Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/gFj5Y7Sq5zgQETW47
After Honduras, I had a few weeks to spend at home, so caught up with a few friends over the 3 weekends I was there in NYC. It was great to see the city back and kicking, as I was in packed shoulder to shoulder bars each night I was in the city. Good to see that the US is at least back on its’ feet after COVID. It was nice to have a few weeks just to get Kili packing/planning all sorted with my sister and also since I had to help plan a friend’s bachelor party that is taking place a few days after I get back from Tanzania (I have a bachelor party and two weddings right after Tanzania, and then a Montana/Wyoming road trip that takes me through the end of July. Hopefully will have a loooong extended stint abroad starting early August).
We got an incredible roundtrip deal with Delta/KLM, like 800 USD for a JFK-AMS-Kili airport and return Zanzibar-AMS-JFK, which was really clutch considering how both Kili and Zanzibar aren’t the world’s biggest international airports and we’re still in a pandemic. Arrived in the Kili area a day early so we spent a day just lounging around and slowly preparing before heading off for the 7 day Lemosho trek. This trek starts off at an elevation of 3.5k meters, and the peak is just under 6k meters, with the summit coming on the morning of day 6, so this was a good trek to help avoid altitude sickness by the slow and steady ascent.
So to start off, Kili was awesome. It was definitely worth the hype. However, I will say that I was not quite pushed to my limits like I thought I would be, so I’m definitely craving more difficult hikes to really really push myself. It is arguably the world’s tallest non-technical climb (if you define non-technical as no crampons or ice-axes then it is the tallest, otherwise it is not). My sister and I went through Altezza, which was a little pricey but 100% worth the money. Just a phenomenal pheonmenal company. Our guides, Peter, Joseph, and the lead guide Victor, were all beyond awesome. We were joined by 5 other climbers – a couple from Israel, two solo dudes my age from Colorado, and a solo guy from Moscow. Overall it was a great group. We were also given 500mg of diamox every day (two 250mg pills, one after breakfast and one after lunch), and 750mg (third pill after dinner) the day before our midnight summit to the peak. This was hugely clutch and I am convinced it’s why I basically suffered no altitude sickness symptoms. In addition to the 3 guides, we had 2 cooks and 25 porters – these guys are freaking superheroes for the insane amount of shit they have to lug up and down the mountain, and they do it way faster than we can even walk with just our day packs. Just beyond incredible, and none of this would have been even remotely possible without them.
We did the 7 day Lemosho trek. On day 1, we were driven to the starting point which was at 3.5k meters in elevation, and did an easy ~3 hour walk to the first campsite which was at 3.6k meters in elevation. This was a slow and steady walk to help get us acclimatized to the elevation. Pole pole (pronounced like the spanish word “ole” but with a p) means “slowly slowly” in swahili and is basically the slogan of Kili. We walked at a snail’s pace, and this was by far the smartest thing to do. Even on day one, at our elevation, I would be panting and out of breath after opening/closing our tent or walking quickly to the bathroom and back. At those elevations, we really needed to walk slowly to maintain the pace and not take breaks, while keeping our body under control. Each night we had health checks, and every single night my heart rate was between 80-115 beats per second and my O2 blood level was between 80-92 percent. One other thing was, starting from literally day 1, this was easily the best night sky of my life (quite clearly topping my previous best of Wadi Rum in Jordan). One of the Coloradans in our group, Bridger, taught me how to take night time photos with my camera so I messed around with that, though it was obviously hard with no tripod. But I was pretty happy with some of the results I got.
Day two was like a 5 hour walk to 3.8k meters in elevation, and from there we did an acclimatization walk to 4k meters and back to the camp. This was the first camp where we were really above the clouds, and we could see nearby Mount Meru (~4.6k meters in elevation) rising above the clouds. Not quite as cool as the countless volcanoes rising above the clouds when I hiked up Acatenango in Guatemala, but still pretty cool. The 3rd day was the first real tough day…we did an acclimatization hike by going all the way up to 4.6k meters to a place called Lava Tower for lunch, before descending back down to 3.9k meters for our base camp for night 3. I actually got mild symptoms that night after dinner, with a pretty bad headache. However, I felt perfectly fine the next morning after waking up. Day 4 was probably the single most fun day of the hike for me. We climbed up this vertical wall called the Baranco wall, which was from like 3.9k meters up to 4.2k meters. But this involved legit scrambling and edge walking for large portions. Pretty tiring and this alone took almost two hours, but it was just so much fun. And we were all definitely better at adjusting to the altitude at this point where we were able to go pole pole but not be totally panting and out of breath. After a nice little stop atop of the wall, we had a few more hours of up and down walking until we hit base camp at 4k meters.
The 5th day (just before summiting!), we had a ~5 hour walk to get to the base camp, which was a walk up from 4k meters up to 4.6k meters in elevation. Once we got there, we did a quick acclimatization walk up to 4.8k meters, and this 200 meter elevation gain was actually the beginning of the summit path, which was also by far the toughest part of the summit path as it involved scrambling. It was great to see this in daylight so we could mentally prep for the nightime hike, and also to know that after that the rest of the summit was relatively easy.
We woke up at 1030pm (my sister and I got ~3 hours of sleep which was easily the most of the seven of us hikers) for a light dinner before prepping for the summit. The entire ~10 hours we were up there (~7 hours up, an hour or two hanging out at the summit, and then ~2 hours back down to basecamp) was more or less below freezing, yet I was nice and toasty the entire walk. I wore regular boxers, two pairs of thermal long underwear, and then my rental ski pants. Had a regular pair of long hiking socks, foot warmers over those, then thermal winter socks over that, all in my cold weather-insulated and waterproof hiking boots. Wore a running tshirt, north face fleece, a down jacket, and a hard shell rain coat that was zipped-attached to my downjacket. Also had a neck warmer/buff, and a regular winter hat. And wore thick winter gloves with hand warmers for the walking sticks. With all of that, I legit never was once uncomfortable. We also got so accustomed to the pole pole pace and the high altitude that literally the only breaks we took during the entire ascent were pee breaks…otherwise it was just a slow and steady march up from 4.6k meters to 5.9k meters over 7+ hours in the biting cold without any breaks. The constant pace also helped keep us warm to be honest.
The first stop on the summit was a point called Stella Point, at just over 5.7k meters. This overlooked a sweet looking crater that was covered in a clearly melting glacier. From there, it was just under an hours walk to get to Uhuru Peak, which is the highest point and stands at 5895 meters above sea level. Definitely a super cool experience to get up there, and easily one of the most rewarding things I have done in my life, even though it wasn’t quite as challenging as I thought it would be – like I never once had any doubts or struggled with anything beyond minor headaches.
If you are drunk but your friends are drunker, you feel sober. Likewise, I think that while I might have found this climb difficult, my sister especially (even though she is in better shape than me in the typical sense) plus the other hikers found this very very difficult (especially after the fact where they were all defeated), so maybe that relative difference had me craving for more. But I genuinely felt fine after the summit and was mildly disappointed that Kili didn’t push my boundaries even further.
The worst part about summit was getting all the way back downhill to base camp in 2-3 hours. We got a quick lunch and then descended even further to 3.9k meters for the night, and then the next day went all the way down to 1.8k meters for the car pickup to go back to Moshi.
Overall, I can’t recommend Altezza enough (even though they are crazy expensive), and Kili is definitely something everyone should do if they are even remotely in shape. It’s totally doable, a great achievement, and in my case, will hopefully spur me on to even bigger and greater physical challenges to push myself.