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.
Leave a Reply