Go tell it on the
mountain

In Tusker we trust

We chose to go with Tusker Trail, for a couple of reasons, the first and foremost being safety. One can physically train for the climb, but not for the altitude, and there is no knowing ahead of time how an individual will react to the thin air and low pressure at 19,391 feet.

Tusker would provide two guides trained to deal with high-altitude medical issues. Among the supplies brought along would be a portable decompression chamber and oxygen.

The second reason was comfort. They provide walk-in sleeping tents, an all-weather dining tent and a private lavatory tent. Each year, Tusker flies an instructor from the Culinary Institute of America to Tanzania for three weeks to train its cooks.

And, finally, their treatment of their guides and porters is the gold standard on the mountain. All wear proper hiking boots (we saw many porters from other companies in sneakers, and one even in slick-bottom dress shoes). Our guides were provided with down jackets and rain pants and said they were well paid. Each had started with other companies and aspired to work for Tusker.

While there may have been a sense of being pampered in camp, in the final analysis the trip is somewhere between glamping and a near-death experience. You may have a private loo, but you still have to get up the mountain under your own steam. Call it "adventure glamping."

The first day -- half-day, really -- was climbing a muddy trail through a forest in the rain. The previous week, Emma had followed a Kili climber's blog, and he reported that he had endured constant rain every single day and was miserable.  

But it stopped raining shortly after we arrived at Mti Mkubwa camp, and we only had to put on our rain gear twice again during our eight days. Each of those times it was brief and bearable.

Although the mantra for success in climbing Kili is "pole, pole," (pronounced "pole-lay pole-lay"), Swahili for "slowly, slowly," our porters not only beat us to camp but had our tents set up and had prepared "welcome tea" in the mess tent.

The second, third and fourth days were an avid hiker's dream come true. One moves steadily upward through dramatically different scenery, beginning with a monkey-inhabited rainforest, into what our guide called the "heather" zone: enough altitude for beautiful views, with clouds below and above and varied plant life. The flora we saw as we crossed the misty "moor" are otherworldly, particularly giant lobelia and groundsels.

And the whole time, Kilimanjaro keeps getting closer. Interestingly, the farther you are from it, the more intimidating it seems. On the third day, we met an Australian woman weeping by the side of the trail, her guides trying to console her. Still four days away from the peak, she hadn't actually hit the mountain's slope, but looking at its profile, she decided she couldn't do it and wanted to turn back. (Her guides were ultimately successful in persuading her to go on.)

We crossed the Shira Plain, the collapsed remnant of an ancient extinct volcano that preceded Kibo, the (dormant) volcanic mountain most people picture in their minds when they hear "Kilimanjaro."

The hikes were made all the more pleasant by our guides' habit of wanting to be the last ones out of camp, which meant that until multiple routes merged on day four, we almost never saw anyone else on the trail, but we'd still reach the next camp with plenty of daylight.

Cause for concern

Two worries lurked in my mind as we moved forward. The first was that as we climbed, my kids might get altitude sickness (altitude generally doesn't affect me much, and I was the only one of the three of us taking Diamox, a pill which helps one acclimatize). On day four, we had lunch at 14,000 feet, and Dash, who had been steadily losing his appetite as we got higher -- not an uncommon reaction to altitude -- felt nauseous and headachy.

It may have been the Tylenol the guide recommended as soon as we stopped, but I don't discount the possibility it was the cook, Gaston Kessy, who restored his appetite and good humor by presenting us with a high-altitude lunch of fajitas and guacamole, as good as any I'd eaten when I lived in Austin, Texas. By meal's end, Dash was his old self again.

My other worry was Barranco Wall. This is an 800-foot cliff that must be scaled on Day 5 if you want to get to the summit. (There is a route that goes around it, but it has even more challenges). My reflexes -- the type that help you regain balance quickly after shifting your weight -- were compromised by an illness about 20 years ago, so instead of making these adjustments automatically, I have to make a lot of subtle shifts in balance "manually" (and quickly) when I'm on precarious footing.

And my footing on steep or uneven grades is further challenged by my two big feet. When you think about it, who has perfect-size feet for climbing mountains? Mountain goats. Animals whose entire foot is about the size of an infant's heel.

My shoe size is 15 -- same as Lebron, two sizes larger than Steph -- but I'm without their height, grace or talent. 

So, the thought of a long scramble up a rock face made me very nervous.

An optical illusion that was alternately encouraging and discouraging as I climbed the wall was that I kept thinking I could see the top -- the end -- relatively near. But in reality, the cliff inclined away from my field of vision and frequently gave me false hope. Eventually, I accepted that I couldn't see my goal, nor could I see through fog to the ground below. I felt particularly untethered, which had the effect of keeping me very much in the moment.

In the end, scaling Barranco was like being on a rock-climbing wall, with switchbacks, for 90 minutes; no belay ropes, but the rocky face offered an ample number of handholds and -- though they were sometimes narrower than my boots -- footholds. There were three points at which I needed to stretch and shift weight around either gaps in the trail or rocks that jutted out from the cliff, but the guides seemed to know exactly where I would feel most insecure, and they were always there with an arm extended.

With the wall now behind us, we entered the near-moonscape of alpine desert. Our next big challenge, the summit itself, was still two days away.

The day before the summit, Dash had hiked four hours uphill to camp without complaint. But soon after arrival, he began to feel very sick.

Eliakim Mshanga, the lead guide, had led 280 ascents and received “Best Mountain Guide of the Year” honors from his peers (2018) and from the national park service (2019). He wasn’t entirely convinced Dash had altitude sickness; he thought perhaps he had picked up a bacterium. He administered oxygen and an antibiotic shortly after we arrived in camp, and after Dash fell asleep, suggested we wait until after he woke up to decide the next steps.

At 4 a.m. the next morning, Eliakim came to my tent. “Let me control the game,” he said, referring to evaluating Dash’s condition. I assented, though I added that as Dash’s father, I might want to take back control at some point.

Eliakim went into Dash’s tent. I could hear him encouraging him --  “You can do this!” -- and he began dressing Dash as one might dress a 2-year-old. Dash got up and joined us for breakfast, looking weak but with more color in his face than the night before.

We started out in the dark, wearing head lamps. The first part included an almost vertical scramble over boulders. Dash kept moving.

The point of no return

As the first rays of sun lit the horizon, we took a break, and assistant guide Pastori Minja poured pure white glucose powder -- “Kilimanjaro cocaine,” he called it – into Dash’s mouth, washing it down with water. The grade of the trail continued to get steeper, but Dash continued to climb, the glucose and guides’ encouragement keeping him moving.

At 17,000 feet, Eliakim took me aside. “What do you think?”

“He’s not complaining,” I said.

Eliakim went to Dash. “We’re at the point of no return,” he said to him. “Up or down?”

“Up,” Dash replied.

At 18,000 feet, I knew Dash was feeling better when he asked me to take a picture of him with the peak of Mawenzi, an extinct volcano, behind him. He flashed a broad smile.

When we reached the glacier at 18,885 feet, Dash seemed completely back to normal. The final 45 minutes, to Uhuru Peak at 19,341 feet, was on a snow-packed trail through a sleet storm, but the sting of the sleet didn’t bother us; we knew we were near the end of our seven-day ascent. When we saw the sign indicating we had reached Africa’s highest point, the feelings of emotion, elation and exhaustion came together in a mix akin to euphoria. We had made it. We all had made it.

We spent about 20 minutes at the top, hugging each other, hugging our guides, taking photos. Having made a relatively late start, we were the only ones on the mountaintop, and our guides led us in a song of celebration.  

Tired though we were, we still had another challenge -- our camp that night was 5,870 feet below us, via scree and a rocky trail. We had started the day in the dark, and we would end it in the dark.

The next morning, Day 8, we had another 7,000 feet to descend over an uneven, rocky path and then through mud and rain. But we began the day with a ceremony of thanks to the 19 porters who accompanied us. Most were actually carrying provisions, supplies and tents for other porters and the guides -- like us, they had their own cook, food for eight days, tents, etc. The logistics of a climb for just three people becomes fairly complex, though climb organizer Tusker Trail made it seamless.

The porter team was amazing, from start to finish -- whatever we did, they did, as well, right up to our camp at 15,000 feet, but without the aid of trekking poles, while carrying significantly more weight and then being “on duty” while we rested. Nonetheless, the entire team maintained a cheerful disposition that we often wished we could muster after a day on the trail. We were endlessly amazed by their strength, stamina and grace. Our success was intricately tied to their support; we never forgot that enroute, and never will.