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Wednesday,
December 1, 2021 Morey,
Sophia, On
this day 12 years ago, I stood at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s the
tallest mountain in Africa. Getting to the summit was one of my dreams. It was
also one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. If your life was a book, and you were the author, what would you like it to say? Here are some photos from my trip. If
you want to do something incredible in your life, consider hiking to the summit
of Kilimanjaro. I will happily go with you. This is an open invitation. Just
ask, and I will make it so. Is
your life easy? Have you had any serious challenges? How do you know your
limits unless you’ve visited them? You find limits by pushing them. Once we
accept limits, we can go beyond them. The sky is not your limit. You are. Ask
the Sun if the sky is the limit. For me, Kilimanjaro was a serious challenge. Okay,
first, the shitty parts. I must be honest. Kilimanjaro
is in the east African nation of Tanzania. You’ll need some shots to enter
Tanzania. Specifically: Yellow Fever, Dengue Fever, Malaria, and Hepatitis.
Actually, there are pills for Malaria now, but Yellow Fever is the biggie. I
assume they now also want to see a COVID vaccine as well. I know it’s a lot of
shots. I don’t know if you have any anti-vax tendencies, but the Yellow Fever
vaccine is well-tested and very safe. Hepatitis, too. Plus, people in Virginia
get Hepatitis; you don’t have to go to Africa to get it. And Dengue Fever shows
up in the United States sometimes; it’s hardly exotic. To
reach Tanzania, you’ll first need to fly to Amsterdam or Kuwait City or Addis
Ababa. Airlines change their timetables all the time, so obviously, this can
change. In any case, it’s a long way from Lynchburg, that’s for sure. No matter
what, you’ll need to change planes. I will help with whatever I can. And, a
long layover in Amsterdam is hardly a problem. I’ve had long layovers in
Amsterdam before. Right from the airport, you can easily take a subway to the
city center for a few hours or even overnight. Amsterdam is a fun town. You’ll
need to train. I’ll buy you some new boots, but you need to “break-in” new
boots. You’ll get blisters if you start hiking straight away with new boots.
Breaking them in means you need to start taking short hikes at home but make
them progressively longer. The boots will slowly mold to your feet. Training
for Kilimanjaro means walking briskly for an hour every day, either on a
treadmill at a gym, or out in nature. I’ll get you a nice tactical backpack,
too. Wear it and slowly add weight. Training sucks. The only redeeming value is
that you can listen to audio books to eliminate the boredom of training. I
listened to the biography of Alexander the Great while I trained for
Kilimanjaro in Iraq. The
hike lasts about a week. That’s five nights on the way going up the mountain.
Then two nights on the way back down. It’s possible to make the hike shorter,
but then you need to hike faster. One week seems to be a nice balance between
speed and length. You’ll
go one week without a shower or a proper toilet. You’ll have to use wet wipes. Yeah,
it sucks, I know. It’s
cold. The daytime temperatures are fine, but at night, it quickly freezes.
You’ll sleep in a sleeping bag in a tent. But to keep warm, you need to wear
plenty of cold weather clothes. When I hiked, I wore the clothes you’d expect
for a typical Virginia winter. I underestimated how cold it would be. If I were
to hike again, I would invest in full-body, high-tech cold weather underwear
and a high-tech cold weather coat. Of course, I’ll buy some for you. For
the first four or five days, you will eat a variety of fresh, hot food. But for
the last two days, you’ll have nothing but leftovers, sometimes cold leftovers
if the porters run out of fuel. Once
you get to high elevations on the mountain, you’ll be above most of the
atmosphere that protects the Earth from ultraviolet radiation. That means you
can easily get sunburned. You’ll have to hike in the daytime with long sleeves,
gloves, a hat, UV sunglasses and lots of sunscreen. In fact, I wore a mask that
covered most of my face and neck. You need to take this shit seriously; I saw
people with terrible sunburns. The
fifth night, the last night on the way up, sucks hard. No doubt about it. The
last mile of the hike is over scree, which is a term for loose gravel. It’s
best to hike on scree when it’s frozen. So, you need to wake up around midnight
on that night and start hiking on frozen gravel. When I did it, the wind was
blowing and it was very cold. It sucked. It nearly blew my tent away. I didn’t
sleep at all that night. The
summit is nearly 20,000 feet above sea level. The amount of oxygen in the air
decreases as you ascend in elevation. Once you’re above 10,000 feet, humans
sometimes suffer from a condition called hypoxia, which means your brain does
not get enough oxygen. Now,
the good news. There
are pills to help offset hypoxia. You start taking them a few days before the
hike. They’re safe. They work by making your blood slightly more acidic.
Your body reacts by taking bigger gulps of air when you breathe; therefore, you
get more oxygen. There’s
no rush. The slower we hike, the more time your body has to adjust to the
oxygen levels. We hike slowly. When I crossed 10,000 feet, I was short of
breath and exhausted. But two days later, at 15,000 feet, I felt totally fine;
my body was fully adjusted. There
is no “technical” climbing. Technical mountain climbing means you use ropes and
axes. The hike I’m thinking of is 99% walking. Just walking. The final push to the
summit is a bit difficult, but the hike is almost entirely just walking. Several
companies offer guided tours with porters. Porters are young men from the local
area who are hired to carry heavy bags. They carry food, fuel, water, tents,
sleeping bags and everything else we need. They typically hike ahead of us, and
set up camps that will be ready when we arrive. They not only carry OUR tent
and food and sleeping bag, but all those things for themselves. In
a typical day, you’ll wake up and they will already have a fire going with hot
coffee and hot breakfast with eggs. You’ll hike in the morning, but when you
stop for lunch, they’ll already have a lunch tent set up with hot food such as
soup and sandwiches. Same with dinner. They’ll set up your tent for you at
night. The
point is that you do not have to carry your own food, fuel, water and tent. The
porters do it for you. You’ll still carry a small sack with your own personal
stuff. But the heavy lifting is done by others. If the porters start to run out
of fuel, they will at least save enough to have hot coffee in the morning. There
will be an English-speaking guide who leads the hike. He works only for us. We
won’t be part of a larger group. It will be just us. We’ll have a close and
continuous relationship with the guide. There is no chance of getting lost. If
you have a problem, he will know. We’ll
run into other hikers and other groups. Some of the camp sites are large.
You’ll meet people from all over the world on the mountain. You’ll learn to say
‘hello’ in Swahili. It’s
safe. Hypoxia, if it occurs, occurs slowly. It’s not dangerous; the biggest
symptom is confusion. In very rare cases, high altitude hikes can cause
pulmonary edema. But it’s easy to spot: If your spit is pink, it means your
lungs are bleeding. The guide will ask to see your spit every few hours. The
cure for pulmonary edema is simple: descend; get off the mountain. We’ll
descend immediately if there is a problem. You can be back at safer altitudes
in just a few hours. Nothing bad can happen on the mountain that cannot be fixed in a few hours. The
hikes are organized so that there’s a full moon at night so you can see without
a flashlight. The
sunrise on the fifth day is amazing. It’s all timed so that you’ll get to the
summit around sunrise. All that hard work suddenly pays-off. At the summit,
everyone is happy. Everyone is smiling. Everyone has just done something
difficult and succeeded. Even the porters are happy, even though they’ve been
there 100 times. If
you Google photos of the summit, you’ll see that everyone is smiling. And it’s
not some stupid “Say Cheese” moment. They’re smiling because they’ve
accomplished something amazing. It’s authentic. It’s real. It’s little kids and
old men. It’s part of the human experience here on Earth. When
I was there, the summit had GSM service if you can believe it. In the USA, I
know you have 4G and 5G cell phone service. These are the fast, modern cell
phone services. GSM is an old, slow cell phone service, but most phones today
still support it. It’s slow. But the
point is that you can actually call your mom from the summit or send her a
photo. There
are glaciers at the summit. How often can you hike among glaciers? With climate
change, how long will this be possible? The
next two days (the hike back down) is easy. As you go down, the air gets warmer
and warmer and contains more and more oxygen. After
all that, your first shower and your first hot meal back in civilization will feel
AMAZING. It will be the most rewarding shower of your life. The meal will be
the best you’ve ever tasted, even if it’s just fast food. Then,
you can sleep in a real bed – a warm bed – knowing that you’ve done something
that fewer that 1 person in 10,000 has done. Many
years from now, you’ll have warm and fond memories of Kilimanjaro. You will
have accomplished something difficult. You can brag about it always. I still
brag about my hike. Few people have the balls to do something amazing,
difficult and wonderful. The five days I spent going up the mountain really
sucked. I froze my ass off. But those days have come and gone. What persists is
the happiness and eternal reward of standing at the summit. That moment will
last forever. Long
after your father is dead and gone, you’ll have a photo of us to remember me
by. And not just some random photo of us in Virginia, but a photo that required
sweat, dirt, time, pain, training, risk, dedication and true love. I love you
both so very much. I want so badly to share the world with you. At
this writing, I’m 52 years old. I’m not young anymore. But I’m not so old that
I can’t climb Kilimanjaro again. But the clock is ticking. We only have a
limited amount of time. Many
years ago, I suggested that Morey and I climb Kilimanjaro (Sophia was still
very young at the time). Your aunt Kimberly laughed at the idea, calling it crazy.
I don’t mean to pick on Kimberly; I know she meant well. But I think real
craziness is never testing yourself, never pushing yourself beyond your limits,
never seeing the world, never going beyond Virginia, never realizing that
Emerson was right when he said “Travel is a fool’s paradise”. We go out into
the world and see its beauty and take it with us. Is
your father crazy? You bet your ass he is. Would you really want it any other
way? Two
short videos (not mine, but worth watching): As usual, my contact info is HERE. |