Summit Day - Part 2

Lumpy, Larry, Gill: Hanging at Kibo Hut (note water bottles, which had to be all carried up on porters heads)

Peter (our head guide) wakes us up at 10pm for our summit attempt. Everyone is slow moving, as we're all cold. We slept with virtually all of our summit clothes inside our sleeping bags..no small feat when your sleeping bag is already a tight-fitting mummy bag.

As we're dressing, Alphonse comes over to me and says "You know, Kilimanjaro is NOT to be taken lightly". If ever a statement was dramatic license, this was it. He wasn't kidding...

We rendezvous outside. The night is nicely lit, as we've got a waxing moon. If nothing else, we timed that nicely. It's probably somewhere around 0F, with just a light breeze. We don our headlamps, and start up the mountain.

The terrain at this stage is loose volcanic soil over rock. So, it's kinda like walking up a sand dune. You take a step, then you slip back a foot or two, then another step. This goes on for hours.

At ~ 16.5K we have our first dramatic event. Troy comes around a switchback and totally face plants. He is down for the count. The guides run over to attend to him, and we all wait apprehensively. The combo of lack of food, dehydration, and vertical has beaten him. Kennedy (a guide, not the president) gets ahold of him and starts him down the mountain; his summit attempt is finished. He will be walked all the way down to 12K before he regains his wits (such as they are). We'll see him again sometime saturday night. By Tuesday he's in the hospital (more to come on this one later).

As our eyes get accustomed to the moonlight, we douse our headlamps and just climb by moonlight. The night sky is incredible...we're above the clouds, and this truly is the night sky that our ancestors watch for the last 100,000 years (or last 3,000 if you're a fundamentalist whacko). Stars, nebulas, the Milky Way in all its magestry. Just beautiful.

At ~ 17K we have to scramble up a rockface. It would be a nothing down low, but here it winds me and I have to sit down for about 10 minutes. This is my first checkpoint that I might not make the summit, as we still have 2.5K to go. It's getting colder every hour without the cloud cover, and even with 7 layers on, I'm starting to get quite cold. Someone says it's about 10 below and still dropping. Now, my water has frozen up solid, and I'm out of liquids. This is not a good thing, as you can dehyrdate very quickly at this altitude. Tom is also struggling, he's very wobbly on his legs, bob is having leg cramps, and frankly, nobody is in top form by now.

At ~ 18K we get to Gillman's Point. This is the lip of the volcano, and when you get here, it's considered a successful summit. From here, many people will traverse the volcano rim up to Uhuru Peak, which is the true summit. At this point we split up, the first group being Sam, Larry, Posh. Following close behind is Gill, Walter, and Saski, then I leave with Bob just behind. Tom has just arrived at Gillmans and he is not looking well. He is shaking and very delirious. One of the guides decides to stay bahind with him and see how he recovers before letting him move onward and upward.

Lumpy Out