It was the hardest day of my life.

Seriously - all i could do was breath in and out. I was taking little baby steps and yet i was puffing away like i was running a marathon. Jenn was wasted - from 50% onwards she was struggling and from 80% of the way to stella point, she had to be dragged along. And remember she is way fitter than me...

1hr into the walk we saw this woman come down. She gave up.
Apparently, as we later found out, we passed this 5pple group who didn't make it either.

It was snowing as well when we started walking.

We made it to Stella Point.

Notice i didn't take any photos along the way. I was way too tired to get camera from my bag. To get my camera, i had to take off my gloves. Through the whole climb my feet and hands were freezing. It takes 10 solid min of clenching and unclenching my hands to get circulation back into it. Therefore getting camera out of my bag - i not only have to unload my bag, open the zip, take off my glove and freeze, get the camera out, and i have to take photos without glove on my hand...it was just too much.

But here i am at stella point.

The sun was beginning to rise.

I laughed.

I joyed.

I cried.

tears and all

I asked Fredy to take photo for me (Jenn by this time was non-responsive and was dragged away by Clemence up to Uhuru).

It was beautiful walking up to Uhuru.

No matter how my hands were i had to capture the rising sun.

Nearly dead as i asked Fredy to take another photo for me. The ascent from Stella Point to Uhuru peak took around 1:30 apparently.

By the end of it, i was barely walking. I could have made it to the peak, but Fredy decided to take my hand and walk me there.

When i got to the peak the sun had risen. It was simply amazing.

Jenn cried.

I cried.

It was so hard. So damn hard.

We didn't even have the energy to enjoy being up there. Above everyone in Africa.

Mt Kilimanjaro. Uhuru Peak. The tallest mountain in Africa. The tallest lone mountain in the world. I stood on the peak.

The walk down was hell. Descending from Uhuru peak to Stella point my adrenalin ebbed away. The joy of reaching the peak was replaced by the dread of knowing that i had to make the same way down.

The way down from Stella to Barafu Hut looked like this

If i had pointed the camera horizontally, you would be looking at the ground. And this wasn't even the steepest or hardest part.

I was glad we climbed at night. Cos if i did this during the day, and had 6 hours of continuous slope like the above and i could actually see it, i think we would have given up.

Jenn fell 6 times on her way down.

My legs and thigh hurt like hell.

It took 2.5 hrs to get bk to Barafu camp at around 930am. Straight into sleeping bag to sleep. For 1hr.

Woke up for lunch.

And then descended again for another 2 hrs to Mweka Camp (3100m)

My legs, especially my knees, hurt.

As Clemence said "I left my knees on kilimanjaro"

We had dinner and went to sleep at 630am, right through to the next morning.

And concluded

The hardest day of my life