The Intro
For me, traveling is a bucket-list that is crammed with new places to see, new people to meet, exciting adventures to be had.
My First Up Close Views of Mount Kilamanjaro in Tanzania
Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania had been on my travel bucket-list for many years. Scaling the tallest free-standing mountain in the world is the type of adventure that appeals to me, especially as I enter what is likely to be the last 1/3rd of my life here on earth. So, when the opportunity arose to go climb it with a group of other equally enthusiastic Adventurers, my answer was a swift and empathic, “heck yeah!!!” Coupled with the fact that Vivien would come along and do some mission-based charity work in Kenya, while I was off climbing Kilimanjaro, was icing on this adventure cake.
We made plans, booked our flights, confirmed our reservations, and on June 30th we set off for Nairobi. After a brief layover, I continued on to Tanzania, while Vivien headed to a school in Great Rift Valley of Kenya, with plans for us to reconnect 10 days later, after I had completed the climb.
The Training
In order to climb Kilimanjaro, I had to get my body into excellent shape. Twice weekly training hikes of 4-plus hours was my base workout. Climbing the hills of the National and Ridgeline trails, in South Mountain Park, near my home in Phoenix, Arizona in the 3 months prior, was my regular endurance routine. Additionally, for 3 days a week, I did hard, sweaty, spinning sessions on my Peloton, which provided the anaerobic cardio portion of my training. Wildfires in Flagstaff prevented me from doing any high-altitude training prior to the trip.
Training and Taking Time for Shadow Selfies on South Mountain, Phoenix Arizona
The Logistics
Our climbing team was comprised of 13 people, from Arizona, Germany, Romania and Switzerland. I met 10 of those folks for the first time at our introductory meeting at the Aishi Madame hotel in Tanzania the night before the hike officially kicked off.
My mini team consisted of myself and two other extended family members: Chris, my daughter’s brother-in-law, along with his cousin Amy. You’ve heard of Run DMC right? Well we were the Klimb-DAC crew. At age 61, I was the oldest of the group of thirteen. There were a couple others 50+ year-olds, with the rest of the team been in their 30s and 40s.
We used an Adventure Travel Company named Altezza. They handled almost everything for us. Our main job was to show up at the Kilimanjaro airport with our proper gear, and be ready to spend to next 8 days climbing the mountain. In turn, Altezza supported our group of 13 climbers with a team of 50 Porters. Yeah, this was a massive operation.
The Porters
The Porters did almost everything for us, except for the hiking. They were broken down into a pecking order of:
One Overall Leader – Abraham. He was kind of like the airplane Captain. He was responsible for us and his entire crew of fifty.
5 Group Leaders – Each day a different leader led us on our daily hike. He would set the pace, answered our questions, decided when and where we’d stop, etc. The rest of the Leaders formed the caboose, staying with any hiker that needed help or fell behind. The skill level of our team was fairly equal and we had no problems staying together for 7 of the 8 days that we were on the mountain. The summit night/day at the highest elevations was the only time the group broke up into smaller packs of climbers.
Porters: These guys (and yes, they were all men), did the grunt work.
The Porters - The Real Backbone of any Kilimanjaro Climb
The Support
So, what type of support did the Porters provide you asked? Well pretty much everything. Here’s very condensed list:
Carried our 34-lbs dry duffel bags, which had all our gear that we needed at camp, but not during the day while we were hiking up the mountain.
Setup and pulled down our campsites at the end and beginning of each day, respectively.
Cooked and served our 3 main meals daily, and provided tea and snacks during the hikes.
Carried all the gear needed for survival on the mountain, including:
Food and water
Tents – both personal and mess hall tents where we ate our meals
Tables, chairs, utensils, pots, pans, gas, stoves, etc.
Portable toilets and supplies
Medical Kits, including oxygen tanks, etc.
All this equipment meant that each porter carried on average, about 60–70 lbs. worth of gear each day from campsite to campsite. It was brutal, back-breaking work. They used no trekking polls and climbed up the mountain at twice our speed. They were efficient and extremely impressive.
During my 8 days on the mountain, I counted less than 10 women out of hundreds of porters, that were working as Leads or Porters. But I saw one small all women’s team, of 3 women hikers and two Leads at about the midway point heading up the mountain, just like us.
Rest and Tea Breaks on the Mountain
My Personal Day Pack
My personal pack, which I carried with me throughout the day consisted of:
2 Liters of water, spiked with a generous amount of electrolytes
Snacks – mostly protein bars and sugary candy
A poncho, a rain jacket, and a warmer fleece jacket which was worn at the start of the day but was removed by mid-morning as it got warmer.
Personal items and electronics: cameras, lip balm, gloves, hats, sunscreen etc.
A small notebook, from which I now write this blog.
My day pack weighed less than 12-pounds.
A Typical Day on the Mountain
With the porters handling most of the heavy lifting, our typical day consisted of us hiking, resting, eating, and sleeping.
5:30AM – Wakeup and pack up tent, prepare Day Pack
6:30AM – Morning tea to warm up from a cold night, take care of personal needs and prepare for the day.
7:30AM – Breakfast and medical checkup. Oatmeal porridge, bananas, eggs, bread, tea, coffee, was a typical breakfast.
9:00AM – 2:00PM Hiking with a tea break at ~12:00 Noon
2:30PM – Lunch
4:30PM – Some days a higher altitude ‘acclimation’ hike – almost universally hated
6:30PM – Dinner. Soup, pasta, rice, veggies, chicken, beef were the staples
8:30PM – Medical checkup and bedtime.
Some days were longer, but most, except for summit day, followed a similar script. On average, we hiked about 7 miles per day.
The Lower Elevations of Kilimanjaro are Lust and Green and has a Rain Forest
For summit day, we slept during the early evening hours, had dinner/breakfast at 10:30PM, and we set off for the summit at midnight. It was cold and dark. A long trail of headlamps as far up the mountain as I could see and made for a surreal experience that added to the spirit of adventure.
My Steps, Oxygen Saturation and Resting Heart Rate During the Climb. Oxygen Sat and HR Got Worst over Time
The Weather
The weather was fantastic for us the entire 8 days. Couldn’t have asked for anything better.
It was cold in the mornings, ~10 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit, warming up to the 50s by mid-afternoon. No rain. Windy at the higher elevations, but that was to be expected.
On summit day, it was the coldest around 2 – 4:30AM, hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit. But with the windchill factor, it felt much colder.
Sunrise on the Roof Of Africa - Kilimanjaro
I wore 5 Layers on top, topped off by a warm wind resistant Columbia membrane jacket. I had 3-1/2 layers on the bottom – 2 pairs of warm undies, a warm base layer and a fleece lined, wind resistant pants. Two pairs of socks and 2 pairs of gloves protected my digits. A hood, a beanie, and a balaclava protected my face and head.
It was a huge chore to take a piss while wearing all that layering, which I needed to do several times, as we pushed towards the summit. I simply switched off my headlamp, took and few steps off the trail and hurried my way to get my business done.
The TMI Section About Pooping
Ok. So, every time I talk to my non-camping, non-hiking, non-outdoorsy friends, the issue of how one manages their bodily functions in the great outdoors, especially on a trip like this, always comes up. I’m going to address it, so here I go.
For an extra $85 each, Amy, Chris and I shared a portable toilet, while at camp. The camp sites had public toilets, but we were warned that they were gross, and best be avoided. It was money well spent.
I digress. Toilets in many parts of Asia and Africa are literally holes in the floor. Meaning deep squats to do number 2 for guys; and numbers 1 and 2 for the ladies. This was another reason to rent a portable, sit-able toilet.
The porters handled the business of cleaning/emptying the toilets, and we basically arrived at camp each afternoon to mostly fresh toilets. With only 3 responsible people using our portable toilet, getting our business done at camp was very tolerable, considering the circumstances.
While on the trail, the hike leader planned well timed pee/poop breaks. For the guys, a reasonable size rock, a bit off the trail, provided sufficient coverage. For the ladies, and they were 5 on our team, they went further off the trail, to handle their business with a bit more discretion.
Digging cat-holes was not a practice or priority that I observed on Kilimanjaro. A rock sufficed.
Using the toilet when its zero degrees, tends to be, ahem, unpleasantly frosty on one’s under-carriage. As a son of the Tropics and the Sunbelt, it’s the only time in my life that I can recall ever wishing that someone else had used and warmed up the toilet seat before I used it.
The Porta-Potty
So there, you have it. My treatise on taking care of business in the mountains of Tanzania.
Climbing Stories
Pole Pole: Pronounced ‘Poll-Lay Poll-Lay,” is the first Swahili phrase you learn on the mountain. It means go slowly, take it easy, don’t be in a hurry. As the miles and altitude grinds your body down, everything and every step becomes pole pole.
The second phrase on the mountain – “sippy sippy, pee-pee pee-pee.” Dehydration will undoubtably wreak your climb. We were constantly warned to sip more water, and you can guess the rest. Pee breaks became as common as rest breaks the higher we went.
Diamox is the go-to preventative high-altitude sickness medicine. Everyone on our team took it. It worked. However, it had one major side-effect, excessive urination. By day 3, the running joke was not that one needed a pee break, it was now, “I need to take a Diamox break really badly.” Everyone understood what you meant.
We did see several folks in serious altitude sickness trouble high up on the Mountain. Several high energy teenagers, who didn’t practice their pole-pole refrain, looked quite delirious and were talking gibberish when we ran into them one afternoon above 16,000 feet.
High altitude does disruptive things to the body. Over the course of 3 days, I went from severe diarrhea to constipation to morning time dry heaves. I simply suffered through it. At a certain elevation, the path of least trouble is to just keep on climbing.
By the way, I learnt a new homeopathic treatment for constipation – Tanzania style
1/3 cup of hot as you can take it water
1/3 cup of very cold water
1/3 cup of hot as you can take it black coffee
Guzzle each down, in the order stated above, go lay in your tent and wait. It works!!!!
A Warm Afternoon Back at Camp After a Long Day’s Hike
Starting on night three of the climb, the porters gave us a real treat. It was a bladder filled with hot water, wrapped in a package that resembled a very cute “Bunny”. And as you might have guessed, the running joke became, where you would place and how you would cuddle your “Bunny,” within your sleeping bag. For the record, I much preferred the Bunny to the Nalgene bottle that I had brought along for the same purpose. The oxygen deprived, adult-humored brain, on a mountainside in Tanzania, is a wonderful thing to behold. We had fun during this adventure.
I have gained a new level of appreciation for wet wipes. Eight days without showering and they kept my gamey-ness at bay. I ran through the entire 100-sheets pack that I had brought along for this trip.
Taking a long hot shower back at the hotel at the end of the climb, was simply one of life’s wonderful pleasures. I also got the try 3 new local beers: Kilimanjaro, Serengeti and Tucker Lagers. After such a taxing grind, these indulgences made the trip even more memorable.
Mirrors are overrated. Having not used one for 8 days, I really didn’t miss it. Granted, I had no hair to fix, no eye-liner to apply. I did use a lot of moisturizer and sunscreen though, cause it’s harsh up there on the Mountain.
The high altitude does call out your age. I really should have done this climb at age 31 instead of 61. The last few hundred feet of climbing was a suffer-fest.
On summit day, despite all my layers, whenever I stopped moving bone chilling cold would set in. To keep my camel pak tube from freezing I had to blow any liquid in it, back into the big bladder, else I would have been stuck with a frozen tube and no water. Spare flasks had to be carried upside down, so that be bottom would freeze first, leaving cold but drinkable liquid water close to nozzle/spout.
If I have one regret, it was not bringing much more cash in order to tip the porters more generously. Without them, none of this would have been possible.
What’s The Next Adventure?
I’m glad I got this bucket list item done now. I’m not sure I would be able to do it in my 70s.
My Final Views of Kilimanjaro as I Flew Back to Kenya from Tanzania
The while the feelings of reward and accomplishment for this adventure are quite high, so are the pain of getting it done. It was rough on my body.
42-plus flight hours, inside packed airplanes, not counting layovers, is draining. Diamox, malaria pills, yellow fever shots, allergy meds, anti-diarrhea meds, and my liver certainly needs a detox. Time zone challenges that wrecks your sleep patterns, combined with the sheer physical demands of the hike itself, simply wears you down. The nail-beds of both my big toes are bloodshot and sore. I expect the nails to eventually fall out. I’m not gonna climb another high mountain for a while. But this one was totally worth it.
My adventure bucket list is now 99-items long. Next up, my 7th and final Continent – Antarctica. Vivien has already told me that she is skipping that one. Who wants to come along?
Our Final Night On Kilimanjaro.