summit day

As we lay in our tent listening to the steady patter of frozen rain, even D’s optimism began to flag. The previous night, the weather did not clear up until almost nightfall, so D refused to be concerned when the rain that began falling upon our arrival at base camp turned to sleet, and later to hail. Some form of frozen precipitation continued to fall throughout the day, however, so we stayed in our tent, drinking way more water than we needed to in order to stay hydrated, and making frequent bathroom trips to break up the tedium as a result.

At one point, around 8pm, S came back from one such outing with amazing news: the rain had stopped, the sky had cleared, and she could see Moshi’s lights down at the foot of the mountain. When D got out of the tent twenty minutes later, however, the sky had clouded over once more and a fine snow had begun to fall. Even though it did not look like we would have a clear summit night, the excitement of the approaching climb made it difficult to fall asleep. We did manage to force ourselves to get a few hours of shuteye, but we were up again at 11:30pm and ready to start hiking before our guides. After a quick cup of tea, we set off on the trail a few minutes past midnight.

It snowed for several hours, but not hard enough to make the climb difficult. In fact, the snow might have actually helped. When S climbed Kili last summer, she did not encounter any trace of snow until the rim of the crater, half an hour from the summit. The trail up was sandy and difficult to climb, as she would slide back a bit with every step up that she made. By contrast, this time we had snow all the way down at base camp. Several weeks of continuously cold weather had frozen the ground solid, and the accumulated snow had formed a thin crust over the trail.

It turns out that climbing Kili the previous summer did not make it easier for S to summit the second time around. We spent fewer days on the mountain, so she was not as acclimatized. She also kept trying to recognize different parts of the trail, which is hard to do in the dead of night with snow swirling overhead and without any moonlight, and constantly kept thinking that we were farther along than we actually were. This, in turn, made it harder to maintain her resolve. Climbing at high altitude is a wearisome task, as the steep trails and thin air make it all but impossible to advance at anything faster than a snail’s pace. The key is to make up one’s mind to walk steadily for an hour at a time without stopping, which is hard to do when one walks slowly and when the mountain seems to stretch up interminably. To fully appreciate the plodding pace of our ascent, try walking around your house by taking no more than one step every 3-4 seconds.

Seeing that S was struggling a bit, D tried to take her mind – and his own – off the toilsome task at hand by talking her ear off. After a quick climb up some bare, smooth rocks, the path leveled off a bit and the trail became wide enough for D to walk alongside S, telling her stories that encompassed everything from his childhood to his college days. After two hours, however, the trail became too steep and narrow for us to walk side by side, and the air too thin for D to keep talking without losing his breath.

It took us five hours to reach Stella Point, which signaled the end of the steep portion of the climb. We walked slower than the other handful of groups that were making their summit bids the same night, but we also stopped a lot less often. When we reached Stella, which is located on the rim of the Kibo caldera, we found the other climbers resting and celebrating the end of the difficult part of the ascent. From Stella (5756m/18,885ft), a 30-45 min hike along the ridge that skirts the massive Kibo crater is all that separates one from the Uhuru peak summit (5895m/19340ft).

S likewise decided to celebrate by feasting on a granola bar, which D had carried in the inner pocket of his jacket to keep it from freezing. This, it turned out, was a terrible idea. At 5am – an hour before sunrise – it was bitterly cold, and by the time S was halfway done with her snack her hands had frozen stiff. We carried some hand warmers, but even with one stuffed into each glove, it took S fifteen minutes to regain feeling in her fingers. The granola bar left half uneaten, we trudged on towards the summit, arriving at Uhuru peak just as the first feeble rays of light began to filter through the cloud cover.

From its rain-soaked slopes to its frozen summit, Kilimanjaro proved to be the most inhospitable mountain we have ever climbed. However, standing atop one of the Seven Summits and seeing the famed snows of Kilimanjaro before they are all gone were two things we wanted to do that we can now cross off our bucket list, and that makes the trip eminently worthwhile.