We arose at 1 am and gathered
soon after outside Kibo hut dressed in several layers
against the cold to begin the final ascent, the final four thousand
feet, in the dark.
The idea is to reach the summit in the morning while the sky is still
clear and the view unobscured.
Later we were all grateful that
we couldn't see much further than the light cast by our
headlamps.
The darkness saved us from the surely discouraging sight of all those
switchbacks up this incredible slope of scree.
What we couldn't see during the final ascent.
What we did see were the
distant and slow-moving headlamps of those
above and below us on the trail.
We walked in a daze, with only
the footsteps of the person ahead of us in view.
The most comfortable and sustainable pace was an incredibly slow,
single step forward with each breath out.
Even so, I soon started feeling a little dizzy and nauseous.
I worried at length over this and whether these were signs I should
bail out
and how I could avoid disrupting everyone else's ascent.
I eventually spoke up and
discovered that the others were feeling much the same,
that my symptoms weren't serious
and that I wasn't about to die after all. (grin)
Funny thing is that I immediately felt much better.
A few minutes shelter from the wind at the halfway point, Hans Meyer Cave.
Look at all the happy campers!
Dawn's first light consisted of a thin orange line demarcating the horizon.
Minutes later the sky began to glow behind Mawenzi:
When the sun appeared our group was still probably close to a thousand feet from the rim of the caldera.
From left to right, Mary, Jim,
John, Elaine, and our summit guide Paul.
Gary's out of the frame next to me as we all bask in the welcome heat
and light.
The final few hundred feet
before the rim were absolutely the most difficult.
The rim seemed to always be in sight, but never any closer.
Finally...
Gillman's Point - the rim of Kibo's caldera
5685 meters
Even though we were split up
into three differently-paced groups,
everyone eventually made it to the rim.
And all but two pressed on for the high point on the caldera, Uhuru peak.
Uhuru can be seen here in this
photo from Gillman's, but we were all fooled
by its apparent closeness...
So we kept going...
and going...
and going...
for two hours.
This is the view across the ice fields towards Mawenzi.
Round about this point, with
Uhuru's signpost in sight, I suddenly felt very sick.
I collapsed in the middle of the trail to rest as I felt very dizzy
and nauseous,
my head and eyes ached and my muscles in my arms and legs would send
sudden sharp pinpricks
if I jarred them at all. But more than anything it was just very
scary.
After a few minutes, I got up and pressed on to cover the remaining hundred yards of trail.
I knew I wanted to get off that
mountain immediately and that it was going to take hours
to walk back along the rim to get down again,
but I had to walk those remaining yards.
Because there it was...
5895 meters (19,340 feet)
(plus six feet to my brain!)
Funny how different the caldera looks from Uhuru back towards Gillman's point.
Another view from Uhuru to the
southwest: Mt. Meru (4565 m),
40 miles away through the smog and haze.
Well, I took my pictures and ran.
I managed to rush back around
the caldera without slipping on the snow and ice
and took a nap on the scree slope a thousand feet down.
When I woke, all my symptoms were gone.
Hey and no apparent brain damage!
Scree-skiing in formation!
Didn't take long to get down to Kibo hut. But then we had to continue on down the mountain to Horombo.
The last of our three groups
arrived at Horombo well after dark.
They had been hiking for twenty hours!