Summit Bid (Day #8 - Feb 19th 2011)

Mawenzi sunrise

Coffee was good this morning.  It was 4:15 a.m.  It was chilly.  The three layers plus the jacket helped.  It was still dark.  No one spoke much, it was much too early for talk.  At least it had stopped raining.  Everyone had their head lamps lit and breakfast was under the lights.  I don't remember what we had for breakfast, it must have been something good and nutritious, it always was.  We start off at 6:15 a.m.  The path out of camp got steep very quickly.  A few yards out and we were clambering over rocks, icy, and still wet from the rain.  They were not very slippery though, probably because they were mostly greatly pitted volcanic rock, the pits providing a natural grippy surface.  It wasn't easy, but going "polé polé" (Swahili: "slowly slowly) our mantra right from day 1 helped immensely.  We did not go straight up, instead traversing the base of Kibo in a Westerly direction.  We note there are cairns marking the path as far as we can see.  The path then merges with the one coming from the Kibo Huts camp which we see about a 1000-odd feet below us.  The climbers from Kibo Huts are long gone, having left the comfort of their tents for the summit bid around midnight.  That way they get to the summit at sunrise and back to camp by midday or earlier, to then get off the mountain the same day.  I don't think they get to enjoy, nay, experience the mountain as much as us.  We had a whole night on the mountain coming up.

Hans Meyer Cave

Now the climb begins in earnest.  The light is better and the headlights come off.  Its steep.  Where were the switch backs we had read about?  Far above us we could just discern the climbers descending from the mountain.  In a trance-like state we continue the climb, each painful step brings us a little closer to the summit.  Hans Meyer cave is not much of a cave at all.  It appears to be a hollow below a rather large slab of rock whose flat bottom side just did not make it all the way to the floor.  Hans Meyer is supposed to have rested here on his way to the summit on his third attempt on October 5th 1889.  It's a good thing that the highest peak on Mawenzi is named after him, because this cave is a kinda crappy way to honor the first European to climb to the summit of Kilimanjaro.  To the side is a plaque with a memorial to Samuel Teleki, who was supposed to have rested here too, being the first European to get to the snow line on Mount Kilimanjaro.  He made two more attempts to get to the summit but never made it to the top.  Like all the greats before us we rest here too.  We don't rest too long.


Just below Gilman's Point the switch backs disappear and , thankfully, so does the scree. Now it's climbing over and in between rocks.  Walking is now painful.  I had had dreams of taking beautiful pictures on the climb, but right now, all I looked at were the boots of the person in front of me.  I thought about my school flag in my back pack.  I was going to fly it on the summit.  We could see our "lunch" team waiting for us at Gilman's Point but it was another hour and a half before we clambered over that last rock to reach Gilman's Point  5681 m (18747 ft).  Gilman's Point is the culmination of the most physically demanding portion of the climb.  Officially, when you get here, you have climbed Kilimanjaro, and you get a certificate saying so.  But this is not the summit.  It is just less than 600 ft below the summit.  It is named after a Mr. C. Gilman who climbed to the summit n 1929.  I have searched around for some insight into the man but have not been able to come up with much.  When he got to the summit there was no universal agreement on the height at the summit, and he made calculations which determined the "newest" height of the peak. 

Resting at Gilman Point 

Here we had lunch.  It was 2 p.m.  Altitude sickness was rearing its ugly head among some of us.  Thankfully it was not bad, just a slight loss of appetite and headache.  About this height there is only about half the oxygen one would have to breathe at sea-level.  Kit-Kats never tasted so good!  I think I had a couple of extra bars kindly donated by my fellow climbers.  The crater was snow-filled and featureless.  The clouds filled the crater, but the wind blew incessantly and before long the crater was brilliantly lit.  We could see the Northern and Eastern Ice fields in the distance.  Goody pointed out the summit to us.  It still seemed a bloody long way off and still a lot higher than where we were.  Bernard made a decision to split the group.  Ken and I were to go ahead with Goody, Mwelu and Prosper.  The trek to Stella Point (5752 m)  was not particularly difficult, although walking along the inside of the crater's edge, with the sun's brilliant glare reflecting off the ice covered rim of Kibo, the sharp drop off into the crater, made for some careful stepping.  The path is icy and the walk was punctuated by frequent slips and slides.  The trekking poles were of a great help.  At Stella Point our tents were already up.  We were supposed to have camped within the crater but with the crater so full of snow, Bernard decided it would be safer to camp up here.  Who Stella was, I have no idea.  It is from here to the peak which is, psychologically, the hardest part of the climb.

Rebmann Glacier (Photo by Ken)

 The Rebmann Glacier glowed with an iridescent blue to our left.  We started off for our final segment to the summit along a narrow steep ridge, made more difficult by the presence of snow.  The going is slow. The slope is not as steep as the one we had climbed before Gilman's Point but it was more tiring.  We took a few short breaks along the way.  We passed Hans Meyer Point, so named, I suspect, because Hans Meyer probably thought that here was the summit,  false summits, is what they are known as.  A little further along is Elveda Point at 5882 m, another false summit.  Now we can see Uhuru Peak.  From here to the peak is a gentle, almost anticlimactic, walk.  There are a four or five other climbers there.  They get to the peak just before us, took their pictures and left within a few minutes.  Ken and I walk up to the summit.  Now, I am not known to be an emotional guy, but as I took the last few steps towards the peak, tears welled up in my eyes.  They were streaming down my face.  I was afraid people might see and wondering what all that crying was all about.  Thank God for those really dark glasses.

Uhuru Peak from Elveda Point (Photo by Ken)

Nobody was going to see my teary eyes.  And then, Ken knelt down on the snow, his face buried in his hands.  I know he was offering thanks but it sure also looked to me as if emotions had overcome my friend.  Then there was this big burly guy from New Zealand who was part of the group that had summited just ahead of us; he had his video camera out and was recording himself on the summit and as he narrated his few words to loved ones he was sobbing uncontrollably.  It made me feel better.  It was not just me.  I never conquered the mountain, I did just one more thing more than I had done before and that was enough for me.  We were now by ourselves at the summit.  I flew my school flag, the one my friends and classmates from many years back had made especially for this trip.  It fluttered strongly in the freezing wind that blew across the summit.  It was bright and clear, but there were clouds below us and the view beyond the mountain was nonexistent.  I got my satellite phone out and called my wife in the US.  She would have been waiting for this call.  You would have thought being on top of Africa with the closest tree a few miles away, and so much nearer to the satellites in space you would have had a better signal.  The signal was so poor that I had to attempt the call three times.  I got to talk to my son Bharat and he just wanted to know what the view was like.



I had one more thing to do.  My good friend Kent had given me a cigar and I had promised him that I would light it on the summit.  We had wangled a box of matches from Richard and we crowded around to shut out the wind, but try as I might I never got that cigar lit.  I don't know whether it was the wind or was it because the partial pressure of oxygen at that height is about 10% (It is 21% at sea level). Prosper expressed an interest in the cigar and I gave it to him.  We took our pictures.  Our summit bid was special.  This was more like the Kibo of years gone by, covered in snow as far as the eye could see, a dazzling white, the same white that Johannes Rebmann saw through his thick glasses (he was short sighted).  No where could you see the brown earth that one sees in pictures of Kibo.  Ours was the mountain in all its former glory.  It made for a more difficult climb, but, boy, was it worth it!

Nora and Renee at the summit

It was time to leave.  We descended to Stella Point, passing the ladies on their way to the summit.  I was very proud of them.  Renee in particular, as I had doubts whether she could make it.  She was tired, I could tell, but the determination writ across her face was unmistakable.  Norah, I had no doubt would make it to the summit.  A few whispered words of encouragement and they were gone.  I am proud to report that every one of us on the climb summited.  Bernard was happy too.  It kept his statistics up!!  Thomson Safaris would be happy too: another 100% success.

Our camp at Stella Point in the distance (Photo by Ken)

Ken and I waited in the dining tent for the ladies to turn up.  They were back from summiting and went straight to bed.  Some form of altitude sickness had manifested itself in most of us.  The ladies were exhausted and they did not eat anything in spite of Bernard's attempts to get them to eat something.  I think they munched on snacks they had brought with them.  Ken then went to bed too.  I was left by myself in the tent and was still there when dinner was served:  beef tenderloin and fries; awesome.  I ate like a pig.  The water, though is whole different matter.  The water is melted snow taken from around the glacier and then treated with a chemical to make it potable.  It reminded me of toilets on the Indian Railway system.  Not a good thought.  It made me nauseated to drink it, and consequently I drank very little till we got better water at Mweka camp.  The stars were out, but with all the snow it was too bright and darned cold.  Star gazing just wasn't on the agenda tonight either.  I went back to my tent, crawled into the sleeping bag and slept well, the fleece liner continued its function as my pillow.


We had made it.