Jambo! (Swahili for hello!) And so it begins! Our team arrived over the past two days and we gathered for our first team meeting as we met each other and prepared for our pending adventure. We have a young couple from Seattle, a family of 6 from Iowa, a woman from Southern California (my roomie!) and me. Admittedly a little nervous, we listened to our guide, Dave Hahn, share itinerary plans, packing advice, cultural expectations, and encouragement in anticipation of Day 1 on the mountain. I climbed a viewing tower on the grounds of the lodge at sunset and gazed at the large mountain pushing up from the clouds. “Lord have mercy, what have I gotten myself into”, I prayed!
The day was spent mostly packing our stuff and resting. After an equipment check and weighing our bags to make sure we were not over the 33 pounds limit we then read, napped or whatever best helped our bodies overcome jet lag. The weight limit is because the porters who carry our bags are not only carrying their own stuff on their backs but they haul our bags on their heads! Thus the weight limit.
Surprisingly there are hundreds of people on the lower mountain with us. It will thin out the further up the mountain we go. There are about 5-6 routes to the top but we are going the Machame Route. It starts out on the west side of the mountain and then meanders along the south side and we will eventually summit from the east. But our first day we will climb for 5-6 hours and cover 4000″² of elevation ending at 9890″². It will be a nice slow pace.
Machame Gate entrance
Our outfitter is Barking Zebra and they are providing 50 local people to support us up the mountain! That seems like a lot of people for a team of 11 but these are good jobs that help the local economy out. I’m sure I will be grateful for every one of them by the time we are done! We will have 30-35 porters, 5 guides, 2 cooks, 4-5 camp guys that set up camp each night, 3 waiters that serve dinner and a poor latrine guy that carries and sets up 2 latrines at each camp. Clearly low guy on the totem pole gets that job!
But here we are this morning. The weather has been a little drizzly but rain coats are starting out in the backpack! But we do start in a rain forest so it is typical. After a hearty breakfast (which I don’t normally eat) and a 2 hour bus ride to the park gate we are ready to get moving. After registering our group on the mountain we are finally on our way!
I don’t know when I’ll be able to write again and adding pictures is a challenge so you may get word pictures along the way. But words fail me now describing what it feels like to actually be starting a dream in real life. My prayer that keeps pouring off my tongue over and over is God be with us! I have no doubt God will be.
7 day climb with a 3 day safariThis is the path we will travel with all of the camps along the way
It’s hard to describe my feelings right now. It feels like such a long journey to get to this place of excited anticipation. I leave Monday to start my adventure of reaching the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I can’t believe it’s finally here. I’m filled with a mixture of joy and excitement as well as angst and nervousness. Will I be able to reach the top? Have I packed correctly? Will I experience more pain than exhilaration as I test my physical and mental limits? What will it look like in real life? How will it feel at the top? Have I prepared enough? I have been thinking about this trip seriously for 5 years. I have been planning this trip for 3 years. It has occupied a great deal of mental space in my life and certainly an extreme amount of physical time and space!
Part of the sweetness of getting this close to departure is the agony I was feeling a year ago this time. As many of you know, I was scheduled to do this trip in 2017 and one week before departure I went on a final training hike and fell and turned my ankle severely. I had to cancel the trip and the disappointment was nearly unbearable for me. (And poor Greg having to deal with mopey me for several months!) Needless to say I have trained very carefully and I can honestly say that today, I feel no remnants of the ankle pain that plagued me for 10 months.
I have been asked several questions so the rest of this blog is an attempt to answer the most frequently asked questions.
How do you train to climb a mountain? It involves a regiment of intense cardio for at least an hour at a time 3-4 times a week. This includes interval training to maximize my body’s Oxygen intake ability. I have done lot’s of running on a treadmill where I could control my pace and push myself to run fast. And lots of time on a stair climber – the kind that actually has stairs that rotate so you are mimicking climbing upwards.
Training also involves strength training to help the upper body manage a 25 pound pack. Lifting weights and doing cross fit 1-2 days a week has helped me not neglect my upper body since so much attention has been given to my legs the other days of the week. This also includes core training every day to help with balance of both the pack and the upper mountain rocky path. Doing Plank is my friend!
Finally, a critical part of training is taking long hikes on Saturday’s that involve altitude to mimic a typical 5 hour hiking day on Kili. This also let me train going down the mountain which is equally important to prepare for.
The good news is the variety of exercise regiments kept the weeks of training from getting too monotonous. The hard part was it has been very time-consuming and quite honestly, it’s not a lot of fun to wear a 20 pound weighted vest on a stair climber for an hour. I was happy when this past Thursday I could retire my stinky, sweaty training vest! Hopefully my car will start smelling better, too!
Who are you climbing with? Unfortunately, my husband is not able to go with me on this trip due to some health issues. I am climbing with a company out of Seattle- RMI. They will provide an expert Guide (ours is Dave Hahn!) and hire porters to assist us on the mountain. There are 10 total people in my group – folks from Iowa, Washington State, and California. Yes, I am the only southerner! 6 women and 4 men. I am looking forward to making new friends and sharing this adventure together! However the only person I know on the trip is our guide, Dave. He helped guide me up Mt. Rainier the first time I climbed it and is one of the most famous western climbers in the world. So I’m stoked to have him as our guide.
How long does it take to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro? So the local phrase or mantra is Pole Pole (pronounced Polay Polay) which means slowly, slowly in Swahili. The peak is 19,341″² high and you don’t use Oxygen. Instead, you go at a slow pace and let your body acclimate. So we will spend 7 days climbing the mountain. I will start next Thursday, summit the following Tuesday morning, and be in the parking lot in time for lunch the very next day on Wednesday! Needless to say, you come down a whole lot quicker than you go up! But by climbing 4-5 hours a day and then making camp you let your body adjust to the decreasing Oxygen levels. However on summit day, we will be hiking for 12-14 hours starting around midnight Tuesday morning. That’s the day to pray hard!!! (BTW I will be 7 hours ahead of you in time.)
Will you be able to blog while on the mountain? Unfortunately, no. I’ll blog before and after but I will not have wifi while climbing. But you can go to this link RMI Blog and follow our group by reading Dave Hahn’s daily reports on our progress. It will include a map that shows were we are at each stop. Just look for Dave Hahn- Kilimanjaro to make sure you are following my group!
How cold is it? The weather on top of the mountain has been interesting of late. They have gotten more snow than is typical. The temps will range from 60 degrees at the park entrance at 5000″² to 19 degrees on the summit. Most of the upper mountain will be in the upper 20’s and lower 30’s.
Is this a technical climb with equipment? No. That is why I was interested in climbing this particular mountain. After doing Rainer which is technical and involves ice axes, crampons and ropes- that was my limit of the hard and scary stuff. Kilimanjaro is a trail most of the way up with a little bit of scramble over rocks and loose volcanic ash closer to the top. I will use my regular hiking boots and my handy trekking poles the whole way. It also helps that we only have to carry 20-25 pounds on our backs. Porters help haul our heavy stuff up to the next camp each night.
If you have any other questions you are curious about please ask and I’ll respond. Right now I am rejoicing at the fact that I managed to get all of my stuff into my main duffel and a carry on. Does it weigh over 50 pounds – well maybe!
This pic actually doesn’t include my boots, poles, back pack and sleeping bag!All of that stuff fit in these 2 bags!
Feel free to ignore my posts over the next few days if you don’t want to hear about this again! I truly appreciate all of your prayers and well wishes.
It’s taken me a while to get back to writing my blog after moving to Boone. Part of it could be that a company that shall remained unnamed took 10 days just to get our internet and TV running a total of 15 days to get telephone and still hasn’t gotten the order completed-one of our TV’s doesn’t have a working cable box yet. I really don’t feel like making my 8th call to customer service.Maybe we will just donate the TV to the Boone UMC Bazaar this fall!
Maybe part of my delay is that moving is flat-out exhausting. I still hunt for things in the kitchen and tonight I could not find something that I know I put aside in a “special place” until I was ready for it and cannot for the life of me remember said special place.
Maybe part of it is my increasing nervousness regarding my upcoming Mt. Kilimanjaro climb (I am less than 2 weeks away from departure!). And the fact that I have been trying to train like crazy in my spare time.
Maybe part of my delay is that so very much has been happening in the news cycle that I am expending most of the remainder of my energy trying to figure out what feels like a very turned upside down world to me. People/agencies/countries that were our enemies are now our friends and people/agencies/countries that were our friends are now our foes? I would give anything for Jesus to return and show us how he would respond to the world we live in right now.
The cats settled in before we did. Yes, Olive
loves the bathroom sink.Boone UMC
Regardless of the reason for my procrastination, I’m back in the saddle again. I hope that my new friends in Boone will help share with our church and community this bi-weekly blog. One of the things I am reflecting on a great deal these days is how refreshing a new start can be. As hard as it is to remember names and new faces and “special hiding places”, there is great joy in making new friends and experiencing the warmth of wonderful hospitality. It’s inspiring to see what God is doing in another neck of the woods. It is exciting to discover what my new role is in God’s great Kingdom plans that are already happening at Boone United Methodist.
Getting started together is also a time of great hope. Hope that this new combination of people and skills, of ideas and dreams, of experience and context can, in unison together, create something new that hasn’t happened before. Getting started can also remind me, personally, that God is at work in so many places, impacting so many lives, reaching so many new people, far beyond my scope of vision. Moving to a new place can expand your perspective. And for me, that usually equates to increased hope and possibility.
So off we go on new adventures. I’m excited to explore and celebrate what God is doing in the High Country. I’m eager to reflect on the discipleship journey from a different perspective. And I’m looking forward to calling Boone home.
Grace and Peace,
Lory Beth
