A letter from the Summit

Dedicated to the Kili Crew and our Tanzanian guides and porters.
August 24 – 30, 2014

On the fifth day of our hike through the Kilimanjaro National Park, we reach the Barafu base camp, a tiny patch of flat, rocky surface located at the attitude of 4,550 meters above the sea level. Its name means “icy” in Swahili and it gives shelter to many dozens of tents for at least one night.

What makes this cold, inhospitable and dangerous plot of real estate so popular with so many people from all over the world? In a word: location, location, location! Barafu is the jump off point for those insane adventurers, who attempt to reach the Uhuru Peak, hanging just 1,345 vertical meters above their tents.

As always, our amazing porters had arrived at Barafu well ahead of the already tired hikers from California, Washington and Toronto. They carve out a small area for our group and pitch the tents there.

I don’t like the place from the beginning – the tents are crowded right next to each other to the point that it is difficult to walk around the camp. It is cold, windy, dusty and no one can even see the Uhuru Peak from the campsite. We are situated well above the main cloud layer, but every now and then a cold wet cloud envelops our mountain top and the uncomfortable situation becomes even more so…

Having completed a short (only 4 hours) but demanding hike that morning, our instructions are straight forward: eat lunch, relax, eat dinner, relax, put your warmest layers on, go into the night and attempt to climb the tallest free-standing mountain in the world.

Very quickly it becomes clear that catching a few Z’s in this camp is almost impossible. My tent is pitched right next to the porters’ area and they are noisily excited about something. Everyone around me is walking around, talking, and moving their gear. Even my trusty earplugs prove to be useless against the cacophony of this super-charged human activity.

12 am – the wait is finally over. We drink some black tea, eat a few cookies and line up outside the mess tent. The long awaited attack of the summit is about to start. We will soon find out what had brought us to this place.

We walk in a single file. The complete darkness is punctured by our headlamps, the headlamps of the teams in front and behind us, and the countless stars above us. I don’t recall seeing the moon on the night of August 29th.

To my great astonishment, the air temperature is fairly moderate, just a few degrees below 0 C. The cold wind would pick up later into the hike, as we would start our never ending ascent.

Our team of 13 “tourists” and 5 guides has slowly walked to the edge of the Barafu valley, I try not to look up, but when I do, I see the endless line of headlamps zigzagging up and up into the darkness. There is no way to tell where the headlamps end and the stars begin, and it is easy to assume that our path is about to take us right into the Tanzanian sky.

The hiking tempo is reduced to a crawl, but I don’t mind – it suites my new job description very well. Just look down at the back of the person ahead of you and move your feet, one at a time.

Left, right, left, right.

Don’t worry about such useless concepts as time, distance, altitude – none of it matters right now.

Left, right, left, right.

Oh, yeah – don’t forget to take shallow breaths of whatever air is available at this altitude.

Left, right, left, right.

When is the next water break? It doesn’t matter – the guides will tell us.

Left, right, left, right.

Does anything hurt? It doesn’t matter – all painkillers have already been taken before we left the camp.

Left, right, left, right.

How is everyone else holding up? Probably, as well as me… I’ve heard some bitching as we left the camp, but now it is pretty quiet.

Somehow, three hours have passed. Suddenly, I realize that I am hungry, out come the energy bars, beef jerky and hot tea from the Thermos bottle, since the drinking water from the CamelBak has frozen somewhere behind me.

Let’s start again.

Left, right, left, right.

The stars and the headlamps ahead of us are not getting any closer. There is no point of reference and it doesn’t make any sense to ask the guides – they always tell us that we are almost there, but now we know better.

Only one thing is certain – the sun will rise at 6:30 or so. By then we should be at or near our first goal, the Stella Point. What time is it now? Only 3:30 am! Damn it, why am I doing this?

Left, right, left, right.

The cold wind is picking up. Should we have bought the warmer thermals? Doesn’t matter now.

Left, right, left, right.

One friend has been suffering from food poisoning for a few days now, another one has had a cold. They must be having hard time.

“Hey! How are you?”
“Shitty, but thanks for asking.”

Left, right, left, right.

Someone from our team is throwing up behind the rock during the break. We rest, we drink, we move on.

Left, right, left, right.

5 am – one of the guides takes my backpack from me, I am almost spent, my fuel tank is empty and I am sleepy like hell. “Don’t sleep!” yells a guide to everyone, I suppose that I am not the only one in this condition. My sons get in front and behind me and make sure that I don’t loose my ground. Is it hard for them too? No doubt!

Left, right, left, right.

6 am – I am done. There is nothing left in me and I can’t move. The only thing I want is to lean on a rock and close my eyes. Someone picks me up, holds me by the arms on both sides and, somehow, we start moving. It is Dickson and Yitzhack, our guides. They take my poles and we inch forward, higher and higher. The other guides are also helping some of my friends, but I can’t see them very well.

Left, right, left, right.

6:30 am – I see a distinct thin red line on the horizon and can only think of a verse from the  Vysotsky’s song “As if a razor had cut me across both eyes, the dawn split the sky into two parts”, or something like that… Are we at Stella Point yet? Not even close.

Dickson keeps on telling me something in his broken English: “Common, Baba, you can do it”. Baba is the Swahili word for Father and I had earned it by sentencing both of my sons to the same torture I am undergoing right now,

Left, right, left, right.

7 am – someone starts saying “Stella Point!” It is considerably lighter now, but when I look up I can only see the figures above us on the damned mountain. Have we made any progress at all?

But I want to believe that we had done it and I start sobbing on Dikson’s shoulder. “It is OK, Baba. You can do it.” He keeps on repeating his mantra. “Hakuna Matata!”

Left, right, left, right.

7:30 – somehow we had crawled to Stella Point. There is a sign, but no one is taking pictures. My team is “smudged” against the rocks, unable to move a muscle. One friend says: “I can’t go any further, but I can’t come down either. I’ve got nothing left in me. What should I do?” We sit on the rock, then the guides pick us up by the arms and we move on.

Left, right, left, right.

8:30 am – only one kilometer separates Stella Point from the Uhuru Peak, but It takes us an hour to walk this short distance.

The trail is pretty flat and it looks like the Moon surface – rocks, boulders, a huge glacier in the distance and a deep valley on another side. There is not a single tree, bush or a patch of grass. The only live beings, other than the struggling homo sapiens, are huge black ravens with a distinct white stripe around their necks. What do they prey on around here, I wonder?

We reach the Uhuru Peak sign and join the line of people waiting to take pictures. More than a year of training, hundreds of miles of hiking, countless hours of research, significant financial expense, personal dedication and determination, and tremendous effort have led us to this point. All we had to do now was to take a few photos and come down the mountain,

I turn to Andrew and David, hug them and can’t hold back the tears.

We’ve made it!

Igor Yasno

Kilimanjaro Photo Album