Pole Pole!!!

We will never forget this, oh so very important, Swahili word for the rest of our lives. Pole Pole (pronounced polay polay) means SLOWLY in Swahili. It was this reminder spoken by the guides, the porters, and even the cooks at least a hundred times a day that got 7 of the 8 of us to the top of the highest mountain in Africa…19350ft! Julie unfortunately succumbed to altitude sickness at about 4:30am at approximately 18000ft on Summit day. She, nonetheless, had an incredible experience on Kilimanjaro as did the rest of us. For those of you who are not aware, Kili is the tallest free-standing mountain in the world so the sight of it from the town of Moshi where we started is truly awe inspiring. Of course Moshi is overcast most of the day so we did not actually get a glimpse of the entire mountain until after we had climbed all the way to the top and come back down.

The 8 climbers I speak of included myself, Lynn, Julie, Julie and Todd (a couple of Lynn’s friends from CA.), two girls we met in Moshi, Angela and Dipps, and a Japanese guy named Ochi, all three of whom now live and work in Dubai. Together we set out with one guide, three assistant guides, one cook, and 15 porters to go higher than any of the eight of us had ever gone. The climb begins at 6000ft. The entire first day is spent hiking up through a gorgeous rain forest that barely lets the sun shine through in some parts. Right from the beginning the guides stress “Pole Pole” and at first it seems crazy that we are going to walk and climb 76km over 7 days at a pace of one step every two seconds, but it truly saved us all from our massive egos and allowed us to go on day after day without too much negative effect from the mountain.

The other tactic that helped, which was different from Corry’s climb 5 yrs ago, was that we spent two extra days on the mt. where we would climb up to say 14000ft. and then back down to 12000 to spend the night so by the time we made it to summit base camp at 15000ft. we were pretty well acclimated. Nothing, however, really prepares you for summit day which is 6hrs of gruelling, freezing, dark, pole pole (at this point we are taking one step every 3 or 4 seconds) up to the summit beginning at 1am. You actually reach Stella point first where that amazing sunrise photo was taken and which almost cost me some fingers to frostbite. From there the summit is another 45min of half conscious, foot dragging over ice and rock all the while passing people who are already heading back down who look so mangled, you wonder what the hell we are all doing at the top of this bloody mountain. It's definitely worth it though.

You only stay up top long enough to take some pictures with forced smiles before a 3.5hr descent back down to base camp where we were able to recover a bit from the first 10hr hike before continuing on another 3.5hrs of toe jamming, knee hammering descent down to about 10200ft where we spent our final night. We almost ran down the rest of the mountain on the final day, picked up our summit certificates and proceeded to the hotel for the greatest showers of all time. We were very fortunate to have an amazing guide, Jacob (the grandfather of the mt.), who is actually a bit famous as he was the guide for the crew that filmed the IMAX movie Kilimanjaro. However, the true heroes of the mt. are the porters who carried all of our crap up the mt., always had the tents set up, hiked extra km’s everyday for our water, served us our meals, and did it all with smiles and friendly, positive attitudes. All in all an unforgettable experience and now we are off to Lamu for some well deserved R&R on a beautiful beach.