It begins.

A month ago today, our team of fourteen North American climbers, along with a small army of guides and porters, began our trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. It has taken me a month to begin communicating the experience of climbing to the Rooftop of Africa. Even today as I write, I struggle to extract stories and experiences that can be meaningfully shared with others. If you’ve invested enough time to navigate to this page, I assume you want more than sound bites. I’ll do my best to deliver.

Yesterday I pointed out projects and reflections from two of my teammates. If you need a few more spoilers, I highly recommend those of my teammate, Paul. Frankly, you should probably stop reading this post, check out what Paul has already written, and then check back here for my personal reflections. He’s done a masterful job of capturing our daily routines – what happened every single day of our climb, as well as what made each day unique.

Packing and Porters

Anyone who has traveled with me during the last decade knows that I still haven’t mastered the art of packing lightly. I recently checked a forty-pound (eighteen-kilogram) bag for a four-day trip, and I also took a fully-loaded carry-on with me.

I don’t enjoy packing. I also don’t believe in Purgatory, but if designing such a place fell to me, I’d make sure people there spent most of their time trying to pack for every plausible contingency, believing they were about to spend over a week at a remote, multi-climate, once-in-a-lifetime destination with no convenience stores, delivery services or access to showers. I’d permit them thirty pounds (fourteen kilograms), and I’d give them the twenty minutes just prior to departure, start to finish, to complete the task.

Part of the previous paragraph relied on hyperbole. I didn’t have twenty minutes. My camera gear alone weighed roughly fifteen pounds (just shy of seven kilograms). While it was true that I had a day pack – I would personally carry this on my back, and it wouldn’t count against the fourteen kilograms (thirty pounds) of stuff I handed to my porter – I had a fairly poor sense of how to make sure I was adequately prepared for the climb, while also limiting equipment to what my porter and I would carry. My camera alone weighed half of the porter’s allowance, and as I wouldn’t see my porter again until I reached camp each day, I decided to keep my camera gear with me.

To be sure, these are chiefly #firstworldproblems. The porters worked hardest of anyone on the mountain, and they were almost certainly paid the least for their work. They were also underappreciated – not in that we didn’t value their incredibly hard work, but in the sense that we were rarely with them to develop relationships with them and express our gratitude. The entire time we climbed up and down the mountain, a steady stream of porters passed us, carrying their stuff and their groups’ stuff, traveling ahead of their groups to prepare meals and camps. Many porters, we were told, had never reached the summit, instead regularly resting at the final pre-summit camp while teams made their final pushes to the top.

Two of our ClimbKili porters, just prior to starting the climb.

First hour of the climb: Porters to the left, our group to the right.

Having “Extreme” and Starting to Climb

Prior to commencing the climb itself, we registered with officials at Londorossi Gate. There we saw a handful of signs with various rules, pointers and prohibitions to observe inside the national park. One of these signs mentioned, “DO NOT PUSH YOURSELF TO GO IF YOUR BODY IS EXHAUSTED OR IF YOU HAVE EXTREME” and then didn’t provide an object of this extremeness. Throughout the climb, we determined that we all had “extreme.”

“Points to Remember” at Londorossi Gate

From Londorossi Gate, we rode an hour or so to where our trek began. Due to road conditions, the vans dropped us off a short hike away from the Lemosho trailhead. Our hike to the first camp lasted five hours. It started out at an incredibly slow pace, while we walked on fairly level ground. As Paul mentioned in his post, during a short break from hiking we eventually requested to move a little faster, not realizing that a significant climb awaited us immediately after that request.

Team of eMi climbers at start of climb.

David and Jeff at Lemosho Route trailhead.

As I already mentioned, I had a difficult time figuring out how to pack. On our first day of the trek, I carried more on my back than what I handed off to my porter. Once we picked up the pace and started climbing, a few things were true. First, I was glad my training had included walking quickly uphill on a treadmill with a heavy pack on my back. Second, I realized I needed to make some adjustments at camp, if I hoped to reach the summit and survive the remaining seven days of the trek. Third, I admittedly had momentary “What have I gotten myself into?” thoughts.

Camp in the rain forest on first night.

Partly because we had hauled uphill through the rain forest, we arrived at camp an hour or so earlier than advertised. I was a bit surprised at how densely packed our first camp was. It was crowded! Our guides told us that camps would be a bit more spread out after that first night.

I also discovered, during that first night, how cold it would get on the mountain at night. My sleeping bag, which I rented from the climbing company, did not fit me. One of my shoulders stayed outside the sleeping bag all night, so my sleeping bag literally gave me the cold shoulder. If I wasn’t staying warm on the first night of the trek, where we camped at our lowest sleeping elevation of the entire eight days, what would happen as we continued to gain elevation?

It was clear that I needed to make some adjustments.