Ah! How to start attempting to describe the pure agony and hell which we all endured...
We started the climb on 4th July and it started off pretty shitty to be honest! It was pouring it down so we had to get out of our coach thing and scramble/fall over & slide all over the place trying to reach the Machame route gate!! Good start to the trip... The first day you climb from around 1000 metres above sea level to 3000m all through the rain forest. It was a really tough day! It was an 18km hike too which was exhausting! Properly shocked me as to how hard the actual climb was, immensely steep and really long too. The porters are actual champions and just run off ahead whilst you struggle, so our camp was all made for us by the time we reached our target with popcorn and hot chocolate too... yum!
2nd day got even harder, was realllllly steep!! Only 9km walking though but boy it was awful!! And we only went to 3800m so altitude wasn't particularly bad thank god! The terrain was through moorland which was pretty harsh cos the soil/gravel would just fall from under your feet with every step you took!
3rd day was our acclimatisation day from 3800m up to 4600m and then all the way back down again to around 3800m. At the time it seems really pointless but so grateful we had it in hind-sight cos people who didn't were amazingly sick on the summit night! The terrain was moorland/alpine desert. It was so bizarre going from such different environments in such a relatively fast pace... well i say fast. We were bloody slow! Suited me just fine!
The 4th day was awesome, did some actual rock climbing up Barrango Wall. Really dangerous and scary cos we had no ropes or anything (Africa style!) and if you took one wrong step you would plummet to the bottom. Fun times!! The days seemed to be getting longer and longer even though the actual walking was reduced quite a bit from the 18km at the start of the week. Some people did the summit tonight but we had another day, thank god. We were all so knackered that I don't think I'd have made it if we had had to do summit on the 4th day.
5th day = summit day! Ahhhhh, what an awful & miserable experience!! I was really sick at the base camp (4600m) just hours before we left for the final ascent so I was pretty nervous about making it. We went to bed, after a day of hiking through desert, at around 6pm and got awoken at 11pm!
oh my god, it was horrible. The summit took us from midnight to 6.30am! I was in tears at various points of the climb, as were most of my group. This one part of the climb was horrendous, Shira Plateau... It was practically vertical and made of shingle so every 2 steps you took you fell back 1. By the time we made the flat section people were collapsed on rocks and some had passed out and gone asleep literally in seconds! That's the second highest point of Kilimanjaro so lots of people stay there due to altitude sickness but we all ploughed on. My group were relatively okay-ish with altitude sickness... we had dizziness, hallucinations, and difficulty breathing basically. At some points during the climb I remember I just closed my eyes and kept walking, I swear I was practically asleep. But when we reached Uhuru Peak (highest point in Africa - nearly 6000m) whilst the sun was rising... amazing. Everyone was in tears. Hilarious looking back but definitely justified!
Then you'd never ever guess what... we had to turn around and walk back down to the base camp. Was pretty scary though because this man was being dragged down by 'mountain rescue': 2 porters basically. Luckily our guides had some oxygen and gave it to him but it as awful to see. So scary. Later on that night at the final camp a further 3 people got stretchered down from summit. Anyhow, we walked all the way back down from summit to base camp and we realised why we had to walk in the dark... there would be no way you'd ever ever ever do the final ascent if you saw the gradient of the mountain. Words cannot describe! Once we all got back to base camp we had to pack up and hike back down to 3000m! An awfully long day... 3 hikes with like 3 hours sleep. Was so exhausted it was unreal!
The final day was pretty boring because you just want to get off the mountain after the summit! Your feet/legs/arms/body/everything aches and you've reached your goal so we all walked pretty damn quickly!! Am really proud of myself to have actually reached the summit of the highest free standing mountain in the whole frigging world :] !!!
(am trying to upload a picture of me at the summit but it's not working!! boo!) ooo think it worked...
am off on safari next week so will inform all about that soon too! so excited for it!! 5 days seeing animals, amazing!
lots of love to all xxxx
