I was at Byron, burger in hand, talking with a friend who tells me, “Exeter is looking to sponsor someone to climb Kilimanjaro for the 700th Anniversary, haven’t you heard?”
As it turned out, the deadline for applications was that day. I wrote mine in a hurry, did a follow up Skype interview the next week from my girlfriend’s kitchen, and a few days later I’m told I’m going to climb Africa’s tallest mountain.
I have a list of things to do before I die. Up until last month I had mainly managed to do little things: fly a kite, learn how to play Cluedo, have my fortune told, this was my first chance to really do one of the big things on there, have one of those huge, incredible, once in a lifetime experiences I’ve heard so much about that inspired me to start the list in the first place. I couldn’t let the opportunity slip past.
Then training began. I dragged friends up the Mourne Mountains with me on a weekly basis, went twice a week to ju-jitsu to get into shape, and did an eighteen-mile trial hike to see how things stood. I gathered my gear, guilt-tripped everyone I knew for sponsorship, and thought about which of the ‘recommended’ vaccinations were expendable. Then I climbed the Mournes some more.
All in all, the training served me well. Physically, I was happy to find that I was able to manage, and I had learned a lot of lessons during the earlier practice, including the sort of willpower it took to keep plodding on. Pole pole – slowly, slowly – was the mantra of the trip. We trekked through the rainforest, across scrubland and alpine desert, across the plain of a low-lying caldera, with Uhuru peak always visible, growing larger by the day. The scenery was breathtaking; to look out over rippling valleys of treetops fringed by huge cathedrals of rock was exactly what the trip was about for me. Seeing things so few people see, and which really stun you was why I wanted to climb the mountain in the first place.
The altitude, however, was something else. It isn’t something you can prepare for, and I think we were all just crossing our fingers and taking things as they came. My blood pressure dropped, blood sugars went crazy more than once, and altitude sickness hit. I didn’t quite make it to the 4,600m Lava Tower for acclimatisation on day four with the rest of the group, reaching 4,450m before having to descend to the next camp to recover. I, for one, was certainly happy for the comfort Haribo I had brought, which I maintain were what got me up the mountain.
On the last night, through nine hours of darkness, the 1000m ascent to the peak provided the final challenge. The lack of oxygen made it difficult to think straight, and it was becoming impossible for me to walk for more than a few minutes without taking a breather. I don’t know what the others were thinking, but it was hard for me not to question whether I could make it. The best I could manage was to put one foot in front of the other. I suppose that’s all you need.
It took a long time, and I needed to draw on every last bit of inner strength, but I made it: I reached the peak, walking the last 100m or so in silence with some of the people, one fifty years my senior, that I had gotten to know over the course of the walk getting us to this point, passing the others of our group on their way back, who hugged us, encouraged us, and walked on with their hearts soaring.
Seventeen Exonians made it to the top, and I am extremely proud and grateful to have been among them, to have walked with them and gotten to know them, and to have had such an incredible experience alongside them.
