In August 2010 Hannah Braye climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in memory of her friend Lucy raising over £1,000. This will go to help build a school in Dairuharu in Brikama and the first classroom being built will be dedicated to Lucy, a former Gambia Experience client.
The following are some highlights from Hannah’s fascinating account of her climb. Her determination is a real inspiration and I’m sure Lucy would be very proud of her. Hannah’s account can be read in full on “Nyodema’s” blogsite.
Alice, Emmanuel and Hannah
Day 1 – Londorossi to Big Tree Camp
So today is the first day of our Kilimanjaro trek. Alice and I met our guide Emmanuel yesterday evening (we are the only two in our walking group). He is 26 years old and has been walking the mountain since he was 17, working his way up from porter to waiter, to cook, to assistant guide and finally guide.
We set off early from the hotel. The jeep ride once we get into the national park is extremely bumpy. I am sat in the back seat; there are only a few inches between the roof and my head, which takes quite a beating. How Alice manages to drop off for a cat nap is beyond me! From the gate where we sign in we can make out Mount Meru’s peak hazy in the distance.
We drive past the local potato farmers who are collecting in their crop and finally alight at the foot of the rain forest in the early afternoon. This is where our adventure begins.
The walk through the rain forest is fairly steep but we take it “Poley Poley” (slowly slowly). At times the pace seems almost ridiculous but Emmanuel tells us it is the best way for us to acclimatize.
Day 2 – Big Tree Camp to Shira 1
The day starts with breakfast of a similar size to last night’s dinner. The porridge is a particular challenge. Tanzanian porridge is brown and very watery the oats have been completely ground up. It tastes of little until large dollops of Tanzanian jam, which is as sweet as opal fruits, are added. The porridge will become a daily challenge for some of us. It takes Alice 3 days to pluck up the courage just to try it. Before we set off the porters of an American group also staying at the camp sing a song about the mountain. It is a song that Emmanuel will sing to us many times as we walk. Some of the lyrics are Akuna Matata (which means no worries in Swahili, as most of you will know from a certain Disney movie about a lion cub). I actually prefer the porter’s song to Elton John’s.
As we head higher the rainforest stops abruptly and turns into alpine forest. The trail is narrow and head high plants grow on either side of us. Now we are out of the forest the sun is hot and trail becomes increasingly steep.
We walk for about 4 hours and as the path gets dustier and steeper I put my camera away in my back pack. Of course a minute later we round the Shira ridge and against the perfect blue sky we catch our first glimpse of Kibo, the Kilimanjaro summit, its white glaciers glinting in the distance.
We are camping at Shira 1 camp on the plateau which is at 3500m. At this altitude even just turning over in your sleeping bag gets you out of breath. This coupled with the 4 ½ litres of water we have drunk during the day and the diamox tablets we are taking to prevent altitude sickness (the main side effects of which are tingling hands and feet and an inexplicable need to wee continuously) makes for a broken nights sleep.
Day 3 – Shira 1 to Shira 2
Today we are doing an easy walk for 3-4 hours across the plateau. It is one of the acclimatisation days built into our route to give us the best chance at reaching the summit. The plants in the moorland are beautiful and Emmanuel laughs at how many photos I stop and take.
The sun is very strong today and Alice and I both start to burn despite using factor 40 sun block. As we near the edge of the plateau we realise why. We are above the clouds! They stretch out below us, soft, white and fluffy, the kind that you just want to roll around in. I remark that it’s like looking out of an aeroplane window. Emmanuel is intrigued to know whether planes have windows and whether you can open them. He says he hopes to fly someday. We discuss some of the places he could go and suggest England, although he seems unsure about the weather. It’s a bit of a reality check given how much we take just getting on a plane and hopping to another country for granted. I really hope he gets to fly one day.
Day 4 – Shira 2 to Barranco Camp
Today is a harder days walking. We are ascending to 4600m before dropping back down to 3850 to camp, as this will help us to acclimatize. As we climb steadily higher the moorland fades out into rocky terrain with large boulders scattered about and not much growing. Alice isn’t feeling well with the altitude at this height and it is a bit of a wake up call that this isn’t just a lovely little walk we are doing.
As we walk Emmanuel teaches us some Swahili. His favourite phrase is ‘poa kachizi coma dizi’, (pronounced porky cheesy camondeesy). This translates as ‘super cool like crazy banana’. We think something maybe lost in the translation! We teach Emmanuel ‘easy peasy lemon squeezy’ in return – something I come to regret on summit night when, whilst I have my head between my legs in an attempt not to pass out, Emmanuel insists the walk is easy peasy lemon squeezy! My favourite Swahili phrase I have learnt so far is ‘la la salama’ which means sleep well, which I certainly did that evening after the exertions of the day.
Day 5 – Barranco to Karanga Camp
One of the strangest effects of the altitude are the crazy dreams that you have. The sleep is much lighter and I find I am having 3 or 4 memorable dreams a night.
The start of today’s walk was not so much of a walk as a climb up the cliff face opposite camp. The fact that there are no photos of this part of the trek is testament to how steep the trail was.
The rest of the walk is up and down, up and down for about 3 hours. We climb to 4200m but descend to 4100m to camp at Karanga, which in Swahili apparently means peanut. It feels like we are camped on the edge of the world.
As we are camping higher than we have before the wind is much stronger. Most of our tents don’t have any pegs and the porters use large rocks to pin them down. During dinner the mess tent takes a real battering and it feels at one point like it might actually be blown off the mountain. A miniature dust storm swirls up around us from the floor and our food becomes all of a sudden crunchy. We each hang on to a corner of the tent with one hand and a pole/plate/table or whatever we can get hold of with the other. It is at this point that Matt decides to break into a rendition of Gloria Gayner’s ‘I Will Survive’ at the top of his voice which sends us all into hysterics and bowls and plates flying.
Day 6 – Karanga to Barafu Camp
Today is only 3 hours walk up to 4600m as we need to rest in the afternoon for the summit attempt tonight, although the trail is quite steep.
Barafu means ice in Swahili, which is extremely fitting. There aren’t many redeeming features to Barafu. The wind is biting cold and so noisy. The terrain is like being on the moon, thick dust swirls into the air and is constantly in your eyes and throat. Even the ravens don’t inhabit Barafu. The wind is so strong our toilet tent stands no chance of staying upright and the long drops are positioned right on the edge of an exposed ridge so that the wind howls under the tin roof and a blasting ice draft blows up from underneath you. There is however a beautiful view of the neighbouring mountain. It is also over 5000m but it is a technical climb so not many people attempt it. Its peaks look like the turrets of a castle and it reminds me a little of Tryfan in North Wales.
At our early dinner we stock up on carbohydrates and I think the nerves start to show on everyone as we prepare for summit night. We go to our tents and attempt to sleep but at this altitude and with the wind shaking the tent continuously around us I’m not able to drop off. If I reach the summit I will already have been awake for 24 hours.
We gather in the mess tent at 11pm for tea and biscuits. Alice and I polish off an entire bar of dairy milk in preparation for what lies ahead. One might have thought that I was fairly prepared for the summit. I had fared well so far, not suffering with any symptoms of altitude. I had taken double the dose of diamox to the previous days, as instructed and I was toasty warm, my summit outfit consisting of 2 pairs of thermal leggings, walking trousers, waterproof trousers, 4 layers of thermal tops, a thick fleece, a down jacket, a waterproof jacket, 2 pairs of gloves, a fleece hat and a ski mask. But I’m not sure anything can fully prepare you for summit night!
We start off ‘poley poley’ as ever. The moon is only one night short of full and the path is illuminated in front of us. Emmanuel and Frank don’t use head torches. However we’ve only been walking an hour or so when the queasiness sets in. This can be controlled fairly easily by continuous burping but Frank has to carry Alice’s backpack for her from early on. As we pass 5000m I start to feel light headed. I have a pocket full of sweets which I munch on continuously in an attempt to keep my blood sugar up (apparently it plummets drastically at extreme altitude). The further we go the more the yellow dots start to dance in front of my eyes to the point when I can hardly see the floor below me and with every step I feel as though I could pass out. Emmanuel doesn’t let us rest long, constantly calling “twende twende” (lets go, lets go), as the trail is extremely exposed to the wind and there are few places to shelter. Soon I too have to surrender my back pack to him to. The temperature drops to -15 degrees. The first things I lose feeling in are my hands, then my feet and face. It’s around this time that I start to compose the email in my head…the email explaining to everyone who had sponsored me that I didn’t make it to the top.
It is only down to Emmanuel and Frank and the way they look after us that we manage to struggle on through the next few hours. Frank does up my shoes laces when my hands stop working because of the cold. They give us their walking poles and head torch when mine runs out, rub our hands to get the feeling back, get the water from my back pack (the only bottle that hasn’t frozen solid) and pour it in to our mouths. And all the while Emmanuel sings to us.
Gradually my head starts to clear slightly. I think my brain can only concentrate on either the cold or the lack of oxygen but not both at the same time. We find our rhythm. We’ve been walking for 5 hours at this point but all I have is what feels like a few minutes of conscious memory. Just as I start to fear the mountain may be starting to get the better of me again, Emmanuel announces that we are nearing Stellar Point, where we join the crater rim. From there it is only 45 minutes to an hour to Uhuru Peak, the summit. The timing is perfect to give us hope. I know that if I can make it to Stellar point there’s no way I won’t make it to the summit, I’ll have come too far. However, Emmanuel may have been a little premature in his announcement as it feels another age before I look up from the floor to realise we are on the rim and Emmanuel is gathering us together for a group hug. It’s 5am.
Up on the summit the temperature falls further to -20 degrees. It’s so cold that the boiled sweets I’m sucking won’t melt in my mouth anymore and I have to spit them out. As we follow the edge of the crater round there are dark shapes appearing all around us and icicles grow vertically up from the floor.
Unlike the last 5 hours the last hour passes in a heartbeat as I anticipate the exhilaration of reaching the top. And all of a sudden we are there!
With the light comes a feeling of great joy and achievement and another round of hugs. It also illuminates the precarious nature of our journey around the crater rim at times!
I feel like I could stay on the top of the mountain forever. But it is still well below freezing and we have to keep moving. We begin the long descent down. If I didn’t know that only an hour or so earlier I had walked up the same path I never would have guessed. The mountain is thick dust that your feet sink down into. All I have the energy to feel is relief that I made it. The sun becomes increasingly hot and slowly the feeling returns to my extremities in a flash of pins and needles, all except the fingers of my right hand, which stubbornly remain numb for the next week!
So now the adventure is over and I reflect on it all. We’ve been through a lot, wind, rain, glaring heat and dust storms. There have been tears (me secretly at the top), singing and a lot of laughter. We are filthy, bedraggled and greasy. There have been the inevitable toilet issues along with nosebleeds, black toenails, sunburn and an awful lot of snot. It is impossible to hang on to much dignity when walking Kilimanjaro. But as Alex so rightly put it at our last meal together, you regain it all and more when you reach to the top.
