Kilimanjaro Part 7a

August 26, 2009 (Day 6 on the Mountain, Summit Day)

The sun rises, a warm orange through the tent walls. We have all had a virtually sleepless night and it is time to get moving. Anita asks if anyone has any water. During the night all the water in the tent froze. We are sleeping next to a glacier after all.

‘I do.’ I pull out my aluminum water bottle that has spent the evening tucked into my right elbow for just this reason. The seal on the bottle stopped working properly yesterday, which means I had to make sure it remained upright all night so it didn’t leak. Easy to manage when you don’t sleep—gives one something to do really.

I release the large Ziplock bag that has spent the evening clutched in my right hand (just in case I had to throw up and couldn’t make it the two feet to the zipper—the bag is blessedly empty) and my headlamp that has been firmly ensconced in my left hand (just in case there was an emergency in the dark—you know, one of us throws up, stops breathing, or is attacked by a leopard).

I pass the water over to Anita, noting in the process that Lisa, who has spent the night in the middle to try to absorb the most heat, is in fact, breathing. I have spent the night in a slightly paranoid unease. Every time I lay on my side, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and had to sit up or flip over. I was half- convinced one of the three of us would suddenly stop breathing. So periodically through the night I would try to sit up and check to see if Anita and Lisa were moving, and as I lay, not sleeping, I would try to listen for their breath. Maybe slightly paranoid is an understatement.

Luckily we are all breathing and, thankfully, up and feeling better than we had the day before. Papa says he’s often seen people struggle to wake up when sleeping at this altitude, and when they do finally get up, will then choose not to summit. This is part of why he was pushing us to summit the day before. Luckily, we all seem to be up and relatively alert.

We start to get ready, not much to do as we’re all still fully dressed. We re-stuff the sleeping bags and are putting our boots on when a soft ‘Habari za asabuhi’ (‘Good morning-how are you?’) grabs our attention. The expected answer ‘Mzuri sana’ (‘Very well’) dies on our lips. Very well is a bit of an exaggeration for how we feel this morning. We’re ok. We look at each other and answer back a resounding ‘Aya’. The crew laughs in the tent next to us--‘Aya’. They know we’re feeling better. We unzip the tent to find Irasto outside wondering what our thoughts are on breakfast after the disastrous attempt at dinner the night before.

Anita and I opt for toast, fairly innocuous we think, and Lisa, the bravest of us, includes a request for eggs. These items appear, along with some canned pineapple, and we manage to put some calories into our body for the first time in 24 hours. The boots are on and we head out into the sun. We fill up our water and Macho and Papa head with us to the top. The other 4 guys will go around Uhuru and meet us at Millennium Camp.

Our pace today is still glacial, like 90-year-olds with bad hips and corns, but the headaches and nausea are much improved. It takes us another hour to top the mini mountain ahead of us, and as we reach the top Macho points ahead.

There it is.

Uhuru.

Ahead of us is the famous sign, the picture you see in almost every account of a climb of Kili. We make our way to it. It’s all a bit anti-climactic after the effort expended to climb the Breach the day before. I now understand why Macho and Papa were hugging us then. If we were going to die it was going to be yesterday, today was a nice walk up to the top.

We take some photos and admire the view. Anita attempts to send a photo to RJ from the top, but even here, no cell coverage. You can see the larger glaciers from up here, Meru’s now small peak in the distance, and there’s a cloud bank that spreads out below you to the horizon. It is beautiful. We are at 19, 341 feet (Approximately. That number varies in many books, I’m not actually sure how tall the mountain is.)

To be continued...

Photos:Glacier and cloud bank from the top. Dancing and singing with Macho and Papa on the way up. At the summit.