Africa 2012--Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

We departed Phoenix on Friday January 6, 2012 after a full day at the office. British Airways has a daily flight that departs at around 9 pm.

Due to all of my frequent flier miles, and knowing that I was going to be sitting on a plane for 44 hours or so round trip to Africa, I was able to book it all in business class. While I have always known that it appears pretty nice up front, I had no idea of the real experience. My own check in lines. My own waiting rooms. Food and snacks in those waiting rooms. Better food on the plane. And the best feature--We were able to get showers at Heathrow while waiting for our departures. How good is that to feel clean and get that slimy airline smell of of you and start fresh for the next leg of your journey. And more leg room that my 38 inch legs would ever need or want.

The Departure Lounge at Phoenix Sky Harbor for British Airways

We arrived at Dar Es Salaam on a Sunday morning, a day a a half after we departed Phoenix (counting the transfer). While boarding the plane in London Florence commented that the gal in front of us in the business class line looked like Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter movies. And sure enough, it was she, along with her mother heading to Tanzania. They sat right next to us in business class on the plane. Nobody bothered her, including us unfortunately. It would have been fun to get a picture but Florence and I figured she deserved her privacy as much as anyone else does.

We had almost a five hour layover at Dar Es Salaam before we got our turboprop flight to Kilimanjaro International Airport. We were picked up there by our guide Ian for the Kilimanjaro hike and taken to our hotel in Moshi, a town 45 minutes from the airport. The rest of our group was scheduled to arrive late Sunday night on the flight from KLM from Amsterdam, so Florence and I wandered the streets of Moshi some, had some dinner, and went to bed.

We hooked up with our group at breakfast the next morning at the hotel. Our group leader is a German woman named Billie. She has lived 10 years in England, so great English. She works at lots of little jobs, like leading this tour, so she can live as much as possible in Nepal and climb big mountains. She has already climbed Everest, Aconcagua there in Argentina and Annapurna. A little over kill to lead us up Kilimanjaro but a great woman. She works part time for the Swiss UN and has lived in Pakistan, Syria, Israel, as well as all sorts of crazy places. 44 years old. No fear.

The group consisted of four of us besides the leader. Steve is a IT consultant for the military. Mostly classified computer work for the air force he could not talk about. 32. Single. Baba (short for Barbara) is a 40 year old Swiss woman who bases out of London as a Vet who is an expert on animal diseases. She was currently on a job in Kenya working for their government when she took a week to climb Kilimanjaro and starts a 3 year job for the government of Mongolia in July. Single.

So Florence and I were the parents/grandparents of the group with the professional singles. A fun group. We wandered around Moshi some more. Florence found a fabric and dress store and had a skirt and a dress made. She ended up being nicknamed Mama Africa by all of our guides

We started our climb the next morning. It consisted of traveling all the way to the other side of the mountain right up next to the Kenya border. We were using a trail that less than 5% of the people climbing the mountain choose. While others camp in huts along the main route, also called the coca cola route named because you can buy a coke or snickers at every camp, we went with tents and the back country. It was beautiful. I will post our pictures on Picasso along with titles in the next day or so.

We had over 20 porters/guides/assistant guides/cooks to take the five of up the mountain.


What a way to camp. There were porters carrying our tents, our sleeping pads, chairs to sit in at camp. A table and table cloth to eat on, along with a mess tent, all the food, cooking gear, and even a portable bathroom. The porters would hightail it up the mountain ahead of us each day and camp would be set up when we arrived, with popcorn on the table, along with roasted nuts to eat upon arrival.

Meals were hot and of very high quality. Breakfast consisted of portage, eggs, and ham, along with some fresh fruit and hot chocolate for Florence and I. Lunch was a boiled egg, chicken, some rice and vegetables. Dinner was either chicken, beef, or fish fixed into either a pasta dish, or with rice or potatoes. Again vegetables and some sort of fruit for dessert. Plenty of choices, and plenty of good food. Of course we bought along plenty of chocolate to pass around each night--the Hatch mantra--dessert is not dessert unless it is chocolate.

Pole Pole was what we kept hearing all day--slow slow. They wanted us to hike slow and steady, which is completely against how Florence and I have hiked. We are the ones trying to see how fast we can go rim 2 rim 2 rim in the grand canyon. How hard, how tired, how fast can we do it. But we took the Pole Pole in stride knowing that it was more important to get to the top then to get there fast.

The terrain was steep but beautiful. The farther up you go, the less the vegetation and the more the ground looked like you were walking on the moon. On the 4th night we were at the Kibo camp, or Kibo hut for those using the huts. This is at around 15,520 ft msl, so it was high.

We got there at around 1 pm, had dinner at 5 pm and were told to go to bed and rest. We were up at 11 pm, and off at midnight to climb towards the summit. Most of the groups left camp at around 10 pm - 11 pm, but we talked our guide into midnight as we felt we would climb faster than most, and we didn't want to freeze standing on top in the dark waiting for the sunrise. He was reluctant to agree but did so.


The climb is essentially at a 30-40 degree incline straight up the mountain. It feels that you are almost going up as much as you are going forward with each step. We had 4,000 ft to go up over around 2 miles or so of distance, then a mile of mostly level hiking on top to get that last 200 ft to the summit.

Even though I had put my camel back and water bottles in my sleeping bag with me to warm them up, my camel back hose froze up half was up the mountain. So no convenient way to drink my water other than to slam my water bottle against a rock each time I opened the lid to break the ice off the top of it to get to the water.

We arrived at the summit about 10 minutes before sunrise. Great weather. Mostly clear skies. Light to no wind. Beautiful to take it all in. The Swiss woman of our group started getting altitude sickness in the first 1000 ft. up the mountain, so she slowed down and one of our assistant guides stayed with her. She ended up making it to the top, but not without throwing up and getting fairly sick. But she did it. She arrived less than 30 minutes after the rest of us.

Believe it or not, the hard part was not going up, but getting back down. It is amazing how much your Adrenalin carries you up, but that goes away on your way down. Combine that with being able to actually see how steep the mountain is going down and all of the loose scree beneath your feet and it wears you out going down. It took us 6 hours to go up, and only 2 hours 40 minutes to go back to camp, but we were slip sliding away all of the way down the mountain. By the time I got back down to camp, we had been gone almost 9 hours counting our 40 minutes on top. And we had not eaten for 7 hours before that, so I was on fumes having not eaten in 16 hours other than a few snacks.

We ate and rested for an hour or so before starting down the mountain. We were tired, sore and exhausted. Baba, our Swiss vet was still sick and looked pale, but the only way we were going to get her to feel better was to get her down the mountain, so off we went.

We hiked another 8 miles dropping from 15,500 at the kibo camp down to 12,300 at the next camp. Because we were going down the Coca Cola trail, huts and bathrooms were available at each camping area. When we stopped for the night at 12,300 ft we discovered a shower was available. No hot water, and my guess is the water temperature was under 50 degrees, but after sleeping 5 nights with only a wet wipe and some sponge baths, Florence and I took the challenge of the cold water and had a shower. Burrrrrrrrrr!!!!!! Everyone else thought we were nuts. Why not wait 24 more hours for a hot shower.
The next day we descended down through the rain forest with lots of monkeys, etc. and finished up the hike. Then we went back to Moshi and spent 24 hours there with real hot water, a real bed, a real hotel, etc.

The next post will cover the safari part of our trip.