Sunday, February 26, 2012

Summit Day

12:15 a.m. The time has finally come. A year of training, planning, and thinking. 5 1/2 days on the mountain. As much as I've told myself that I'm here for the experience, and as much as I've enjoyed everything we've seen and done, not summitting would be a bitter disappointment. And now it's time to see if we can pull this off, if we can stand on top of the highest mountain in Africa...

I'm not feeling real optimistic as we start off. It's already been a rough night. We got to base camp in the early afternoon at 15,000 feet.  Just the simplest tasks make me feel like I'm breathing through a straw. I unpack my duffel and have to lay down to catch my breath. Walking the 30 yards from my tent to the mess tent makes me double over.

We had lunch, took some time to relax and prepare our summit gear, and then had an early dinner at 5:00. The "plan" was to sleep from 6:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m., have a small breakfast, and then hit the trail at midnight. The wind picked up as the night progressed. I laid in my sleeping bag listening to the wind buffet my tent and convinced myself that things would calm down once the sun went down. No such luck. As the night went on the wind just got stronger and stronger. At some point in the darkness the mess tent came crashing down. I heard the poor porters yelling in Swahili as they ran around trying to put the pieces back together.

Silt that blew into my sealed tent
Several hours into this attempt at sleep I gave up on the idea of even attempting the climb. I was much more worried about my tent collapsing and blowing me down the mountainside. The tent walls shook violently. The roar of noise was just nuts. The best guesstimate was 45 MPH winds. Even attempting to climb seemed like lunacy as I laid there bug-eyed. My alarm went off at 11:00 p.m. I hadn't had a minute's sleep, but I figured I'd be back in my bag shortly. I went through the motions of getting prepared. I'd made a summit-day list ages ago with all the special things that only applied to this one day:  iPod prep, hand warmers, 5 layers of clothing that had been packed in a special bag.

I waddle out of the tent and make my way towards the mess tent, which the porters had somehow managed to resurrect. I see Zack, our Mountain Guide, and a few of the other trekkers. I ask him point blank -- "Zack, have you ever attempted the summit with winds like this?" He assures me that yes, he has, and with weather colder than this. Crap. I guess I have to give this a shot. Sleep will have to wait for awhile. I decide in that moment to harness my one true athletic gift -- pure pigheaded stubbornness. There are only two reasons I'm coming down this mountain: medical necessity or because I've reached the summit. Quitting won't be an option.

After a few false starts we finally begin the summit climb. Robert has faithfully followed the "Pole-Pole" method, Swahili for "slowly-slowly", all through our adventure. Today it's Pole-Pole-Pole. I didn't know it was possible to walk this slowly. It's also as fast as I'm capable of walking.

Early on we reach a fairly technical section of trail. At sea level it would be no big deal, but at 16,000 feet I don't have any oxygen to spare. We pull ourselves up small boulder hops, and I feel my heart racing. I make a point of taking several deep breaths and using the pressure breathing method as much as possible,  but I still feel like I'm barely holding the pace. Each irregular step seems like a struggle.

After about an hour we get through the technical stuff and Zach lets us know the trail is much simpler from here on out. We're hiking under an almost-full moon so we turn off our headlamps and hike only by moonlight. It was utterly amazing to be hiking through the darkness, the glow of the moon lighting both the trail and the mountain summit. It seemed to add to my energy. The view of the mountain, with the moon directly over the glaciers, was postcard worthy and took my mind off the difficulties of the moment-to-moment tasks on the trail.

Two hours in we finally take our first break, and I quickly realize that summit day is not like our other days on the mountain. We had 5 minutes to do what we needed to do: Try to make a pit stop, get something to eat, make any adjustments that might be needed, actually rest for a couple of minutes. Three problems with that though. One, I'm wearing four layers of clothing. Stripping off gloves and then digging through all those layers trying to find my turtled-up little buddy took 5 minutes all by itself. Two, I became more and more brain-addled the higher up we went. Three, 5 minutes is not nearly enough time to do all of that.

The "rest-stops" became exercises in frustration. My rain pants outer shell just frustrated the crap out of me. I couldn't figure out how to zip them back up. On two different occasions a porter came up and pulled my pants up for me. I couldn't get my gloves back on so I'd need help pulling them back over the wool liners. I am truly a feeble moron. I never seemed to have time to eat. In the 7-1/2 hours to the summit I had one small granola bar and two gels. I really felt like having a meltdown and just kicking the crap out of something, but I just didn't have the energy for a hissy-fit. Irritability and fatigue are apparently symptoms of mild Acute Mountain Sickness.

At the 2nd rest stop Zack comes by and asks me how I'm doing.

 "I'm a little wobbly" I tell him.

"What's 3 + 4" he asks me.

Well that's easy. It's, um, er, "7?" I respond in much too slow a time.

He fires back "What's 7+7".

"14". -- Nailed that one! He tells me I'm fine and just tired. Off we go again.

The  night progresses ever so slowly. One switchback after another. The wind has not calmed any. Still gusting to 45 MPH, with a wind chill somewhere below 0 degrees. Grit and dust everywhere. We turn into the wind and I pull the balaclava (kinda like a ski mask) over my mouth and nose. We turn away from the wind, I pull down the balaclava and suck in as many deep breaths as possible. Zack makes a comment about Stella Point, where we reach the crater rim. I channel my inner Marlon Brando and holler out "Stellllaaaa...". Damn I'm funny. But that gets no reaction.

There's not much conversation in the darkness. The wind dominates the sounds, and nobody has excess energy for chit-chat. I look ahead and see that Graciella has given her pack to one of the porters. Not a good sign. I worry  that she won't make it to the summit. We continue on. Up ahead we see headlamps. Way up ahead. We still have a long way to go. As the night wears on the sky grows incredibly dark. The moon hides behind the mountain and we return to hiking by headlamp. It's always darkest before the dawn, never more true than on this night.

One of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen

I see the very first hint of light. It's like a mirage at first, and then, unmistakeably, a thin line stretching across the horizon. As it transitions from purple to orange to yellow I find my emotions getting the better of me. It reminds me if the view of sunrise from space. It's quite possibly the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced. After climbing all night the crater rim is in sight. We're all going to make it to Stella Point. That realization, along with the astonishing beauty of the surroundings is more than I can hold back. Tears run unashamed down my cheek.

Sunrise on the roof of Africa
Shortly after that we finally reach Stella Point, the crater rim of the Kibo cone. The hard part is done.  The fatigue of the last several hours vanishes in a swarm of joyful emotions. The whole group is just elated. We take pictures, enjoy the sunrise for a few minutes, stare down into the crater, and then saddle up for the last 45 minutes and 600 vertical feet of hiking to the summit.


On the summit with Greg and Bev
The fabulous green summit sign that I've seen in countless blogs is finally in sight. It's real. It actually does exist. We follow up and around the crater rim, seeing the glaciers up close. And finally after over 7 hours of climbing we reach the summit. There is no ribbon at the finish line, or spectators to cheer us on. No marching band or TV cameras. It's just us and the rest of the summit group. It's incredibly beautiful, but not a place to hang out and have a picnic. The 45 MPH winds are still with us, With the wind chill it's below 0 degrees, and we're at 19,340 feet in the air, so after a bit of celebration and some photo opportunities we head back down the mountain.

There were countless other stories on summit day, some of which I'll hopefully catalog here, but the most important story is that all 8 of us in our group made it to the summit and down safely. We all got to experience one of the most beautiful sights in the world. We challenged ourselves and were all up to that challenge. Later than day after descending to Millenium Camp, 7400 feet below the summit, we looked back up at the mountain. It seemed unreal that just several hours earlier we'd been standing on top of the largest free-standing mountain on earth. On the highest point in Africa. But we had.