My head was pounding, my hands were frozen and my legs felt like jelly. My stomach was noisier than New Year’s Eve in New Orleans and my aching back had me bent over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
As I reached Stella Point, the last stop before ascending to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, I once again asked myself what possessed me to climb Africa’s tallest mountain.
Was I trying to prove that, in my mid-60s, I still had the stamina, strength and willpower to scale this majestic, snow-capped, 19,341-foot peak in Tanzania? Was I fulfilling a longtime dream that began when I read Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro’’ in high school? Or was it just temporary insanity?
Whatever the reason, here I was 3½ miles above sea level, exhausted, sunburned and dehydrated with yet another hour of hiking to go before reaching Uhuru Peak. That’s the ultimate destination, the iconic spot where climbers pose beside a battered wooden sign signifying that they have reached the “roof of Africa.’’
The day after I turned 65, I flew from Newark, New Jersey, to Kilimanjaro via Amsterdam. I arranged my expedition through Tusker Trail, one of the most highly regarded tour operators on Kilimanjaro. There are six main paths to the summit; I chose Lemosho because it’s considered the most scenic and because its week-long journey to the top allows trekkers more time to acclimate to the altitude than shorter, more popular paths like Marangu, nicknamed the “Coca-Cola trail’’ because locals used to sell bottles of Coke to hikers along the route.
After spending the night in Moshi, the closest city to Kilimanjaro, my nine-member climbing group spent the following day resting and going through orientation for our 12,000-foot climb to the summit. We met our four guides – Elias, Stanford, Shabani and Nemes – and were told that our support crew would total 41. It takes a village to climb Kilimanjaro, including cooks, waiters, a camp manager and porters who carry tents, sleeping bags, food, medical equipment and, in our case, even two portable toilets up and down the mountain. (It also takes money. While some cut-rate operators may charge as little as $1,000, excluding airfare, plan on spending triple that amount for a safe, reliable company.)
The following morning, we packed up and took a 4½-hour van ride over bumpy dirt roads to the entrance to Kilimanjaro National Park, where our duffel bags were weighed to make sure they didn’t exceed the 33-pound limit that porters are allowed to carry. (Each climber carries his own backpack, which contains necessities for the day.)
Our first day was a light warm-up, covering about three miles through a lush rainforest teeming with birds, flowers and trees. Along the trail we spotted a troop of black-and-white colobus monkeys, which we jokingly dubbed “skunk monkeys.’’
That became the moniker for our group, which consisted of five Canadians, two Australians, one New Zealander and me, an American journalist. I was the oldest – the ages of my climbing partners ranged from 32 to 57 – and our lead guide Elias soon started calling me babu, which means grandfather in Swahili. (At first, I thought he was calling me “baboon,’’ which would have been understandable given my walking posture.) We were an eclectic group that included two doctors, a chiropractor, a realtor, an insurance executive, a post office manager, and a married singing duo known as Dear Rouge. What we had in common was a love of adventure and a sturdy pair of hiking boots.
We learned many Swahili phrases during our trek, but the one we heard most frequently was “pole, pole,’’ which means “slowly, slowly’’ and is pronounced “polay, polay.’’ Walking at a turtle-like pace is the key to summiting Kilimanjaro, a way to conserve energy on the arduous journey up the mountain. Another essential is Diamox, a pill you take twice daily during the ascent to prevent and reduce symptoms of altitude sickness such as headaches and nausea.
Porters stay ahead of their group so they can have the overnight camp set up by the time the climbers arrive. As soon as we got to our first campsite, Mti Mkubwa, our two-person tents were up and our bags were inside. After washing our hands and faces with water that porters gathered from a nearby stream, we ate dinner – the food on our trip was plentiful and tasty – and went to bed early to rest up for Day 2.
We were awakened at 6:30 a.m. for our morning routine – washing our hands and faces in a plastic bowl of hot water, followed by hot tea or coffee and breakfast. We trekked for about seven hours (including brief stops for rest and lunch), passing from the rainforest into the heath zone with its sparser vegetation and shrubs, until we arrived at Shira I camp. Feeling claustrophobic in my cramped tent, I barely slept that night. I crawled in and out of my tent, wandering around the camp with my headlamp and listening to cacophonous snoring that sounded like a lion’s exhibit at the zoo. (I was later told mine was one of the biggest roars.)
On Day 3 we crossed the Shira Plateau, a crater formed by the collapse of one of Kilimanjaro’s three extinct or dormant volcanoes. The area used to be home to abundant wildlife, including elephants, buffalo and leopards, but now animal sightings are rare and the only traces we saw were dried lumps of scat. At one point we passed a large cave, where antelope sometimes sleep to protect themselves from the cold and rain. (It sounded like a good alternative to my tent.)
After spending the night at Moir Hut camp, the next day started with blazing sunshine and ended the same way. In between, we experienced rain, hail, thunder, massive rolling clouds and freezing cold. They tell you to dress in layers on the mountain so you can add and subtract clothes quickly. On this day, I went through more wardrobe changes than Madonna in “Evita.’’
The highlight was Lava Tower, a triangular, 300-foot high bulge of volcanic rock. Daring trekkers used to climb it, but the practice is now banned because of falling rocks. We spent the night at Barranco (12,795 feet), which was actually lower than our previous camp, part of a two-day plan to keep us at a stable altitude and get us acclimatized to the thin air. I was doing surprisingly well in that department, registering a high oxygen level during our twice-a-day medical checkups. Not bad for a babu!
The ordeal – we’d been walking six to eight hours a day — was starting to take its toll. Paul, the insurance guy from Toronto who has competed in Ironman triathlons, was having fierce headaches. Others complained of nausea and diarrhea. My knees were killing me — one of the Australian doctors mercifully gave me a numbing shot — and we still weren’t halfway up the mountain! Just ahead was Barranco Wall, a precarious ledge that must be negotiated by hand without trekking poles. One narrow section is known as the Kissing Rock because your face is pressed against it as you file past, not because it makes you feel amorous. When we finally arrived at Karanga, our campsite for the night, we were rewarded with a radiant sunset Monet would have envied.
Day 6 was the calm before the storm, the final day before attempting the grueling summit. It was a relatively short, three-hour climb, and the weather was warm and sunny. We passed what looked like a rock quarry, remnants of a volcano eruption thousands of years ago. At Barafu camp (15,331 feet), I met a badly sunburned Australian woman who was descending after reaching the summit. She looked like a ghost, but insisted the final stretch wasn’t as bad as she expected. I thought she was hallucinating.
It started snowing shortly before dinner, after which Elias told us a humbling story. In 2015 he and Shabani led an 86-year-old Russian woman to the summit — the oldest person ever to reach the top. Suddenly, reaching Uhuru Peak at 65 didn’t seem so impressive.
Summit day was torturous – 8½ hours of rock-strewn trekking to the top and another six hours of slippery descent to our final campsite.
We started out in pitch darkness at 1:20 a.m., summited in clear daylight at 9:50 a.m. and didn’t get down to Mweka camp (10,171 feet), until nearly dusk. We all were struggling. Andrew, a Toronto area realtor who like his friend Paul was a veteran of triathlons and Tough Mudder competitions, needed several gulps from the oxygen tank. And his pal Ryan, a chiropractor from Vancouver, had such a splitting headache when he reached the summit that he couldn’t get off the peak fast enough. My knees were aching and I could barely speak, but I had just enough energy to pose for pictures and record a selfie video by the famous Uhuru Peak sign.
The view from the top was dazzling. We were above the clouds, framed by glaciers (which are shrinking at an alarming rate) and peering over an unspoiled arctic landscape. Like most groups, we only stayed for a short time before heading down. The steep descent was over a sandy trail lined with scree, crushed rocks that make you feel as if you are sliding, rather than walking, down the mountain. It’s particularly brutal on the knees, so I draped my arms around the shoulders of two porters for support during the final stretch.
I also got some help going down on the last day of our trek. I had fallen so far behind my group that Elias ordered me to take “the express train’’ to catch up. That meant being strapped into a one-wheel cart – the kind usually used to rescue injured climbers – and pushed by six porters for about an hour until I caught up. Improbably, as they dodged rocks and trees, the porters sang while wheeling me down the mountain.
After getting out of the cart, I walked a bit further until an SUV picked me and two other stragglers up for a short ride to the exit gate. There, I bought a Kilimanjaro T-shirt from one of the many souvenir sellers and, after waiting for an injured porter to arrive, took a short ride back to Moshi and enjoyed my first hot shower in eight days.
Our group dined together for the final time, and we distributed tips to the guides and porters. Exhausted but exhilarated, we exchanged email addresses, formed a Facebook group – the Skunk Monkeys – and parted with hugs and kisses. “Let’s do this again,’’ someone said with a wry smile. He paused, then added, “in about 10 years.’’
