By Malcolm X
“Mail me the notes you took on Kilimanjaro”, instructs George Miller, “and I’ll put them on the Web Site. If you haven’t typed them up yet, fax them to me and I’ll type them up for you”. There’s a slight threat in that last bit - he’s obviously serious about it and will brook no denial.
Sitting round a camp fire at N thousand feet up Kilimanjaro, where N is a large number, we had already discussed a major problem facing the Internet - namely that there is no control over the quality of material to be found on it (with the possible exception of sites created by George, of course). Such was typical of the quality of intellectual stimulus that we enjoyed on our trip - at least, that was the case before N grew to be a very large number and things simply either fell apart or lapsed into limp silence.
However, there’s a problem in complying with George’s request - for it turns out that at any altitude above a few hundred feet there is no control over the quality of material to be found in my Notes, either. Where they are legible, they are gibberish. Of course, where they are illegible, they may be imbued with sheer genius, although this appears unlikely. So what follows has been reconstituted from memory - which has not been difficult at all, since what a mouthful of madeleine did for Proust, a mouthful of lumpy porridge dredged in honey does for me, having eaten precisely that for breakfast almost every day on our trip. So here goes, A la recherche de la douleur perdu. (Look it up, lazybones - I had to).
Unlike Marcel, I prefer to opt for the practical, as opposed to the stream of consciousness, approach: I was taught at school that all essays should begin with five W’s and an H, and I don't suppose that the Internet is very different.
What? A description of our trip up Mount Kilimanjaro.
When? February 20th to 28th, 1999.
Where? Well . . . . Mount Kilimanjaro, really. . . . . let’s settle for Tanzania.
Why? Because my old friend Stuart, with whom I have walked in the English Lake District, asked “why don’t we do something different next year, like climb Mount Kilimanjaro ? Only it’s not so much climbing as a strenuous walk, and you don’t really have to be that fit” . . . . . (I could have written “because it was there” - but not only has that been done to death, but had I realised that quite so much of it was there I would never have agreed to it at all).
Who? Just the five of us.
Namely:
There’s my ex-old friend Stuart Marshall, for a start. He’s the organising type, who wears shorts all the time, when he’s not actually at work. When he is actually at work, he organises trips to African mountains at the same time as helping to keep Britain’s Airports running. He pants reassuringly heavily when he walks uphill. Reassuringly . . . . but misleadingly, as I found out too late.
Then there’s my other old friend, Cherry Marshall - who turns out to be Stuart’s wife, which is pretty convenient for everyone concerned. Cherry wasn’t expected to come on the trip at all, and only stepped in when some wimp cried off with only ten days’ notice. But the lack of time for preparatory training didn’t faze her: it turns out that she’s as tough as a horse, and if you’ve ever eaten at the poorer type of French establishment, you’ll know just how tough a horse can be. She’s also a medic, which gave reassurance to those of us who had been frightened by the tour operator’s notes on Extreme Altitude Sickness, Pulmonary Oedema and Cerebral Oedema, and how to recognise them. (Basically, you feel awful, stagger around like a drunk for a while, fall over and die - usually in that order).
Then there were two old friends of the Marshalls from California, whom I had not met before. Now, to the English, Californians (and most Americans actually, except perhaps the ones we never meet who come from places like De Moins and Nebraska) are notable for two principle traits: over-relating and an extreme delight in technology. At first blush, these two were no exception.
George Miller, he of the eponymous Web Site, has retired early from a successful banking career and now appears to spend his time either skiing or managing his high protein diet. (Make that three principle traits - close interest in bodily ingestion). He has a bushy beard that makes him appear like an amiable Neanderthal. He strode purposefully into step beside me as we set out on our very first hundred yards up the mountain and said “so tell me, Malcolm, what does your wife do and what are your hobbies?” We English are ill equipped to deal with openings like that. . . . . . . . . most of us don’t have hobbies, for a start, and not many of us really know what it is our wives get up to, either. OK, most and not many of me, anyway.
And Stoddard Vandersteel - make it four: tendency to have odd names, frequently with numbers attached. I didn’t have the courage to ask whether he was a IIIrd or merely the first in what will presumably be a long heritage of Vandersteels. Stoddard, who is a technology consultant/maniac brought with him his Palm Pilot, replete with the precise times and directions in which we could expect to see the Iridium Flash - and if you’re savvy enough to find a Web Site you’ll be savvy enough to know what that is.
Both George and Stoddard carried their camcorders with them, naturally, and had a tendency to suddenly race on ahead of the rest of us, pivoting round to record and comment on each of us as we plodded stoically by. Should we pretend that it was fly-on-the-wall stuff, or were we expected to make smart remarks? Somebody should write an Etiquette for Today to deal with such dilemmas, although as the altitude increased and we got more used to the idea, we rapidly ceased to care very much - or at all.
If my subtle racist approach leaves an impression that I am describing strangers (with the emphasis on the strange), that is because that is what George and Stoddard were - then. Take from me: there is nothing like a nineteen thousand foot (5,896 metre) vertical toddle to create lasting bonds of friendship, and I would now follow either of them to the ends of the world. Provided it was flat.
Finally, there was me - desk and plane-bound investment banker, sporting (although the word gives entirely the wrong impression) a month-old scar from having a hernia repaired. (Mine, as it happened). Hernias, or possibly hernium, are all the rage at our age, it appears - I even found myself comparing scars with other guests at a recent dinner party . . . .
So much for the five W’s. And as for the H:
How? . . . . . . . . . Aye, there’s the rub . . . .
Arrival: Kilimanjaro International Airport is certainly international - an alarming number of people from a wide variety of countries descended from the KLM plane and filtered patiently through the local bureaucracy. It seemed that there would be a long polyglot procession winding its way up the side of the mountain. We tried to look nonchalant - we do this sort of thing all the time, after all - and secretly sneered at the people who had been out to buy special equipment, such as safari-type waistcoats with pockets in every conceivable crevice for cartridges, quinine and the like. They were only softies going on safari, after all. I wished that my rucksack didn’t look what it was (i.e. brand new), and surreptitiously tried to rub dirt into it with my foot. I’d not had much need for a rucksack before: in my book, only a fool carries stuff on his back if there’s a car somewhere nearabouts for him to put it in.
We were met by our guide, Kennedy, who loaded us and our gear into a jeep and took us off through the warm mysterious night to our campsite which was – well, not quite where the driver had expected it to be, at any rate. We bounced and lurched down rutted earthen tracks through the bush, stopping at times to consult either map or locals, with equal lack of success. But we didn’t care - we were in Africa.
The sky was crammed with brilliant stars, the air was fragrant with woodsmoke and other unfamiliar spicy smells, and we caught glimpses of farms and villages as we criss-crossed the bush in an apparently aimless fashion.
Finally, we arrived at the most civilised set of tents you are likely to find outside of a photograph of an Edwardian big game hunting trip: good, solid constructions of strong green canvas, guy ropes as thick as your wrist, each tent complete with camp beds (the sheet folded invitingly back), a bedside table equipped with bottles of water, and a tripod wash-bowl affair standing proudly outside the door. Hurricane lamps lighted the pathway through the trees to the dining tent, where a dinner of steak and beer awaited. Yes, this trip was going to be a cinch, and Stuart was the best organiser in the world, we told ourselves.
George, ever the gentleman, and realising that “hey man, where’s the john?” might perhaps be difficult for Kennedy to comprehend, sidled up to him and inquired “ah. . . were there any particular facilities that you would want us to use ?”. After the confusion caused by the weird combination of circumlocution and tenses had been sorted out by appropriate translation, it turned out that indeed there were particular facilities- and we were advised that if we wished to use them in the night, we should take a torch, since this would prevent any leopards or elephants that might be wandering around from being caught unawares and frightened into attacking us . . . .
We went to bed surrounded by the sound of insects chirring and peeping, and the occasional rustle of something larger. But not much larger, and I suspect that the talk of elephant and leopards was merely a hyperbolic building up of atmosphere on the part of Kennedy, who, after all, was being paid to make us feel good.
Day One
The dawn chorus was loud and exotic, with monkeys and birds competing to make the most noise. We were roused, on this as on every day, by our cook bringing us a cup of tea, followed closely by warm water for washing. George, afraid that he might be losing his peak of fitness, went for a short run after completing his daily routine of press-ups, while Stoddard investigated the shower tent, with its tub of hot water perched on beams above. With no peak of fitness to jeopardise, I eschewed the run and shaved under the distant but watchful gaze of a troupe of baboons, sitting two hundred yards away in the grass.
Loaded back into the jeep (and having been encircled first by respectful base-camp staff seeking a tip), we headed off for Kilimanjaro itself, which was obscured to the East in clouds. Mount Meru, however, was visible - a paltry pimple at only 4,565m high, but worth a photograph nonetheless.
We drove through bush and scattered farmland, passing Maasai tribesmen in their bright red robes, and groups of women walking to and from market, bundles of produce on their heads. Kennedy assured us that the dots in the distance were ostrich.
Turning up through the foothills around Kilimanjaro itself, we eventually reached a steeply rutted track that wound through banana and coffee plantations, before terminating at the Machame gate, one of the entry points to the Kilimanjaro National Park. However, to get that far we had to negotiate our way past a group of workmen apparently laying a drain across the road. “Apparently”, because the drain was a great deal larger than the shallow trench crossing the road, because there was a large number of men standing round without a single spade or other implement between them (possibly something they learned from English workmen in earlier colonial days), and because all concerned seem to take it as a matter of course that we would have to negotiate a small payment in order to be allowed to drive on before they started lowering the drain into the trench. Payment having been duly negotiated and made, we were allowed to pass - and nice work too, if you can get it. (In London nobody has thought of simply giving in to the blackmail by paying the trench-diggers to let you through without them having to go so far as to dig a ditch; the otherwise avoidable traffic jams are the inevitable consequences of progress).
At Machame Gate organised confusion reigns. Whilst we sign ourselves in at the park register, our luggage is decanted from the jeep into large green plastic bags with rudimentary straps, which the porters will use to carry things up the mountain. (So much for the deep thought which went into choosing that particular rucksack). There are ten other porters involved, besides Kennedy our guide, in getting we five up the mountain - carrying all the tents and food which we will require for the next seven days, in addition to our own gear.
Stoddard has brought with him a bag full of small toys for the local children, and is soon surrounded by toddlers clamouring for bouncing balls, balloons and pencils. The latter will only be useful once sharpened, but he leaves that for them to figure out – who knows what they are being used for now. Sensing a bargain, a group of youths surrounds him in the hope of selling him a pair of wooden walking poles - and after much haggling he purchases a pair of poles recently hacked from the surrounding trees. (We English contingent have brought proper extendible walking poles with us, together with a motley assortment of other expedition accessories that will remain unused, whereas George has taken the opposite approach, having a minimalist survival kit contained in two small hold-alls).
“Dwende” - Swahili for “let’s go” - and the five of us, plus Kennedy and a porter carrying our lunch in a cardboard box on his head, set off up a gently sloping track through tall shady trees. The track winds through the rain forest, and we caught a glimpse of monkeys (black, with white tails - lemurs?) swinging through the trees. The trick to getting to the top of Kilimanjaro, apparently, is to take it slowly. Rush, and the altitude gets to you all the more fiercely, so it is “pole pole” (slowly, slowly) as we go. It all seemed too easy and pleasant, as we stopped for a picnic carefully prepared and laid out on a tablecloth for us by Elvis.
(At least, he told us his name was Elvis, but was later covered with embarrassment when his fellow porters made it clear that they had no idea who Elvis was, and that his name was actually Maouli).
The route took us up a buttressing ridge, and occasionally the trees and undergrowth thinned enough for us to look out over heavily forested valleys on either side. Generally, however, our view was restricted to the track and immediately surrounding vegetation, which includes Impatiens, a variety of which we grow as Busy Lizzie in London, although one red specimen which grows here is actually named Impatiens Kilimanjaro.
After four or five hours of walking, the trees are more sparse and begin to shorten, with grassy clearings appearing between them - and we emerged into the open sky at Machame Hut, our camp-site for the first night at 3,000m. The Hut itself is a large black corrugated iron shed, together with a smaller round, green hut of the same material - the latter have been placed at several locations up the mountain in the past, and are now generally badly rusted and decaying, although still used by the porters for shelter, being heavily lined with tar from the fires they light inside for warmth and cooking.
The porters set up our tents - two-man affairs, and it is unanimously decided that Stoddard deserves to sleep on his own, based upon the significant suspicions of snoring issuing from his tent the night before. George and I nervously anticipate our first night together – but I reassure him that everyone’s style is cramped on a first date. The porters then proceed to set up the mess tent, which marks us out from the other two dozen or so hikers in the camp-site as being Superior Travellers. Whilst they have to squat on the ground to eat, we not only have our own tent to eat in, but are served our meals at a folding table and chairs - all of which have to be carted up the mountain and back for our convenience. Yes sir, that man Stuart can certainly organise!
The porters who do all our carrying are unbelievable. Slight of build, they manage to carry not only all of our and their own personal gear on their backs, but will also each have something to carry in at least one hand (a large can of cooking oil or water, for example), and very often something balanced on their head as well. Some also have small transistor radios which they carry permanently tuned to the local Tanzanian music station, and the hits which we thought we had left behind with out teenage daughters followed us determinedly up the mountain, although whether this is a reassuring indication of progress or not, I couldn’t say.
Whilst we would toil painfully up the steeper stretches of the slope, carrying only our small day packs with us, the porters would clamber energetically past us, the comparison between our hiking gear and their sneakers (often mis-matched and invariably without laces) making us look ridiculously over-equipped.
Tinu, our number two guide, walked for three whole days carrying a cardboard tray of eggs for our breakfast in one hand. At the higher levels, once we were clear of the tree line, the porters had to carry not only the wood for our fire for two nights, but also a smouldering branch with which to light it.
(Kilimanjaro-climbing is now grown into a major tourist enterprise, which makes one sad that one didn’t do it ten years ago, when there would have been fewer people around generally, and even more of an adventurous feel to it. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how it can continue on its present basis. Food for all is cooked on wood fires fuelled by the trees growing round about, although restrictions at the more heavily populated lower camps mean that wood already has to be brought down from higher up the slope - further restrictions are inevitable. Some of the tracks at lower level are heavily carved into the clay, and are obviously treacherously slippery when it rains. In time, rules will have to be introduced to prevent further erosion, or the tracks will have to be paved. So the tourist of ten years hence will wish he had done it all today - which made us glad that we did).
After a brief rain storm, the clouds lifted and the sun came out - giving us our first sight of the snow fields at the top of Kilimanjaro itself, towering over us to the east.
It looked too far away to have anything to do with us.
Day Two
Less of a racket at dawn at this altitude, there being no noticeable animal noises and the forest bird-song being replaced by sounds more reminiscent of English moorland birds. Under clear skies, the chill of the morning was only dispelled by the sun clearing Mount Kilimanjaro and driving off the dew. Mount Meru was resplendent in the early morning light to the West, rising brilliant in the sunlight from a bed of lower cloud which was still shrouded in darkness.
After our standard breakfast of porridge, bacon and eggs, we set off up a steep twisting path through low trees and shrubs, occasional vistas opening up over the African lowlands beneath us. There was a greater variety of plants, being more sunlight: wild gladioli, and stancia trees, which seem to be half tree, half cactus, and which we were told branch in two every 25 years. In places the trees were bare, the result of a large fire the year before; elsewhere, the branches had plumes of moss growing on them, fluttering in the wind.
After clambering up a steep rock wall, we emerged into moorland, and trekked a few miles to Shirra Caves, which we reached in time for a late lunch. The caves are created by wide overhangs of rock, providing shelter for the porters that they prefer to the rusted rattling confines of the Shirra Hut, some half an hour further on.
By this time, the clouds which had built up on the plains beneath us had welled up, engulfing us in a cool mist and a brief rain shower - we had our picnic lunch squatting in the cave, smoke from the porters’ fire swirling round us. This was a weather pattern that was to repeat itself daily, although we were not caught by showers again, and as our altitude increased we enjoyed longer and longer periods of sun before the clouds caught up with us.
We spent the afternoon in walking up to Shirra Hut and back, and talking to other hikers staying around the caves. Conversations were initiated by George and Stoddard, I need hardly add - the English are far too reticent to approach other people in such a way, and are genetically incapable of starting a conversation with the words “hi - where’ya from?”
Each evening after supper Kennedy would join us in the mess tent to answer our questions and discuss the following day’s itinerary. The first was always instructive, although less so after we realised that he answered in the affirmative whatever the question happened to be. We never did establish whether this was a result of his limited English or a natural desire to avoid the disappointment consequent upon saying No.
On this occasion, the planning element of the conversation turned to our proposed route to the Top. We had already decided against what the porters refer to as the “Coca Cola” route, the Marangu Route, which climbs from the East, and which is both crowded and tedious. We had originally plumped instead for the Barafu route, which is more esoteric and ascends from a more southerly direction - however, this too is described in the books as including “laborious and steep scree”, and Kennedy was against it in principle, saying that the drop-out rate was very high. Instead, he thoroughly recommended the Western Breach route, which has the advantage of being shorter, if a good deal steeper - it takes you over the rim of the crater at a point well below the peak itself, which is then scaled the following day from inside the crater.
The idea of spending the night in the crater, rather than hitting the peak from the outside of the mountain and merely looking down into it, appealed to the more macho element amongst us (i.e. George and Stuart, mainly). The more naturally cautious amongst us, including a sub-set of less fit it has to be admitted, were only brought round by Kennedy’s description of the ease with which a party of three English ladies (most definitely ladies) aged between 70 and 74 had scaled the same route three weeks earlier under his tutelage. There was of course a catch - a question of cost. The porters needed additional encouragement to spend the night in the crater, since the tents would normally be taken no higher up the hill than 4,600 m. However, from the safety of a lowly 3,800 m we agreed readily, entirely forgetting in our enthusiasm that cost can be measured in more than mere greenbacks.
Heavy distant lightning flickered round Mount Meru and over the plains below us, and we clustered closely round the camp fire, for the night air was cold.
A small fox-like animal sneaked around the outskirts of the firelight, its eyes glinting occasionally; however, apart from a handful of small mice-like creatures with stripes down their backs, this was the only animal we saw until we came back to the lower levels.
We discovered that George had been nicknamed “Baboo” by the porters - this merely demonstrates how well they know nature, we thought, in that they too recognise his similarities to a baboon. It’s something to do with the beard. And indeed it was - although we were all a little disappointed (including George himself, I suspect) to learn that “baboo” is actually Swahili for “grandfather”.
Day Three
Icy beads of condensed breath on the insides of our tents the next morning, together with the heavy ground frost, were the first indication that things were about to get tougher. Some of us complained of headaches, disturbed sleep, and odd flashes of light disturbing our vision during the night, even when our eyes were shut. However, any such mild discomfort was soon forgotten as we had an al fresco breakfast in the morning sun, overlooking the spectacular series of rocky ridges between us and Mount Meru.
This was to be a day for acclimatisation - hardly any height to be gained, and a leisurely side excursion just for the fun of it. After a walk of barely an hour across the sunny moorland, we reached a camp site picked out just for us (i.e. not an established site occupied by others), located in a slight hollow overlooking the rolling scrub of Shirra Plateau. Naturally, without the provision of what George would refer to as an established “particular facility”, and (as Kennedy explained it to us) in order to protect the privacy of the lady amongst us, a portable lavatory had to be produced, lovingly carried this far (and further) by some poor porter. This splendid edifice took the form of a green canvas cubicle enclosing a plastic lavatory seat fixed to four iron legs, like a chair. Dig a hole in the turf, site said chair above it, and with a little careful bomb-aiming, voila !
Having scoped the site out, facility and all, we set out across the plateau for the Shirra Needle and Cathedral, two rocky outcrops a few miles away, from the height of which you could see over the edge of the plateau into what is apparently Kenya. The walk there was easy enough, but on the way back the effects of walking at above 3,500m began to make themselves felt, and we all complained of tiredness - except for George, who would insist on bounding on ahead in an irritatingly healthy manner. However, we soon recovered and after lunch took another short walk to a camping site used by an outfit called Mountain Madness, at which they have erected a plaque to Scott Fisher, one of their number who used to guide on Kilimanjaro and who recently died on an Everest expedition. I resolved not to let any success on this trip goad me into higher feats (not a problem in practice, as it turned out).
Relaxing in the afternoon sunshine, we watched Stoddard fix himself a cup of instant Meso soup, high in potassium or something similarly useful, which he drank with slightly forced enjoyment. I should explain at this point that Stoddard had let his womenfolk see to his packing for him - with the result that not only had his wife packed all manner of natural goodness for him (far better for him than the Mars Bars and other confectionery that others of us carried, and far more enjoyable for him to, I don’t doubt), but small notes and homilies put there by his daughter fluttered from every fresh garment he took out of his pack. “The joy of a thing well done is knowing it’s done well” sticks particularly in mind. Never have I met a man so solicitously looked after by his womenfolk as Stoddard, although whether this was because they considered him too incompetent to do things for himself, or whether they saw more deeply into his beautiful soul than I had yet managed to do, I cannot tell.
We dined at 5.00 p.m., and being too ashamed to admit that we were sufficiently tired to go to bed right away, we sat on our chairs round a large camp fire, playing bridge and arguing about the conversion factor between feet and metres.
Day Four
Being notionally acclimatised, the next day saw the climb begin in earnest after another sunny breakfast. We walked steadily uphill from the edge of the Shirra Plateau, the shoulder high shrubs giving way first to grass, then to bare earth or scree.
Our path intersected briefly with the South Circuit, which cuts round the southern side on the slope, and we joined a small caravan of hiking parties, each accompanied by its porters. It was about this time that Stuart’s usefulness declined somewhat - up to now, he had readily been able to provide our altitude (give or take slight adjustments for barometric pressure) by reading it from his Casio watch/altimeter. A useful instrument at work, one imagines, since not only do you always know when to go home, but you can tell precisely which floors the lift has got stuck between, if and when it does. However, from 4,000 m onwards this doughty instrument merely registered “Full”. It was trying to tell us something.
Clambering over a steep wall of rock, we ground our way laboriously and diagonally up a long scree slope which was seemingly endless and not much fun at all. However, just as despair was setting in, the route emerged onto a flatter area, and there, as the heavily trafficked South Circuit diverged from our route, and leaving all the other walkers to pass us by gazing in wonder and envy, our lunch table and chairs were set out, the well furnished tablecloth fluttering in the wind. We sat slumped in the last of the sunshine, silently congratulating ourselves (i.e. organiser Stuart) on managing to do things in style.
Kilimanjaro suddenly seemed much closer, and we could see a hoary sprinkling of snow covering the rocks between the pure-white gashes caused by glaciers and frozen waterfalls. It also suddenly seemed much bigger.
During lunch the clouds caught us up, instantly plunging us into freezing fog and causing a scramble for gloves and warmer clothes. We trudged onwards, increasingly cold, until we reached the camp site at Lava Tower (4,600 m), where a small flat amphitheatre of bare earth nestling at the bottom of the lava tower itself already contained our tents and particular facility. The clouds swirled round us, with occasional hailstorms rattling on the tent sides - even bridge failed to rouse our wilting spirits, cosseted as they were by now in our full thermal gear.
In a brief lull in the hail, the ever energetic George persuaded me to see if we could climb the lava tower, and we started scrambling up its lower slopes. Personally, I am not much of a climber. I suspected it at the time, never having tried it before, and I very soon found out for sure when I found myself having a panic attack sitting perched on a protruding saddle of rock overhanging a dizzying, golly, at least five foot drop back to where I had started from. However, Baboo was there to help me back to both sanity and safety, muttering something kind about it being “a bit technical”.
We all slunk quietly to bed, daunted by a combination of the bitter cold and the enormous bleakness of the mountain towering above us.
Day Five
However, as always, things looked better in the clear skies of the morning, and we breakfasted in the late sun, looking up at the Great Penck Glacier above us. Actually, the glaciers on Kilimanjaro have been retreating for some years now, and not only would the word Great hardly be appropriate today, but Penck would probably be uninterested in giving such a paltry puddle of ice his name. My notes, breaking into a brief spell of lucidity, state “slow packing - confused, every thought an effort. Ice everywhere on tent”. And so it was.
Kennedy took us up the lava tower, and what had seemed so impossible the evening before was now only mildly terrifying - but that’s what good guiding is all about. From the top we could look down at the porters packing up our tents, out over the wooded lower slopes of the mountain, or upwards towards the Western Breach, high above us. Looking up, Kennedy pointed to a small ant-like procession, winding its slow but glinting way up the steep scree slopes high above us - forerunners on the route which lay ahead.
Descending the tower, we set out for the day’s climb, crossing a small icy stream and making our way up a jumble of rocks, mud and gravel. The path zig-zagged upwards in short ten metre stretches, and we all tried different strategies for dealing with the peculiarly sapping effects of altitude.
There is the porters’ approach: a relaxed and steady shuffling walk which they can keep up for half an hour at a stretch, and which is impossible unless you have done it all your life. Then there is the fit Westerner’s approach, consisting of a slow walk with five minute rests. For myself, I tried twenty consecutive paces and then a rest for ten pants - which worked for a while, until I found that the panting had extended to twenty gut-wrenching gasps.
That’s an odd thing about altitude - standing still, you feel fine. Why, it’s only another couple of hundred yards to the top - we’ll make that in a few minutes, easy. Take two or three small steps upwards, and Blam, there you are, totally exhausted again. Ten steps up, twenty five pants. Repeat, but shorter with the steps and faster with the panting. The others are a good hundred yards ahead by now, having a nice long rest - which ends just as I stagger gasping up to them.
Stoddard is taking his mind of it all, listening through headphones to a book on African Battles of the Second World War - or maybe it was the First World War, I forget. Something of burning relevance to the trip, anyway. He pauses to explain kindly what a Charlie’s Horse is, although quite why Americans need a phrase for a particular type of cramp in a particular leg muscle is beyond my comprehension. Maybe it has something to do with being so athletic a nation. I wonder quietly to myself who Charlie was, how his horse came into it, and whether it had a name - but the thought soon fades, along with all others.
Our increasingly strangled attempts at conversation soon lapse as we focus our energies on inward sources of strength. We crawl up a series of agonising ridges, ending in a clamber over a particularly steep set of rocks, walking poles swinging wildly about as we grasp for handholds. Threading our way through a final set of large boulders, we emerge into the wild lunar landscape of rocks that surrounds Arrow Glacier Hut - 4,850 m high. Most of us are simply shattered after a mere couple of hours’ climb. We haven’t even started the Western breach itself yet - there’s another four hours of the same to come tomorrow. I secretly wonder if we can do it, evidence of precedent English Ladies notwithstanding.
After a rest and a dank lunch in swirling clammy clouds, we decide to walk across to the edge of the Great Western Breach Glacier, which the map tells us is perhaps a quarter of a mile to our left, although it is currently invisible in the chilling, swirling mists. The route degenerates into a steep slope of flat stones that slip and slide on one another, making each step thrice the effort it would otherwise be. However, persevering, we get there - and the clouds magically part, showing the glacier ten feet or so below us and the vast cliffs of Kilimanjaro towering above it, hundred foot icicles hanging from them where streams have frozen. Awesome. Tireless George, more mountain goat than baboon, skips down to the surface of the glacier, only to find that it’s slippery and steep enough to chuck him down the hill roughly, cutting his hand.
Despite our exertions, it is difficult to be enthusiastic about food - only the daily evening soup rouses any interest in us, and we crawl wearily to bed without bothering (or daring) to take off any of our gear - it’s that cold.
Day Six
Disturbed night. Cold. Tent frozen solid.
We stagger up, taking twice as long as usual to pack our things up - mental and bodily paces glacially slow. I try not to think of the mountain beetling over us, but to concentrate on the little things - like getting my boots onto the right feet at the second attempt. The porridge and fried eggs (last of the eggs, thank you Tinu) stick in our throats. We pretend unconvincingly to be cheerful. Our particular facility looks magnificent, perched alone amongst the barren frost-bound rocks, overlooking a vast panorama of clouds below us on the plains. A Room with a View all right.
Then, day packs on, we set off for the final assault on the Western Breach. If that makes it sound ridiculously like Hilary and Tensing’s last hundred yards up Everest, what the hell - that’s what it felt like to us, two hours into the 850 m clamber up the twisting scree path, threading its way from one splash of guiding red paint on the rocks to the next. Those English Ladies were obviously made of sterner stuff than me, and from half-way up I am reduced to only two small steps per minute and rapidly fall behind the others. To say that I am bringing up the rear would be understatement - I am dragging up the/my rear. I indignantly decline Tinu’s first offer to carry my day pack - I have my pride, after all. But not for very long, because I readily accept his second offer five minutes later, not that it seems to make much difference. Frankly, it’s a struggle, and it’s all Stuart’s fault.
The less said about the final stretches of the climb, the better - the less remembered about it the better. My recollection is certainly hazy, if only in self defence. Stoddard’s video (he arrived at the top a good twenty minutes before me, and had revived sufficiently to be playing Fellini by the time I got there) shows me to be a weakly wobbling ashen-faced wreck, scarcely able to respond to his cheery promptings to camera.
Clearing the rim of the crater, the Western Breach finally breached, we slumped at the top, hardly able to face the picnic lunch laid out for us, but slowly reviving in the face of the remarkable view. The Furtwangler Glacier presents perhaps a 60 foot ice cliff towards us, brilliant white beneath a sparkling blue sky. The ground in between is almost flat, covered in a volcanic sand with the consistency of freeze-dried coffee - which is appropriate, since it is obvious that without the strong sunshine it would be extremely cold indeed, and apart from the ice itself there is not the slightest sign of moisture. Behind the glacier the dull brown ellipse of the ash pit could just be seen, navel of the whole mountain.
Forcing down a few mouthfuls of lunch (never have peanuts been so hard to swallow), we laboriously picked ourselves up, and trudged extremely slowly along the side of the crater to our tents, which had already been erected beneath a rockface of 100 feet or so, at the top of which lay the summit itself. Crawling into my tent, I exhaustedly started to unpack my rucksack, only to find that it was beyond my physical and mental stamina to accomplish such a simple task without stopping for short periods of blackout. (The word Nap would imply both too cosy a scene and a degree of volition that was entirely absent). Camping at an altitude of 5,700 m may be something to write home about, but you’re certainly not capable of doing so at the time, and my attempts to take notes are at their worst, with each short incoherent scribble interrupted by unconsciousness. For some strange reason, the number 107 limped repeatedly through my brain - I couldn’t get rid of it. Feeling, years old, perhaps.
Stuart, Stoddard and George (of course) decided that they had to go and view the ash pit from close quarters, and set out for it with Kennedy, skirting the edge of the glacier on the way. Although the distance was only half a mile or so and the going almost flat, both Cherry and I recognised our limitations, and took the opportunity to doze in our sun-warmed tents. However, waking cold to find the tent in the shadow of the crater’s rim, my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to walk over to the glacier’s edge, perhaps 150 yards away and still in the sun, to inspect it from closer quarters. A mistake. Overcome with weariness before I had managed even half way, I sank down on a rock in the sun and continued my doze. By this time 107 had been driven from my brain by the usurping lyrics of Bob Dylan’s With God on our Side - the tune and words of which continued to occupy pride of place for the next two days. (“Oh my name it means nothing, my age it means less . . . .”).
The others woke me, returning in confusion and loudly demanding medical aid. On return from the ash pit (descriptions of which were quite lost in the excitement) Stuart had succumbed to the altitude, throwing up on his camera, falling down, and banging his eye on a rock in that order. Meanwhile, Stoddard had discovered that he couldn’t walk in a straight line, and was meandering round mumbling incoherently that he felt fine, but thought he was suffering from a parallax problem with his eyesight. Even George looked a trifle peaky. The literal high-point of her career to date having arrived, Cherry sprang into action, doling out Diamox tablets for all those feeling strange, and persuading Stuart to rehydrate and Stoddard to just sit down for God’s sake.
It was a quiet and unenthusiastic group that tried to force some supper down its throat and slunk off to bed.
Day Seven
It was so cold overnight that the water bottles in our tents froze solid - and remained so for most of the next day. We had disturbed night of tossing and turning, feeling the cold despite six or seven layers of clothes inside our lined sleeping bags. My name still meant nothing, and my age it meant less.
The aim is to reach the peak at dawn - not necessarily because that is the most spectacular time to be there, but because it gives you time enough to get down again to a campsite the same day. Thus people taking the Mweka Route get woken at 2.00 am to start their final assault. For us, being only 150 m below Uhru Peak, we were woken at 4.45. Our befuddled brains having taken an age to pack, and without the breakfast we couldn’t have eaten in any event, we were off by 5.30, torchlights strapped to our heads to light our way through the night.
Our slow crocodile wound slowly up the final slope (no steeper than those of the day before, but mercifully shorter), keeping close contact with each other in the gradually dispelling gloom, and casting anxious glances at the lightening sky to the East. The cold ate deep into our bones, and froze the spittle round our hoods. The rocks around us went from black, through grey, to rose pink. Would we make it in time? . . . . . . . . rapidly gave way (in my weakened case, at least) to Would we make it?
We did - clambering over a final ledge of rock shortly after dawn to find a gentle incline heading up towards the peak. We knew we’d reached it because of the number of people standing round, hugging each other and taking pictures of the small notice board perched on top of a wooden box. A procession of other people trudged towards us from the opposite direction, looking even more tired than we’d been feeling before we’d actually got there.
We’d actually got there ! We congratulated each other, got hugged by the guides, and took photos of one another and the view. Kennedy and Tinu appeared genuinely delighted that we were there - mission accomplished from their point of view, and it is a testament to their experience and considerate guiding that we did. Both video cameras expired from exhaustion. It was (you may say) satisfactory.
However, there isn’t much that you feel like doing at 5,896 metres up in the intense cold, and the guides harried us towards the descent after a bare twenty minutes. We walked across the peak through snowfields carved into comb-like shapes by the wind, gazing blankly at the ice caps around us and the zombies still trudging peak-wards past us. Flat gave way to a slight slope down, and - oh long awaited bliss - we were on our way downwards again.
What nobody had told me, and what every experienced climber knows, is that going down is harder than coming up.
The path up the Mweka Route must be a hellish trip in the small hours of the night, being steep volcanic dust, twisting and turning through large boulders. It is certainly hellish going down, particularly if your hands and feet have frozen - even as I write, some five weeks later, the nerve ends in my fingers and toes have not yet fully recovered from the frost-nip they received that morning. To have to go both up and down the same route must be soul-destroying, notwithstanding the lift that success brings.
By lunch we had descended by 1,300 metres to Barafu Hut, the departure point for people ascending from that side of the mountain. However, long before that my legs were shot to hell, and I shuffled into the hut area, dazed with tiredness and bewildered by the profusion of flat rocks and stones slithering around on one another as I tried to find the others. We drank what we could from our still-frozen water bottles, tried to eat a little, and lay comatose for an hour before starting out again. All, that is, except George - who, full of beans, decided that he would go on ahead with Kennedy, confiding is us that he intended to see if he could walk Kennedy off his feet. This seemed slightly ambitious, even for George, seeing as how Kennedy claimed to have been to the top 600 times in his twenty year guiding career, and to be able to do it in a mere two days, to boot. However, we were too tired to point this out to George at the time, and it would only have encouraged him the more, anyway.
The afternoon’s descent of a further 1,500 metres was more interesting. The volcanic dust slowly gave way to thin soil, the occasional isolated plant, and then scrub. The height of which increased, until by the time we reached the overnight stop at Mweka Hut we were walking through bushes over eight feet high. Not that we had much time to consider such developments, concentrating fully on the task of placing one foot in front of the other without falling over. My legs shook with fatigue, and I had to stop for frequent rests to let my muscles recover. By the time we neared the camp we were strung out with a good five minutes between each of us and I had not only suffered the indignity of having to let Tinu take my pack again (on the way down for chrissake), but also the ultimate insult of a suggestion that perhaps the porters should walk up and help carry me the rest of the way. I indignantly rejected such a ridiculous suggestion with all the force I could muster - which must have sounded pretty pathetic.
What speech we had managed between us on the way down was chiefly concerned with the thought that if George had an ounce of decency left in him, he would have used the time after his early arrival in camp to organise a beer or two. And of course, he did, and he had. If ever a man was blest, it was George, as the cold beer slid down our restricted throats and we relaxed on the grass in the warm sunshine of a mere 3,100 metres. I even started to forgive Stuart for arranging the damn thing in the first place.
We slept with the tent flaps open in the warm evening air, able to take an interest in the stars once more.
Day Eight
Warm water - a shave ! We ignored the fact that our legs had stiffened into rigid pylons overnight, and took photographs of the group standing beneath the summit’s ice caps, visible beneath deep blue skies at the top of the mountain.
After breakfast we packed our belongings for a final time, and set off through the bushes, which rapidly increased in height to become rain forest, complete with deeply rutted clay tracks, lined with tree roots to make sure that things weren’t too easy for us. Exotic sounding birds called to each other in the trees, and there must have been unseen monkeys.
After two and a half hours we reached Mweka Gate at an altitude of 1,750 m, where we were able to loll around in the warm sunshine, enjoying further beers and giggling at the non-functioning state of our legs. George, in particular, was complaining of feeling crippled. I noted with some relief that Kennedy was as fit and imperturbable as ever, using his walkie-talkie to check on the whereabouts of our transport. I was in no fit state to gloat openly, however.
We solemnly signed the exit books, dutifully supplying names, addresses and ages, flipping through the pages to find evidence of the by now fabled three English Ladies. And there they were, put to shame only by the entry of a Swiss man who had made it to the top at a claimed 84 years of age. We received our certificates from the Park Wardens to certify that we had accomplished the climb and tried to resist the temptation (not wholly effectively, in some cases) to buy T Shirts supplied by a certain sports clothing manufacturer, bearing the slogan “Just Done It”. In fact, it seemed difficult to accept that we had done it.
The rest is history. A pleasant drive in the jeep down through the banana and coffee plantations, passing workers walking homewards with mattocks gracefully balanced on their heads. Hot showers at Cranes Hotel in the local town of Moshi. The hunt for acceptable souvenirs and even more acceptable local beer (brand names Kilimanjaro and Tusker). Dinner in Cranes Hotel, during which Stoddard decided to try to purchase the framed Tusker advertisement on the restaurant wall. And finally, back into the jeep, worrying that we would miss the plane if Stoddard took any longer over negotiating his purchase.
But we didn’t miss the plane. Nor did we take much interest in the in-flight movie, either. We were just too damn tired.