Summit night

Chef Marimotto prepared a tasty dinner. Salty soup, stew, and rice. The air was cold while we ate our meal under the watchful eye of Benni and August, our guides. We knew that in a few hours, we'd start our summit attempt, and this brought with it a mixture of excitement, concern, planning how many layers of clothes to put on, will two pairs of gloves be enough, or even how many gloves will fit over each other. Moments like these, where adrenaline rushes through the human body, make life sparkle, and I now know that I live for these exact moments. Such are the moments that make life worth living.

Embarking on challenges past the comfort zone is where the magic happens. It is a personal point I am sharing with you, and I am not suggesting that climbing at high altitudes should be on everyone's bucket list. Your health and safety should be the first consideration. But stretch your comfort zone. Read a book that challenges you, one that you would not usually feel comfortable with but still speak to your values. Have conversations with people you would not typically have in a safe environment, of course. Make a new friend while loving your group of friends. Make the circle a bit bigger in your community and welcome those on the outer edges to share in fellowship. Boundaries need to, of course, be set and values kept but stretch your comfort zone to make your kind of magic happen. Do you know how short life is? I was born in 1980. Forty-two years passed so quickly, and there I was, eating dinner with one of my dearest friends, listening to the brief, and planning for the Uhuru peak summit in a tent on a mountain in the heart of Tanzania. Even though many more humans will scale mountains as high as Kilimanjaro Uhuru peak and even daily attempts above 8000 meters, it was scintillating and thrilling to await the summit start!

Our guides advised us to eat well. "Don't lose your appetite," Benni cautioned. It is normal to lose appetite while ascending to heights that challenge human physiology to its extremes. "You have to eat. If you have something in your stomach, you will feel better, and there is something in your stomach when you feel nauseous," he advised. We ate and continued to sake regular sips of water.

After dinner, we washed and started dressing in base layers, tracksuit pants, and a t-shirt. On top of that, a fleecy top or two, a wind and water-resistant layer with two pairs of socks, one very thick pair of socks, a beanie, a buff, and a scarf. Some climbers add a balaclava. Thank you, Rosie Hanley, for your kit. I used my down jacket as a pillow, trying to get four hours of sleep. It wasn't easy to sleep and use the four hours before the alarm went off at 23:00.

A permit to camp at Kosovo, a private campsite secured by Albert, the G2G Adventure owner, allowed us to walk the first 700 meters from Barafu Camp in the afternoon. We were very grateful for this.

At 23:00, David, our faithful porter and waiter woke us up with a friendly "hello." He took such great care of us. The wake-up call, although appreciated, was not necessary as we were already awake. The icy cold weather and the summit challenge awaiting us were super efficient antidotes to sleep. The adventure and task ahead dawned on us with a kind of weight that I was thrilled by. Climbing from our tent, we moved to our nes tent, where we had our meals. In the tent prepared for us was hot popcorn with sweet vanilla cookie pieces between the popcorn and boiled water for tea, coffee, or milo.

Preparations were in full swing as we ensured our headlamps worked by inserting new batteries, water in our bottles, and bladder pack, which would ultimately freeze in the pipe because I forgot to blow the water back out of the pipe after taking a sip (helpful tip) and advice I will surely remember to use in future adventures as chilly as Kilimanjaro. The water bottles should also be placed upside down as it freezes from the top, and we could still take a sip of water when turning the bottle the correct way up. Benni and August encouraged us to make one water bottle full of hot tea for the road. An oxygen cylinder was placed in my bag, with emergency medical supplies in Retha-Mari's bag, should we need it. Our bags were carried for us by Benni and August, our trusted guides who have climbed to the summit on many occasions, successfully. "You can only guide others to a summit if it is a road successfully journeyed before." We were set to start and received these final words of advice, "follow the steps and feet of the guide or person in front of you! Hakuna Matata - no worries. Let's eat this piece of cake!" Questions of concern followed the advice, "Are you warm enough? Do you have another buff?" It was always comforting to know that our guides, although it was their primary goal to walk alongside us to summit Uhuru peak, put our safety and good health through careful preparation first and foremost.

G2G "Good to Go," and we started walking towards what I could imagine was the direction of Uhuru peak, but our approach was from the side in a zig-zag steep climbing angle. It was pitch dark with only the stars in the sky, closer than I'd ever seen them, and our own and the headlamps lights of other teams in front and behind us giving light. Behind us, the lights of Moshi, the town closest to us, glittered. We were the third group on the ascend. Every 30 to 40 minutes, we would hear an excited hiker shout something encouraging or cries of fun and sheer delight, followed by stillness and focused concentration. The concentration mainly aimed at following the feet and the hiking boots of August in front of me, made possible with a slight downward tilt of my headlamp. I focused on covering my nose with a buff pulled up from my neck to the lower part of my face. Allowing enough air to move from my nose and mouth to my lungs for oxygenation at increasingly more demanding altitudes while trying to keep warm - is a challenge.

We passed 5000 meters above sea level. Another piece of advice we were offered from friends was to rub the point of our noses and ears to fend off frostbite. It may sound a bit extreme, but we did exactly that. We were rubbing, especially the tip of our noses. The challenge was that breathing in the buff caused the moisture from my breath to condensate and form a thin ice layer, causing more of a chill on the nose and face areas. So rubbing ensued, and the regular pulling of the buff down under my lower lip helped with breathing. Doing all this with two pairs of gloves, with the top one a bulky glove, was tricky. The headlamp around my head was another aspect playing on my mind. I have this pet peeve of not having anything too tight around my cranium. Not a hat and not a headlamp. So I moved my headlamp a bit higher on my head towards the crown to loosen it. It didn't work because the lamp's position was not lighting the path or August's feet in front of me enough for me to see where I should walk. From my head, the headlamp moved to my hand, after that, my wrist, and then back to my head when I needed my hands free to hold onto rocks and for climbing.

Steady, "poll poll" meaning slow, slow, step by step, we moved forward, passing the group of hikers in front of us. Forty minutes later, we were behind the first group and passing them. Up to this point, we had a group to chase, although it was not a race, and everything happened at a slow pace. Now it was totally dark ahead—humbling and exhilarating stuff. To one side, when I dared to take my eyes off August'a boots ahead, the sight of the bright moon. The stillness at that moment was deafening.

I wondered how the guides knew the way so well in the dark and how fast they knew to pace the hikers—experience, knowledge, training. Getting to know their climbers being a priority in the days leading up to summit night allows the guides to get to know each climber's temperament, strengths, weaknesses, and fitness levels. Taking our saturation measurements every night after dinner to track and document blood oxygenation was a ritual. A critical metric per climber. They also asked how we felt and allowed them to screen us for altitude sickness symptoms.

We moved forward step by step. Slowly but a bit faster than expected. Benni and August probably knew our capabilities and guided the pace with that knowledge. As the steepness of the terrain increased, the pace slowed and vice versa. It was not easy to look ahead at what was to come, but our ankle dorsiflexion degrees told a story of steepness. Our feet in our steady and trustworthy hiking boots felt the rocks underneath foot and it was clear that we were getting higher and higher. There were some very, very steep sections we covered before Stella Point on summit night.