Part 2 – The Little Mountain of the Ice Devils

On Tuesday, Feb 15th, we commenced our attempt on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa, the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, and is featured prominently in both local beer names and Toto songs. The perfect place to continue our adventure.

Our group had grown on Monday from three to ten people. Our intrepid climbers were:
Myself
My mom
Jarlath, a friend from Princeton currently working in Zimbabwe
Kim, Jarlath’s dad
Mary Reid, another friend from Princeton and a PiAF Fellow working in Zambia
Margaret, her sister
Evan, a friend from Princeton
Eric, another friend from Princeton
Natessa, a friend and fellow volunteer from Nyumbani
Aliza, a friend and fellow volunteer from Nyumbani

Princeton ’10 was well represented on this trip (50%).

Kilimanjaro isn’t a mountain where you can just show up with your gear and start climbing. I mean, you could if the government of Tanzania let you. But they don’t. You have to hire a guide, and some porters. And by some, I mean 35. Excessive? Yes. Awesome? Also yes.

Before we get into the climb, let me right now make my habitual excuses for not having lots of pictures. My mom brought her camera so we’ve got some but the battery didn’t quite make it the whole trip. When Jarlath and Eric (our co-team photographers) post their photos I’ll repost a few on here.

So on Tuesday morning the 45 of us (10 climbers, 35 guides/cooks/porters) set off for the summit where we would arrive, if all went well, very early Sunday morning. We climbed by the Machame route, which meant five days to get up and two days coming down.

Machame Gate. The start of the trip. Altitude 1800m.

The first day was spent climbing through a beautiful rainforest to the first camp, Machame Hut, at around 3000m altitude. It was surprisingly cold there, and there was some precipitation that could almost be described by the term “wintry mix”.

View of the mountain through the trees

The second day the terrain changed to a scrub forest/moorland on our way to the second camp, Shira Cave. We never hiked an especially long time on any given day except the last one – 4 or 5 hours was pretty standard, and everything is “polepole” (slowly in Swahili). If you’re looking for one word to sum up a climb on Kili, “polepole” springs to mind. Most of the time its a pleasant pace, especially on the last day, but at other times it can drive you up a wall. Especially when a porter cruises past you carrying a pack and balancing a cooking stove and folding table on his head.

The view down the trail

And another

Me and Mom on the trail

As you can see from those photos, the trail was always crowded. Our group alone was 45 people and there were at least ten other groups climbing at the same rate as us. We always were part of a large train of people, which wasn’t really unpleasant. It gives the hike an expedition-y feeling and there’s good camaraderie with the other groups.

Bacari, on the left, and Tido

Bacari and Tido were our guides on this trip, and they were great. In the later stages of the climb, Tido liked to write little motivational messages for us in the snow using the tip of his umbrella. For example:

“Solid man never dies.
If he dies, never decomposes.
If he decomposes, never smells.”

Hell yea.

Camp at Shira Cave, night 2, ~3800m

This is our camp on the second day at Shira Cave, and its pretty representative of the rest of our camps (which is fortunate because its the only one I have pictures of). Ours are the cluster of green tents on the far left side of the campsite.

View of Kili from Shira

Sunset from camp

The third day, hiking from Shira Cave to Baranco Camp, was my favorite day of the climb until we got to the summit. The terrain started out that morning rocky with some small plants, but by lunchtime had given way to snow and ice.

Mom near Lava Tower (~4600m)

Porters are the best thing ever

It was at this meal that the porters really came through in a big way. The menu? Mango juice, sandwiches, hot soup, and fried chicken. Outside. In the snow. At 4500m altitude. I’ll take it.

We hiked up to the Lava Tower (4600m), and then down again to Baranco (~3900m). I thought the part from Lava Tower to Baranco was the prettiest part of the whole trip – there were some very cool palm-like plants that I can’t show you because I didn’t take a picture along with some gorgeous streams and waterfalls. I also really enjoyed seeing palm-ish trees covered in snow. It was at this point that the camera was shut off to save the batteries for the top, so I’ll have to wait for Jarlath to show you pictures of the next two days.

From Baranco Camp we hiked over the Baranco Wall (really fun) to Karanga camp, where we arrived on the 4th. Karanga was at the same altitude more or less as Baranco, so that day was just for acclimatization. People occasionally got headaches and some nausea in our group because of the altitude, but fortunately never anything severe enough that we had to turn back.

Day 5 saw us climb 700m up from Karanga to Barafu Camp. “Barafu” is Swahili for “ice”, and the name fit well. At 4600m this camp was rocky and very cold, and the air was noticeably thin. Even walking the short distance up the hill to the outhouse left you out of breath, especially at first. Barafu was the camp from which we’d make our push for the summit, and we were scheduled to leave that night after midnight. After a quick dinner we all got a few hours of sleep, and woke up around 11:30 pm to get ready for the big day.

The climb to the top of Kilimanjaro was amazing – there’s no other word for it. We left at 12:40am, and slowly made our way up the frozen volcanic scree towards to rim of the crater. There was a full moon that night, which gave plenty of visibility, although we all had headlamps. We moved, as we had all trip, quite slowly. The wind howling across the barren rocks was freezing cold, and most of the group’s water froze in its bottles before too long. The whole landscape was spartan – snow glowing faintly in the moonlight and utterly black rocks. It was beautiful.

Around 6:00 we reached Stella point, which is the rim of the crater on top of Kilimanjaro. From there it was less than an hour to the summit, Uhuru Peak. As we started our hike to the summit, the sun started to come up behind Mwenzi, a lower peak of Kilimanjaro.*

Beginnings of dawn - a beautiful and welcome sight

Sunset over Mwenzi, from just below the summit.

The top of Kili was the most astonishingly beautiful place I’ve ever been, especially at sunrise. If you look closely at the above picture, you can see the glaciers that surround the summit. The temperature there was at least -20 C and there was a howling wind but I’ve never enjoyed 45 minutes of hiking as much as I enjoyed that final climb. The spectacular views, the exhilaration, the beautiful and hostile environment. I don’t think I can really describe it, certainly not well enough to do it justice, so instead here’s the picture from the top!

We made it!

The next on the sign behind us:

“Congratulations!
You are now at Uhuru Peak, Tanzania, 5895M AMSL
Africa’s Highest Point
World’s Highest Free-standing Mountain”

As amazing as the top was, it wasn’t really a place you linger. We took some (lots) of photos in front of the sign and then headed back down to camp. A few hours and we were down, in time for a few hours of sleep before lunch and then another couple hours of hiking to our last camp. By lunchtime the next day we were out of the park and headed for a well-earned meal and a beer (courtesy of Eric who, being the first one to get altitude sickness, had to buy).

A note on the name Kilimanjaro. No one is sure exactly where the name Kilimanjaro came from. Wikipedia has several theories, the guides have others, so I’m just going to pick my favorite (and to me, the most plausible). Kilimanjaro is the conjunction of two Swahili words – “Mlima”, meaning “Mountain”, and “Njaro”, which can be translated as “Ice Devil” (according to my guidebook). The “Ki-” prefix in Swahili is a diminuative or term of affection, so “Kilimanjaro” translates roughly into English as “Little Mountain of the Ice Devils”, making it the best named mountain of all time.

All in all, an amazing trip. If you’re ever looking to spend a week in Northern Tanzania, there’s no better way.

*Kilimanjaro actually has 3 peaks. The highest, Kibo, is a volcanic crater. Uhuru Peak is the highest point on Kibo, and of the mountain. Mwenzi is the next highest peak, and is a technical climb, although nobody is allowed to climb it anymore due to deteriorating ice conditons. The last peak is Shira, which was the first part of the mountain to erupt but is now mostly gone.

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