Monthly Archives: February 2013

Day Six: 3rd February 2013
3900 – 4950m
Time to get serious…

So today is pre-summit day. We have a long climb to get where we are going, but that’s fine we are going to do it at Team Kobe pace. Today, despite leaving amongst the first people we are quickly displaced by nearly everyone and end up at the back of the pack – so far back that the doctor on tail end Charlie duty, Matt Knox today, gets the privilege of not only listening to our smut and carry on, but of reaching his destination in record breaking slow time as we shuffle ever upwards.

In fact we are moving so slowly we force the doctors to abandon their routine of having one doctor in the middle of the pack and two doctors at the rear providing sweep. Taking one look at our rude good health they quickly decide that two doctors will not be needed here and the other one hurries forward to be at the rear of the actual pack of climbers, instead of being with the reverse breakaway group we have become. Reading this I realise it all sounds very exclusive, but we noisily encourage others to join and see the team kobe light and at dinner time we are (never last) spread out and around socialising with all the other interesting people on the trail who happen to walk faster than the slow shuffle of an elderly person with two broken hips.

At one point a porter walks past who is part of the kitchen team, he is carrying a massive wooden spoon with which they mix the soups and stews. Of course given our history of coming into camp last we feel we rightly deserve to carry the wooden spoon and claim our title as Wings of Kilimanjaro ‘wooden spooners’ . The porter fends us off and protects his burden and races forward away from our group, and we can’t be bothered trying to stop him.

I haven’t mentioned food yet and those of you who know me, even partially, will be wondering how I am coping with food on the trek. To start with I brought a lot of my own food as snacks – I brought a variety, however the stand out winners were my Darryl Lea licorice, Uncle Toby’s instant oats (brown sugar/cinnamon/golden syrup flavour combo), and Salt and vinegar delites. The licorice proved to be a huge win as it provided a strong taste, was meaty to chew on and had a good restorative combination of sugar and salt. The oats meant I could get something easily in my system at anytime provided I had hot water, always available at meals, and meant I didn’t have to eat the other options if weariness or illness meant I couldn’t stomach them. The Salt and vinegar delites retrospectively would have been the best of all snacks, again restorative salts, strong taste and decently crunchy however in my concern over weight limits I only packed in one box and pretty much nailed the lot on day one.

Meal times were much anticipated. As most of us were good health we didn’t suffer from any lack of appetite, much to the caterers despair. Plus we had the doctors breathing down our backs telling us to eat, eat and eat some more. The morning brought watery porridge, cold toast and an odd assortment of cold eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers and some other random things I couldn’t identify. Thankfully hot water and milo were always on hand and with my specially packed thermos I was able to enjoy sharing a nice hot chocolate at points along our walk.

Lunch seemed to be forgotten about most days, though we were sometimes handed a little lunch of muffin, biscuit, juice and sometimes peanut butter sandwich on stale bread. There was one delicious (according to me) lunch that seemed to have the group divided in opinion – I think it was day four or five and they served us a lovely broth which included plantains (similar to banana). Some were horrified and some loved it – my guess is the horrified people are of that evil breed that don’t like pineapple on their pizza.

Dinner was a three course affair every night (except once we reached the summit). It always began with an unidentified soup which was always hot and yummy, moved onto the main and then some sort of fruit for desert. The mains could be eclectic – one meal comprised of a spagetthi Bolognese, which got me excited, until I realised they had used fish in their Bolognese. One dinner some style of hot chips was served up, and for all their mushiness were really quite tasty.
Basically it was all quite palatable and kept the scurvy and altitude illness at bay while we walked up the hill. We didn’t know how good we had it until summit day, when everything got turned upside down…..

Our walk plan had been very different to that of many people who climb the mountain, we took longer, camped in some different areas and were going to approach the summit during the day rather than night. Tonight we were to camp at a place called ‘Kosovo’, which was slightly higher up than the normal pre-summit camp of Barafu. We started to encounter our first return summiters on this walk – people who had gotten up around midnight and made the trek from Barafu camp to the summit and were then trekking straight back down to Barafu that day. They looked…well, like hell really.

We all nodded sagely, and quietly, cockily said to ourselves, ‘went up to fast’, or ‘not quite fit enough’ but I know we were all inwardly shaking at what tomorrow held for us and how our own bodies would hold up to the challenge.

As it was the climb on this day was pretty tough, through a moonscape of rocks at a steep incline for over 6 hours, it was physically pretty tough. It was stunning and exhilarating walking alongside and then finally looking over Mowensi Peak, Kili’s second peak. This valley between the two peaks is the area in which we are to fly through after jumping from Stellar Point. The pilots were all keenly observing the weather between the peaks and some concerns were being voiced over the irregularity of wind patterns (I think that’s what they were concerned about anyway…).

When we got to camp Kosovo there was barely energy left to get to dinner, let alone give myself a baby wipe bath. However I knew that over the next couple of days I would barely have the energy to breath and wouldn’t be up to changing my outfit between the extreme cold and lethargy, so a bath it was. I put on layer and layer of thermals knowing that my skin wouldn’t see the light of day for some time.

By now I was sleeping in two pairs of thermal leggings and my ski pants, two thermal tops, two mid layer tops, two neck warmers – one to stay around my neck and the other to be pulled up around my ears and back of my head, my beanie and don’t forget the thin undersocks, plus the thick over socks, plus the down booties borrowed from the wonderful Karla. With all this on I barely fit inside my ridiculously inadequate and small sized sleeping bag. However it is necessary if I want to last through the cold nights and get some good rest.

Tonight the camp is rocked by massive winds, before we get to bed two of the toilet tents blow over and are only just stopped from being the first of the party to fly off the mountain. Thankfully no-one is inside at the time, though the comedic value would have been high. I notice the toilet tents because I was on my way to the toilet at the time, so I find myself inside hovering over the port-a-potty and holding onto the sides of the tent for dear life. It’s exhausting!
I don’t spend a lot of time asleep tonight, I’m too busy listening to that howling wind crash into mountain around us, looking at my watch and thinking of the poor summiters who are even now in this weather making their climb towards the summit and feeling intermittently feeling nervous about the climb and shivering inside my tent. If I knew what was coming I probably would have slept even less!

Day Five: 2nd February 2013
3900 – 4200 – 3900
Can I say Chaos again??

As I stand looking up at numerous hundreds of porters all trying to proceed up a very steep goats track in the rocky cliff, and getting stuck in traffic so trying to find alternative ways up a cliff – of course with no harness and approx. 20kgs on their head, my thought was today is the day someone gets hurt.

As usual we broke camp at much the same time and left together, porters, guides and walkers all heading to the next destination. This meant that all 800 of us hit the narrow goats track at much the same time and the resulting chaos was truly African! All you could do was stand there, laugh and come up with an alternative way through otherwise you’d be there all day.

I was merrily climbing some rocks to get around some congestion when I heard a loud call above me of ‘ROCK!’ One of the guys climbing ahead had dislodged a large rock and it was heading towards me. I helpfully stared at it for some time before realising that I was going to have make a call on whether to move or stay put depending on the rock’s trajectory. Luckily for me my delayed synapses had stayed put, not through clever calculation of rock speed, distance to cover and angle of fall but more from ‘deer in the headlight’ syndrome and the rock cruised past my right shoulder with no-one touched.

Miraculously, after 75 minutes (over 1km), we all made it through the cliffs alive and unhurt and continued our kobe pace as we headed ever upwards. It was interesting walking with this band of pilots who of course were all interested in the weather patterns. As one of our, now expanded (others had seen the kobe light!), team is a weatherman he was loving watching the formation of the clouds from above. Watching these small puffs of white clouds early in the day slowly grow heavier and higher as the day went on and drift over the top of us and gently recede like a tide washing in. I also learnt some fun new terms like ‘venturi’ and ‘rotor’ all of which were apparently important considerations when jumping from the top of a mountain attached to strings and cloth.

People frequently talk about the amazing porters on these trips and you listen dutifully and nod your head and say yes aren’t they amazing. However when you are walking along slowly, struggling for breath and with a slight headache, using your hands to scramble over rocks and feeling your tummy rumble with hunger and a porter saunters by whistling or singing, carrying your14kg backpack and his 7kg backpack, calling out motivation to everyone and eagerly accepting the small snack you’ve offered because porter rations are not as glutinous as walker rations, you stop and have a moment of quiet reflection. They are the single most motivating factor up there and what can really affect you is when you start to see the porters falter and you think oh my god if they are not coping how can I possibly be coping, but of course I am well fed, well clothed, well hydrated and have consumed more drugs than at any other point in my life (with the possible exception of pre and post back surgery). Those of you reading this who have climbed will understand, those of you who have had the sense to stay below a couple of thousand metres, perhaps this helps paint the picture of the wonders that are the porters/sherpas.

Before I left for Kilimanjaro I was warned by numerous people that the litter situation was epidemic. Something that always confused me, for surely the people so inclined to be part of natures majesty that they are climbing a bloody high mountain, would be respectful of its aesthetic appeal and long term environmental sustainability. So it was with trepidation that I started the climb expecting to be horrified – and when you’ve spent years following workers around and preaching the benefits of waste management you become wired to notice the smallest bit of litter. So, you can picture my joyful bounce when I realised by Day Five that I had barely seen any significant litter throughout the entire trip. There had been a bread crumb like trail of one particular lolly wrapper I had been collecting since day one – I hope they hadn’t been expecting to find their way home with it –but I never did come across the person eating that lolly. There has been a push in recent times to keep litter off the mountain and they have been doing a relatively good job.

On our way to camp today we were going at our usual super slow pace and we realised that meant we were seeing more of the landscape than many other people who were trundling through at a faster rate. For instance there was one particular rock formation today that was a reasonably anatomically correct version of a womens anatomy. The fella’s I was walking with thought that this was wonderful, there is no such thing as a grown up is there? And we all fell about laughing as the descriptions became cruder and cruder. Our poor guide didn’t know what we were on about until Danny, fluent in Swahili, gave Josh an outline of what was capturing our attention, then we all fell about laughing again when we saw his expression and excited chatter to the other porters nearby (not that there were many, we really were tail end charlie’s by this point..). There was also a good outline a tortoise not long after this, which we all felt to be a positive prophetic vision. Slowly slowly wins the race in many forms.

There were some amazing views across to Mt Meru today, with it’s peak just sneaking over the top of the cloud. Depressingly it still seemed higher than we were and we knew time was running out so there had to be a lot of altitude to be covered in not many days.

As we were eating dinner tonight someone pointed out that the cloud at the base of the mountain had lifted and you could see the lights all the way to Moshi and Arusha, someone else joked it looked so close you could just order a pizza and have it there in 30 mins.

Happily I finally figured out that for my phone to get reception I had to be a little more assertive and instead of expecting it to know that I wanted it to pick up signal, go into the settings and tell it where to pick up signal from. My industriousness paid off and I was rewarded with four text messages from Simon! Happy, happy days, it was such a wonder and comfort to receive contact from loved ones off the mountain and gave you proof that someone out there was thinking of you! Although I knew I had a strong support crew on the ground and they were all sending ‘get to the top (and bottom!) safely’ wishes every day. The only downside was that my phone stubbornly refused to call or message outwards so Danny was called in again to help me send a text out from his phone.

Day Four: 1st February 2013
3800 – 4900 – 3900m
Team Kobe is formed!!

Last night I was warm and sedated! What a difference a good nights sleep makes! Western medicine is going to get me up this mountain – hats off to the explorers from the 1800’s who did it without the pharmaceutical sponsorship I am thankful for today!

It was a great day today, huge but gratifying. I set out this morning with Danny, a Tanzanian pilot who runs a camp out in the bush, Gavin, an aussie weather guru, Greg one of the American contingent and Colin part of the British link. We were guided by Joshua, my adopted guide from the day before who sets a lovely slow pace. We worked well as group, we all felt good but were keen to stay that way and decided that moving super slowly was going to assist us in maintaining our well-being.

For those feeling well today there was the option of a big climb up to Arrow Glacier, it was advised that if you felt able it was going to assist in your acclimatisation. Coming up to Lava Tower and I’d been setting a pretty slow pace but the guys advised me they were happy with it. They had spent the day before with people who wanted to walk much faster and it just didn’t gel. Everybody needs to be at their own pace on this sort of hike, so better that the faster ones head on and the slowbees stay back.

Once we got to the place called Lava Tower – oddly because it was just that, a huge tower leftover from active volcano days – people could choose whether to continue up for a few hours to Arrow Glacier or head straight down into camp. There were a couple more people who went down today with the bacterial illness being tossed about. My poor pilot was suffering by the time we got to the Lava Tower. He was quite ill and looked poorly so choose to go onto the camp instead of the 4 hour diversion up to the glacier. The Aussie doctor Matt was also suffering badly however he was given no choice and had to climb to the glacier with the rest of us, I really felt for him but he always had a smile on his face and was still helping others.

There were people climbing the Lava Tower and I can only assume that their geological knowledge was not too strong, as the type of rock they were standing on the edge off 50 metres was pretty brittle and known to break off easily. I stayed firmly attached to the path, deciding that my risk taking dance card was full for the week.

We all did well on the climb up – moving at tortoise pace, hence the christening of our team name ‘Team Kobe’ Kobe being Swahili for tortoise.
The pace Joshua set was almost one step pause, one, two steps pause, one step pause, we didn’t puff at all – unusual at that altitiude – and we were passed by everyone but we were in high spirits and felt great. The 60 minutes crew did quite a bit of filming up there and it was hilarious to watch the porters who didn’t realise what was going on walk back and forth through the filming with toilet buckets to be emptied!

While the walk up was great, what didn’t feel so good was the walk from Arrow glacier to camp. It was steep, long, downhill and demoralising after having gone so far up. Danny and I both had a sense of humour failure on the way down, however as we got closer to the camp the views became quite spectacular. It was like walking into an ancient world, surrounded by these giant selasia plants, with massive ravines and waterfalls running alongside us. Having said that the glorious ancient world looked so much better once we sighted our sea of orange tents! It had been a long and exhausting day, and it is easy to forget what you are in the middle of when you are weary so I tried to take some time out and enjoy the surrounding view. That is after I had my dummy spit not being able to find an empty tent given we got in so late. To be exhausted and then have to kneel on the ground at every tent you came to see if there were bags in there pushed certain snappy buttons. I’d done this 15 times before being rescued by Danny who had found a couple of empty tents.

After freshening up and downloading my good humour software I went into the mess and played UNO with a couple of the guys who were waiting for dinner. I decided that UNO was the perfect mountain climbing game, not complex for your altitude muddled mind – match the colour, match the number and voila! It was funny though, there was so much chaos at dinner time and it could be hard to find a seat in the mess tent. So often you got there early and staked your claim – however the dilemma began when you realised you had gotten there in the daylight, but now it was approaching night and you had left your head torch in your tent. Do you relinquish your prized dinner position so that you didn’t trip and fall of the mountain on the way to bed, or do you go and get your torch and see what you can find when you come back? Yep that’s right food is much more important – you stay and then try and jag a lift with a head torch bearing colleague after dinner!

We could see where the climb was taking us the next day and it looked hectically steep so I opted for an early nights sleep again. Although quick mention must be made of the night sky. Tonight was one of the clearest nights we had, and being so high with no cloud, no dust or light pollution, created a night sky that was just… well, touchable, is what it felt like. I don’t think I’ll be privileged to see a sky like that again and the dancing stars will stay in my memory for all my years.

Day 3: 31st January 2013
3800m – 3900
Struggle city….
With many, many people in a tiny tiny area, there is one thing bound to get passed around quicker than gossip…. Bacteria.

Day three was my day for it. In hindsight I was blessed as just about everyone contracted some sort of bacterial bug along the way but mine came through on the shortest and easiest of all the days. Some people went down quite hard with it, weak and ill with really bad diarrhaea, one girl, poor Sydney, actually needed a drip. Mine was more annoying than anything else and coupled with another night of poor sleep I had a day of feeling pretty average. The doctors gave me hydralite and cipro (antibiotic) and some immodium and I was good to get on with the next day. The docs also did the rounds of the mess tents warning people that nasty germs were on the prowl for unsuspecting victims, they even gave us a lesson in proper doctor handwashing – who knew I’ve been doing it wrong all these years!

As often is the way when you’re ill your mood flags. My phone hadn’t been working so I wasn’t able to get a message out to or in from Simon and was feeling a little alone and sorry for yourself. I was already starting to get very worried about how my gear would cope with the cold as it just didn’t seem to be cutting the mustard.

On the up side as we got to camp quite early and the sun was shining, I was able to get undressed and warm in my tent while I had my baby wipe bath. It was bliss and allowed me a bit of time to have a snooze also.

Some people were feeling very energetic and as this camp was surrounded by some large hills, a few people took the opportunity to unroll their gliders and go for a test run which was fun to watch. There was a lot of skill amongst the pilots in this group. There was another group of people along who are making a movie of the entire production and are using a helicopter drone to get some aerial shots – this caused the porters heads to crank upwards! It’s pretty fun technology and hard not to look at, but they specifically didn’t want us looking at the drone as it would ruin the ‘natural’ aerial view they were after.

Into bed early to nurse the upset body and get ready for the coming huge day. There was a quick self-lecture in staying positive despite feeling poorly and I actually slept pretty well that night.

ay 2: 30th January 2013
3000m-3800m
Settling in…
As expected my nights sleep was disturbed, due to the cold, but unexpectedly also from funky dreams. Curiously many other people also had some pretty weird vivid dreams – not sure what was in that soup last night!

I started my Diamox this morning, a tablet used for glaucoma, but frequently recognised now as helping the body through the acclimatisation process. Happy side effects include peeing copious amounts frequently and weird, sharp tingles in the feet and hands. Getting 100 people plus porters to the top of mountain was only going happen with the assistance of western pharmaceuticals.

There were three young doctors volunteering their time as we climbed the mountain, English Matt, Aussie Matt and Scottish Luke. These guys had a massive job on their hands and I’m sure it felt like an overwhelming responsibility at times. I remembered packing for myself before we left and that was enough of a challenge, ensuring you had everything, but imagine having to pack for yourself , and all relevant medical supplies to keep 800 people safe from the torments of the mountain.

We got up and started walking again, this time they promised only a short 3 hour walk, which turned into a nearly 5 hour walk. Learning for the day – don’t get fixated on times, just keep putting one foot in front of the other and when you see the sea of orange tents, then you’re finished.

The walk today was beautiful, leaving behind the monkeys and forest for a more fynbos look, with lovely flowers (lobella), heath vegetation, groovy rock formations and stunning views. It was steadily uphill, with some very steep sections. I was adopted by two guides who obviously thought I was moving a bit too fast and they kept encouraging me to drink water, move slowly and take rests. There were some other guides/porters walking near us and they were singing and shouting and dancing the whole way – while carrying packs on their heads and moving quickly!

Once we reached those glorious orange tents, we were fed some lunch and then all of a sudden an impromptu song and dance erupted with all the guides/porters. It was amazing to have hundreds of male African voices joined together out of sheer spontaneity – and frustration, it was apparently spurred on by having trouble setting up one of the igloo tents. The 60 minutes crew were able to get some good footage and have a bit of a dance amongst that amazing choir.

I am still feeling fine at this altitude, only issues relate to Diamox use so far. Karla, one of the lovely girls on the trip (from Perth!) has offered me her down booties to wear at night to help with having cold, cold feet, bless her heart. It certainly made a difference.

Day 1: 29 January 2013
1700m – 3000m
Chaos!!!
Imagine, if you can, standing amongst 100 excited expeditioners and 700 enthusiastic porters at the base of a very large mountain. Our very clever planning team has come up with an organisational system to ensure you know who your guide is and who is carrying your bag at all times – unfortunately the 700 porters are unaware of this plan and have just about tossed me off the mountain in their haste to pick up a bag, any bag, because holding a bag means you have a job for the next 7 days.

The 100 climbers are also feeling a little possessive of bags, as they include the paragliders we hoped to use at the summit, naturally they want to ensure that these bags have been picked up and are on their way up the mountain.

Finally we are off walking and I am actually the first one through the Machame gate, a position I wasn’t to hold again until 8 days later when I was the first person to walk out the gate on the other side of the mountain!

The heavens had opened up and we started our walk in the pouring rain, but given it was warm walking through the rainforest we began the first of what would become frequent wardrobe readjustments as we climbed. Clothes on, clothes off, wet weather gear on, wet weather gear off etc you get the picture.
We had been briefed for a 6 hour hike to make the first camp and as we were late getting away we fully expected to be walking in the dark. So it was a happy shock to reach camp after 4.5 hours and find it all set up. Adrian, the organiser had bought about 70 bright orange macpac tents which made a distinct impression upon reaching camp. The fun started if you were late into camp and had to go crawling around to find an empty tent. I devised a clever system for this in later days, as my pace got slower and was frequently one of the last into camp.

We had dinner in a big mess igloos and again chaos seemed to be the general theme, but as always in Africa, it all worked eventually and everyone got fed soup and spaghetti. I personally was ecstatic to find that milo was a key ingredient on this trip – after 7 straight days of frequent milo, that enthusiasm waned, but I’m sure my life time passion for milo will return shortly.

I set up my little living area, blowing up my thermal mattress and suddenly realising that it was only ¾ long – I’d forgotten that key element and knew that was going to come and bite me in the butt in days to come. Got out my sleeping bag and liner, but some warm sleeping clothes on, crawled into bed, with my head at the upward side of slope and attempted to fall asleep. The first and major problem became immediately obvious – there was no way my sleeping equipment was going to be warm enough and bugger all I could do about it now at 3000m. Uh oh.