Day 6: Uhuru Peak

Summit Night! 

It felt like Godfrey woke us up as soon as my head had hit the pillow. In reality it was 2 hours later. That should be plenty of sleep to climb the highest mountain in Africa! Why do we have to start at midnight? The main reason is to have enough time to summit and then descend almost the entire mountain in one day. We need to hike down to a much lower elevation for health concerns. The only way to cure mountain sickness is to get down to a safe elevation again. 

After we put on our layers and layers of gear, we stopped by the mess tent for "breakfast." They told us we had to eat to have enough energy for the many hours of climbing we had in front of us. However most of us were nauseous and could barely touch any food. I managed to eat 4 ginger snaps, probably a whopping 100 calories. Then it was time to go! We turned on our head lights and formed a line that slowly began to ascend the mountain. It looked and felt more like a death march. The trail was mostly boulders, rocks and scree. Scree is like loose gravel which was formed by the volcanic ash and debris. The full moon was high above us, helping to light the way. If you looked up to the peak you could see the bobbing headlights of the climbers ahead of us. We had a long, long way to go. 

When we first left Barafu Camp I thought to myself that it actually wasn't that cold out and I had over-dressed. I started to burn up so I took out all of my mega handwarmers that I had stuffed inside every pocket I had and gave them to Evans. Stupid stupid stupid. After about 30 minutes later I regretted that decision! The temperature dropped and the winds picked up as we climbed. My fingers and feet were going numb. It was amazing how exhausted we were after taking only a few steps at a time. I can't describe how slowly we were moving and how tiring it was. People started asking to take rest breaks. At first I was relieved, but then realized it was a catch 22 because if you stopped moving you froze to the bone. I tried to lie back on my back on one of the rocks and thought how nice it would be to just close my eyes for a few seconds. Wrong. Evans came over and refused to let me lean back. He said it was too dangerous to let my body shut down, so he made me stand up and start again. I was not a happy camper. 

Every second I felt like I was going to throw up, but I didn't want to be the first. At that moment Najaf took that honor from me. It wasn't pretty. Arman gave me an anti-nausea pill which really helped. As we continued our death march the hours passed by. Evans started singing and humming softly. It was the most soothing sounds to hear in the word. I swear he started to hum a hymn that I hear at church every Christmas. It made me think of my grandma and grandpa which warmed my heart some. After about 4 hours the group split into two. Evans wouldn't let us rest anymore and forced us to keep moving forward. The trail turned into an endless series of switchbacks. Looking up only made it worse. No matter how long we climbed we never seemed to get any closer. This is the part where delirium began to set in. I started thinking about the weirdest things that would make me happy. The most prominent thought that consumed me was imagining myself lying down in a giant bath of hot macaroni and cheese, oozing between my toes. Then I began to count my paces 100 steps at a time. Just when mentally I was about to crack, the most amazing thing happened. A thin layer of pink and orange crested the horizon. The sun began to rise, just as we reached out first milestone Stella Point after 6 hours. This was the biggest motivator of the entire day!

Sunrise at Stella Point

This is the point where you have to decide if you're going to try for Uhuru Peak or not. Although my brain felt like it was going to explode and the bones in my feet were cracking from the cold, there was never a doubt in my mind. We charged ahead! (ok there was no charge, more like we managed to take the first step). The switchbacks of Stella Point were the hardest of the entire day. The trail to Uhuru Peak was not half as steep. But we were now operating in less than 50% oxygen in the air. Things were getting pretty delirious. As we trekked on beside four enormous glaciers. Huge slabs of ice which surrounded the volcano's crater. We could see the bright green sign of the peak ahead of us, we were so close. 

After an hour and a half we reached the Roof of Africa! High fives and hugs all around. Before the trip when I pictured myself reaching the top I thought that I would have some deep self-reflecting moment while looking out at all of Africa. I imagined myself deep in thought while soaking in the views high above the clouds at 20,000 feet. But to be honest, I can barely remember the view! Thank god for cameras allowing to relive it. My only thought was someone take our picture at the peak as proof and get me down off this mountain! 

Top of the World

We did it!

Snow caps

The glaciers were enormous

The team! Mark, Cindy, David, Arman, Joseph, Eric, Jamie, Godfrey, me, Dan

Get me outta here!

We were only at the peak for no more than 15 minutes, then it was time do descend down. Funny, no one ever talked about the descent. I was only ever concerned with climbing to the top! But climbing down ended up being almost as hard as reaching the summit. Someone should really install a series of ziplines to get down. After about 4 hours of destroying my knees we reached Barafu Camp again. I crawled into my tent and passed out of pure exhaustion. 

Evans only let us rest for 1 hour before starting the descent down to Mweka Camp. It took us 4 more hours and we ended up finishing in the dark with our head lights. 

Finally after 16 hours of hiking, blown knees, pulled calf muscle, severe dehydration and nausea I skipped dinner and went to sleep thinking it was ok if I never woke up again.