Tom's Climbing Blog

I’m writing this from camp 2.  I haven’t had time to write anything up to now.  36 hours of traveling brought us to our hotel in Moshi, Tanzania at 2 AM. The hotel was having plumbing problems so neither of us were able to take a proper shower (Dan I think is still wearing the soap) and at 9 am we were driving to the trailhead.  We were hiking at noon and arrived at the Machame camp in pouring rain at 5 pm.  Mercifully, our tents were already set up and dinner came promptly. I may have fallen asleep a couple of times during dinner, but I somehow got through it and ultimately had a good nights sleep. 

And that was my introduction to Africa. My only other adventure in what they used to call the third world was in Nepal, and thus it’s impossible for me to resist comparing the two, which isn’t really fair. In Nepal you fly to a cultural capital.  Here you fly to their version of Idaho falls. And nobody lives on Kilimanjaro, just as nobody lives on the Grand Teton, so there is no cultural element to the hike.  The trails are just as crowded, mind you, but there are no villagers on the trail.  Rather all the hikers are just tourists like me and their guides and porters. 

… of which we have 16… for us 2 westerners. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around that.  Sixteen porters and guides!  I can only imagine what they must think of us. 

The hike itself has been, well, uphill.  We started at 6000’ in a hot, humid rain forest.  Trees at the start were 150’ tall which was quite lovely and serene.  The trail went up an inclined plain for 4000 vertical feet.  The serenity never changed which alas is the nature of hiking in a deep rain forest.  No views whatsoever.  At some point when the conversation stopped and I got tired of counting the sweat drops off my forehead, I put on headphones.  And then the rain started and the umbrellas came out and we went from uncomfortably hot to uncomfortably damp and cold.   Such is life in the mountains. 

In comparing the hike to Nepal, at least the trail isn’t dusty.  Muddy yes, but not dusty.  My lungs feel a lot more comfortable here, at least so far.  The dampness that insinuates itself into absolutely everything is a bit of a shock to the system, but what was I expecting?

Today we hiked straight up from 10,000 to roughly 12,600’ at the Shira Cave camp.  The trail turned into a slippery scramble in places, which honestly made it more interesting. The trees got progressively shorter the higher we got and we started to get views.  Overall it was a nice hike.  I enjoyed myself. Our camp is near their version of timberline.  Hopefully we’ll be able to orient ourselves tomorrow if it dawns clear like this morning.  We arrived at camp in thick mists and we ate lunch in our dining tent in pouring rain… our timing was excellent   It stopped raining at dinner and as I write this in the dark I can watch the many flashes of lightening in the distance.  

Well, despite the easy hike, I’m tired so I’m calling it a day.  My Bluetooth keyboard seems to be suffering from the dampness so I’m writing this with my thumb on my phone, which I’m not used to doing so forgive the typos.  Internet is very spotty but I discovered last night that at 3 am I could get cell service. Hopefully history repeats itself so maybe in 6 hours I’ll be able to send this. 

And it’s raining again. 

Cheers.

Never a good sign when there are rainbows at breakfast.

Day 3 camp is already set up when we arrive.

The clouds started breaking up in the evening. That’s the famous icicle in the book The Breach. The first ascent of which was ultimately done by Reinhold Messner.

Evening light on the 6000′ Breach wall.

The lights of the town of Moshi, 10,000 vertical feet below.

A rare outdoor breakfast… Beats being inside the damp dining tent.

No direct sunshine yet…

Ahh, finally. Too bad our guides are telling us to pack up and go…

(Here’s day 3 alternate version. Tom has predictably bad cell service so he sent the above via text and the below via email, I’m not sure which I’m supposed to post but they’re both interesting so for now I’m posting both – Alec)

I got up to pee at 4 am and had a fantastic view  of the mountain bathed in moonlight… my first view of the mountain from camp.  Unfortunately, when I emerged from the tent again at 6:30, we were all back in clouds.  It’s too bad because the views would have been amazing this day.  From  our camp 2 at 12,600”, we hiked up another inclined plane up to a mini saddle at 15,200.  We’re now above timberline and the landscape was mostly a volcanic wasteland with occasional meadows that reminded us of the Scottish highlands… well a hypoxic Scottish highland.   At various points we would pass bizarre otherworldly vegetation to remind us that we’re still in Africa. Because of the mists, we could rarely see farther than a few hundred yards.

The 5 hour hike ended with an easy descent in light/moderate rain to the Baranco camp at 13,100’.  We both felt good and were moving fast which made me fear that we would beat the porters to the camp, but apparently they took a shorter route and our tents and a hot lunch were waiting for us.   Hallelujah.  Money well spent.

So far, our 16 member support team has been awesome.  The food has taken some getting used to, but we’re adapting, and it has always been served with love and enthusiasm.  I have to seriously wonder what sort of appetites their previous clients have had, as they give us mountains of food.  Even when we beg for smaller portions, we can’t finish it, and when Francis takes our uneaten food back to the kitchen tent, he doesn’t hide his disappointment like some sort of doting parent.  With that said, if we ever did eat that mountain of food and then he called us fat pigs, then all would be forgiven.  That would be hilarious. 

In Nepal, it’s easy to intuit how the porters are so strong, as they are born and raised in the mountains.  Here, nobody lives in the mountains.  They live on a flat plain that goes on as far as the eye can see at 3000’ above sea level.   There’s no geographic advantage here (although through dint of circumstance there might be a lot of competition, and I’ll leave it at that).  Some are super strong.  I was passed in descent today by a porter running down a loose trail wearing a backpack and  balancing another duffel on his head… no hands.  I pulled out my camera and started running down the trail to get a picture. 

Respect.

The porters here don’t use tumplines (?) like the Sherpas.  Rather, they wear a modest backpack and then balance another duffel on their head.  Ouch. 

That’s all for today.

Our guide Romli on day 3:

We’ve learned that these minor breaks in the morning mists usually presage rain. Scottish highlands, day 3.

Lunch!

Our crew singing a song to us before the day’s hike. I don’t think every group gets this treatment, but we’ve seen a couple of others, so it’s not just us.

We were successful.  We woke up at 11 PM.  Moving at midnight.  On top at 5:15 AM.  Back at camp at 8 AM.  We then packed up and descended another 5000 vertical feet arriving at the Mweka camp (10,000’) in the deep rain forest at noon.  The crew then served us lunch.  The heavy rains began at 1:30, and I slept until dinner.  Somehow Dan managed to stay awake this afternoon… I don’t how he did it… that’s a superpower… a completely pointless and bordering on useless superpower.

Yesterday, we had the pow-wow for the summit day plans.  “How long do you think it will take us to get to the summit?”  “For you… 5 hours”.   What time should we leave?  “Midnight”.  “Won’t that get us to the summit in the dark?” “Yes”.  Can we start later so that we can be on the summit at dawn?”  “No”.  This went back and forth for a minute or two and brought back memories of Ama Dablam where I had the exact same conversation with my Sherpa, and when the dust settled we had the exact same result: we did it his way and summited really really early.

Here on Kilimanjaro, remember that all parties are guided.  Turns out that all guides start at midnight or earlier… we were actually in the late staring group.  When I stepped out of my tent at 11 PM, I could see a line of headlights already heading up.

If I look back on my life, I would say that more often than not, the night before a big climb I don’t get much sleep.   I toss and turn and think too much.  Last night, I slept soundly.  The alarm had to wake me up.  And then something even better happened: I was able to take a big dump.  For those of you who haven’t been in my situation before, to take a big dump before a climb starting at midnight is mana from heaven.  It’s going to be a good day.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  Orion shone brightly directly overhead… much higher than we see it in Wyoming, and a bright gibbous moon
was just rising.  There was frost on the tent, but it wasn’t that cold.  I don’t have a thermometer with me but I would guess high twenties/low thirties.

With everything lining up in our favor, we entered the conga line of climbers.  The trail started rocky, with some easy scrambling, but then was mostly a steep packed dirt path that was in pretty good shape.  If you stepped off the path the ground was very loose, and that made it hard to pass people, but the trail was easy cruising.

We quickly discovered that our plodding pace was faster than most of the other people on the trail.  Every single party was book-ended by guides.  In our case, Romli set the pace, with Dan and I in the middle, and David bringing up the rear.  Not a single guided party stepped aside for us.  We could hear Romli talk in Swahili to the other guides, but said talk had no practical result.  Rather, when it looked like we could pass, Romli would say “are you ready?” And we would then sprint up a switchback cutoff to get ahead.  Something like this would never happen in the US… guides in the US are much too nice.  Here, I sort of get it: a lot of the clients we passed were pushing themselves to the redline… we even watched a guy (sounded British) literally fall backwards and tumble down some rocks only 15 feet ahead of us (he claimed to be OK as we passed him). Many clients weren’t wearing packs at all.  While Kilimanjaro is the easiest big peak that I’ve ever been on, that lack of difficulty attracts people who couldn’t otherwise climb a big mountain, so I don’t begrudge them being there.  And if they stopped for every stronger party that wanted to pass, it would just make their day that much longer, and as it was, their day was going to be much longer than ours.

I don’t know how many people we passed, but it had to be close to a 100.  We weren’t going fast.  We were just plodding along.  We took breaks.  It didn’t feel rushed.  We put on more and more clothes the higher we got.  A wind from the south picked up.  At about 3 AM it clouded over (of course).  At 4 AM we were back in a cloud again.. this is familiar. 

The last half mile or so goes on a scenic ridge from Stella Point at 18,800’ to the true summit
at 19,341’.  The wind picked up and our left side started getting rimed up.  Again, we’re just following a trail – a dry trail at that.  We didn’t have to step on snow the entire way, but with 30 feet of visibility and a strong wind on our left shoulder and getting covered with rime, it actually felt alpine.   Cool.

At 5:15 AM we stood on the top.  It was Dan’s first big mountain.  Congratulations Dan. Judging by the lack of footprints in the rime on the ground and the fact that we hadn’t passed anybody coming down, we think we were the first on top this day (what do we win?).  Because there was nothing to see, my resentment at summiting in complete darkness was put to rest.  Conditions were far too burly to hang out.  We took a few pictures and I sent an inreach message to Dede, and after 9 whole minutes on the summit, we started down.

At Stella point, the weather began clearing a bit and those resentments returned, and then it socked in again, and then it started clearing again, and then Dan told me to chill.  We were on our way down.

The descent path diverges from the ascent path for more than half the route back to camp.  Instead of smooth packed dirt, you go down a soft scree slope which in places feels like descending snow… it’s a lot easier on the knees and quite a bit faster. We took a 10 minute break halfway down and realized that nobody had passed us.  This might have been the only 10 minute break of the entire week where we were alone… maybe getting ahead of the pack has its advantages.

We walked back into camp at 8 AM.  The porters sang us another song upon our arrival.  They seemed genuinely happy for us.  Not to be too cynical but I’m guessing our early arrival meant both a better tip and that they could start getting the flock out of there before the rains came.

Within an hour, we were fed, packed up and on the trail.  We descended another 5000 vertical feet.  This is not the trail we came up, rather, it is the shortest trail from civilization to high camp.  Climbers are only allowed to go down it, not up.  There were a handful of porters going up bringing food to groups up high, and of course our group of porters were going down, but otherwise the trail was pretty quiet.  It was the least crowded trail we’ve been on all trip, and actually had moments of solitude.  We got into camp at noon.  It was a 12 hour day.

I’m running out of steam.  It’s 9 PM and despite sleeping all afternoon, I’m tired and am going to go to bed.  No cell service here so I’ll send this out when I get down tomorrow.  The porters are in go mode so they are waking us up at 5 AM to be on the trail at 6.  It’s 6 miles and 4000 vertical feet to the trailhead and we’ve been told it takes about 3 hours.  Will the hotel have any water pressure for showers this time around?  Stay tuned.

Being welcomed into camp after a successful ascent.

What goes up, must come down, so today we hiked down an additional 4600 vertical feet to the trailhead, got on a bus and am now at the hotel in Moshi.  And guess what?  We have water pressure so we could both take showers… well, I ran out of hot water after 5 minutes, but I was mostly done by then.

This place just can’t do it the easy way.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little tired right now, but in a good way.  This adventure isn’t over yet: tomorrow I fly 150 miles north across the Equator to Nairobi, from where I will be driven to Mt Kenya.  I get a second night in a hotel and then up I go.  Mt Kenya is the second highest mountain in Africa and is a considerably more technical ascent (17,057’).  Climbing 5.7 at 17,000’ is no joke.  The good news is that I should be well acclimatized after Kilimanjaro, so that should help. In fact, that’s the point.

I will be going alone… just me and another army of porters.

If this blog post is short, well, forgive me I’m tired and I have some packing up to do.  Hopefully, I’ll have time to write tomorrow.

Cheers.

One final song.

Today has been a bit of a blur.  In my defense, two days ago I stood on top of Kilimanjaro, and my poor knees just walked down 13,900 vertical feet.  And I was picked up to go the airport at 3 AM this morning…. Like I said, a blur.

Mt Kenya is about 200 miles north of Kilimanjaro.  My previous post was incorrect: I’m still in the southern hemisphere.  It’s weird that my Gaia map doesn’t show the Equator, but I think I’m still a few miles south of it.  As I write this I’m back in the land of really sketchy cell service and precious oh so precious battery power, so I can’t go online to figure it out.  That will be a task for next week.

My flight from Moshi to Nairobi was only 45 minutes, but that doesn’t include the hours in security and passport control (and me foolishly screwing up my visa, which was fixed and didn’t cost me any additional time, but added a bit of stress).  Since it’s only a 100 mile drive, I asked the taxi driver why we couldn’t just drive, and he said “too dangerous”.  “Drugs”.  We then asked what drugs and in what direction were they being trafficked, but didn’t get an answer.

For Mt Kenya, I’m with a completely different trekking company.  No relation to David’s company at all.  I was met at the airport by my guide Steven, and climbed into the taxi.  I was told that it would be a 2.5 hour drive, but I later learned that was just to the first rest stop.  Before it was over, it was a 6 hour drive, plus a stop for lunch.  We’ve now been dropped off at the trailhead at 10,000’ on Mt Kenya.  All the porters and cooks are with us and they are beavering away.   I’m typing this in a dinning tent.  My personal tent is set up.  Tomorrow we will trek up to the Mackinder hut at just under 14,000’.  No hiking today.

Question of the day: if two westerners – Dan and myself – had 16 guides and porters for Kilimanjaro.  How many guides and porters does a single westerner get?  I’ll answer that tomorrow. 

I’ll be interested to see how crowded it gets up high.  My group is the only one camping here.  There are a couple of cars parked, otherwise, it’s quiet.  Compared to the festival scene on Kilimanjaro, it’s a welcome respite.  Lots of wildlife too: monkeys and a goat like creature whose name I can’t look up right now because I don’t have internet.

Kilimanjaro had no bugs at all, even down to 5400’.  While I haven’t seen any yet, I’ve been told that they come out in the evening.  We’re too high for the malarial mosquitos, but I’ve been told to put on the deet… makes me wonder what’s waiting for me.  I guess I’ll find out.  I’ve also been told to keep taking the malaria medicine for when the trip is over.  Again, that’s different from Tanzania.  Hmmmm.

That’s all for today.  From the Naro Moru River Lodge Met Station at 10,000 on the side of Mt Kenya, good night.

Today was the first sunny day – all day – of my trip.  The mountains were visible all day. No afternoon mists. No afternoon rain. Am I still in Africa?  

We hiked about 180 degrees around the mountain to the Shipton hut.  It went up over three small passes, so about 2000 vertical feet up and down.  It took about 4 hrs. Tonight’s camp is also at about 14,000.

On the high passes I had my phone on and maybe it sent out yesterday’s blog.  It downloaded the headers to my email but I can’t read the body of the emails.  Attempts at sending photos also failed.  Am I really going to spend a week on Mt Kenya with hardly any internet at all?  In this day and age, can I do that?

With these casual days I’ve had more time to focus on the otherworldly flora and fauna.  I’ll have to do a big photo dump when this trip is over.  

My cold is now a full on cough, and it’s really annoying.  This morning I felt downright sick, but after an hour on the trail I felt fine… I just sounded bad.  It looks like there are a couple of westerners staying in the hut tonight and I do feel a little pull to go talk to them, but I don’t want to go inside with this cough.

There were three other parties at last night’s hut: one was a trekking group from Hungary.  The other two were climbers.  Both were attempting the true summit today.  Both were going super fast: going from sea level to the Mackinder hut at 14,000’ on day 1, and then going for the 17,000’ summit on day 2.  In all my years I have never gone so high so fast.  I once hiked up Mt Whitney in a day from Los Angeles, and I remember a vicious headache on the summit.  I honestly don’t know how they do it.  Is it just drugs?  One of them did say that they had a headache at the hut.  Because tonight I’m on the other side of the mountain, I’ll likely never know how they did.  I’ve been stewing on this all day.

My guide Steve has been opening up to me a bit.  He’s never been out of Kenya, but he speaks English pretty well.  Being a guide on Mt Kenya is his main job, and I think it pays better than his peers.  He seems to like doing it.  He’s been eating with me, and says that he never eats like this at home.  At dinner tonight he said that he was still full from lunch (me too!).  I told him that I don’t eat like this at home either.  

Tomorrow is a 7 AM start.  We’re going to hike up 16,355’ Peak Lenana, which is the highest trekking peak in the area.  If you’ve read No Picnic on Mt Kenya, this is the peak the Italian POWs climbed.  Tomorrow should be pretty casual, and then the next day is a planned rest day, and then the big climb. Im not going to lie: I’m a little nervous:  I don’t think I can do a big climb in the state I’m in.  Well, I still have two days…

Sent from my iPhone

This is not an easy post to write.  Fear not, I’m OK.  The cold virus finally reached a tipping point where I had to end the expedition, but I was able to walk out on my own power and am now comfortably recovering in a hotel in Nairobi.

The plan for the day was an easy hike up and over the 3rd highest peak of Mt Kenya: 16,355’ pt Lenana.  For those who aren’t climbers, this is the trekking summit.  It has a very short Via Ferrata at the summit (really just 7 or 8 ladder rungs), but it’s a true summit with great views.  It’s about 2300 vertical feet above our camp (the Shipton Hut), and only about 700’ above tomorrow night’s camp: the Austrian Hut at 15,700’, which is the high camp for technical ascents of the true summit.

What followed was an eerily familiar discussion: the guide wanted to start hiking at 3:00 AM in order to watch the sunrise from the summit.  “What time is sunrise?”  “6 AM” “How long do you think it will take me to get to the summit?”  “You, 2.5 hours”. “OK then why start at 3 AM”. “Because it’s beautiful”.  This time I explained that I really didn’t want to be on the summit at dawn and we settled for a civilized 7 AM start.  Apparently, seeing the sunrise from the summit is a thing that the guides like to do.  It’s part of their brand.  On the way up, we passed about a dozen hikers descending who had done just that.

I’ll give Steve credit, he did accurately predict our timing.  It took us 2.5 hours of leisurely hiking to get to the top, where we enjoyed a warm hour in the sun.  We were alone the whole time.  The weather was so clear that we could see Kilimanjaro 200 miles to the south (a rare event, according to Steve).

We then walked down the easy ridge to the Austrian hut in under an hour, and our hiking day was complete.  Now I had, in theory, 36 hours of rest before the climb itself.  I crawled into my tent and took a nap. 

In the afternoon, both my climbing guide, whom I had not yet met, and the owner of the company, both conveniently named John, woke me up.  They had hiked up that morning.  I must have presented a memorable visage of health and vigor to them, as I think they decided on the spot that I wasn’t going to the summit.  Admittedly, I sounded terrible and couldn’t stop coughing.  In a nice diplomatic way, they asked if I wanted to descend immediately.  I pulled out my pulse-ox meter and showed them that my O2 saturation was 95%, and that I was not dying of any high altitude illness.  However, the ultimate decision was made.  Through mutual consent, I was going to Nairobi tomorrow morning.  The climb was over.  As much as I want to deny it, I knew that I was too sick to do the climb.

So, one more day and night in a flapping tent, and then an 8 mile, 4.5 hour walk down 5700 vertical feet to the trailhead where we started.  In the end, I completed the circle route around the peak… woohoo.  Once the decision was made to go down, I think my body stopped pretending to be strong.  While I felt  fit on Pt Lenana only hours ago, I suddenly felt exhausted.  And that night I suffered a sleeping injury: I must have coughed while my body was out of alignment as I woke up with a tweaked back.   Oh well.  I could still walk out.  My body just wasn’t going to do it the easy way.

After the hike and then the 5 or 6 hour drive in a taxi whose seats wouldn’t pass muster in the US, I stumbled into the Holiday Inn like a zombie,  skipped dinner, and woke up the next morning wondering whether it really is a bad cold, or am I just tired?  Two days later I still don’t know the answer.   I’m tired, and I’m still coughing, and my ears have yet to equilibrate.  Maybe it was a bad cold.  That’s two expeditions in a row where I’ve gotten a cold that’s worse than anything I’ve had in Jackson since before Covid.  Hmmm. 

I don’t have the flu.  I don’t have a fever.  Mercifully, I don’t have the spins like I had on Everest.  It’s just a head and chest cold.  I like to think that I recover from colds pretty quickly, but empirical evidence states that’s not the case, at least in the third world.  I have no idea how I got it.  We were outside for a week on Kilimanjaro. I can’t see how I could have gotten it there.  Dan didn’t get sick.  Could I have acquired the cold on the plane (which admittedly was a ca-cough-ony)?  I wore a mask on the plane, and that was more than a week ago… could the latency be that long?  I don’t know.  I really don’t know what else I could have done to protect myself.  It’s just a bummer.

Well, I have another 2 nights to recover here in Nairobi and then I’m on a plane to Japan. I should be fine.  I’ll post a photo essay of Mt Kenya in the next day or two.  It really is a lovely place.  It’s not empty, but it’s quiet and pretty.  To a tourist like myself, the flora and fauna are much more interesting than on Kilimanjaro, and the mountain feels more intimate.  There are lovely lakes and tarns scattered about, and the rock walls make me wish I had spent a week here in my 30s just to climb a few routes.

For now, it’s in my rear view mirror.  On to the next…

Tom