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Poly, poly, up Kilimanjaro

Despite being a "non-technical" climb, the altitude of the world's tallest free-standing mountain makes it a challenging assignment, says Sri Lankan journalist Larry Campbell

"Move John move!" I screamed, but my raw throat produced only a guttural rasp. Fortunately, my wild gesticulation made Professor John Wilson, my tent buddy and close friend, whip around in time to see the gigantic boulder hurtling down the scree slope directly at him.

With the agility of a teenager fuelled by the adrenaline rush of pure terror, 55-year-old John dived to his left, only to see the boulder kick up at the last second and hurtle towards his new position. Only a last-second dive back to the right saved him. The great hunk of volcanic rock whistled past his head, then mine, and down towards a couple of climbers below. Fortunately the commotion had alerted them and they got out of its way.

By now it was around 11 a.m. on June 30 and the African sun was high above us. Its searing heat had melted the permafrost that holds together the volcanic detritus that forms the treacherous upper slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. At 5,895 metres above sea level, the top of "Kili" is Africa's highest point, and the great rock is the world's tallest free-standing mountain. Somewhere between 8:10 and 8:15 that morning, John and I had become the first to summit Kili from our team of 32 trekkers from various parts of the United Kingdom who had set out a week earlier to climb this great mountain. By the time the boulder came our way, we were already a third of our way down from the summit to our last camp.

A night on the town

The story of our adventure goes back to the summer of last year, when Sara Stacey, one of my colleagues from Wales, decided to have a few after-work drinks with a couple of friends. Quite a few such drinks later, Sara had been talked into committing to tackle Kilimanjaro.

Larry's team press on towards their goal across an arid landscape devoid of life. At 4,400 metres above sea level, this plateau is already higher than the summits of the tallest Alps.

She decided to organise the climb around a good cause ... to raise £100,000 for Marie Curie Cancer Care. Within weeks she and her friends had drummed up support and signed up more than a dozen fellow adventurers from around the company to accompany them. Marie Curie Cancer Care provides high-quality nursing, totally free, to give people with terminal cancer and other illnesses the choice of dying at home, supported by their families. It runs nine Marie Curie Hospices across the UK and conducts palliative care research to find better ways of caring for terminally ill people, also funding scientists who investigate the causes and treatments of cancer.

Kilimanjaro had long being on my "must climb" list. When I heard about the team forming within my firm and the cause, all planets aligned, as they say. I come from a long line of cancer victims and it took seconds for me to make up my mind to join, and only minutes to persuade my long-suffering wife to let me have the 10 days we would need. Kilimanjaro, I pointed out to her, was nowhere near as technical a climb as a number of Alps I had tackled successfully over the years. I chose not to dwell on Kili’s sheer altitude and the fact that less than two thirds of the people who attempt to climb it every year make it. It is no Everest, but it can and does kill people particularly the bold and the brash.

John, visiting a week later during one of his Oxford lecture sessions, threw his lot in with me as soon as he heard about the climb.

We’re off

Thus it was that on the morning of June 22, a motley crew of 32 amateur "climbers" met at London's Heathrow Airport to head for Tanzania via Nairobi, Kenya, and begin a long, hard, and intensely dusty adventure.

By the time the team landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport, our adventure had already begun. Sara managed to get herself stuck in the only toilet on the flight from Nairobi to KIA for a full 30 minutes (total flight time 45 minutes). An hour’s drive from the airport, we arrived at the Sal Salinero Hotel in the Tanzanian town of Moshi where we were to meet our guides and porters. The team had signed up with the company Action Challenge to see us up and down the mountain, and waiting for us was challenge leader Dominic Rudd and head guide Frank Wilyfred.

Englishman Dom was an ex-Royal Marine and formerly Chief Operating Officer with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and Chief Executive Officer of The Samaritans. He proved to be a quiet, deliberate, disciplined leader who would not hesitate to give our team the worst possible news even as he encouraged us. Tanzanian Frank, was an affable powerhouse exuding confidence and strength. Frank informed us that he had a team of 88 porters lined up. Joining Dom from Action Challenge was his deputy Helene Tasker, like him an accomplished climber and Kili veteran, and team doctor Brett Rocos, a skilled trauma surgeon. It was clear we were in good hands.

A few beers, a filling dinner, and a good night’s sleep in a real bed that night were among things taken for granted that all of us were soon to realise were total luxuries.

A 6 a.m. wake- up call on June 24 and 7 a.m. breakfast was followed by a weigh-in of our bags. Having been given a field seminar in packing light by Dom the evening before, many of us had decided to cut our kit down by almost a third. Our target pack weights were 12-14 kilos. Mine came in at 13 kilos.
Frank’s porters manhandled our packs onto the buses that would drive us from Moshi to the beginning of the Rongai Route, in the village of Nalemoru. The four-hour drive was through a mix of scrub and farmland. I was struck by how much this was like driving through parts of rural Sri Lanka. Children and cattle wandered alongside our route unhindered by adult supervision.

At the main gate to the Kilimanjaro park, our bags were weighed again “officially”. We registered with the officials and set off, but not before one of the women on our team slipped on a step outside the registration area cutting her head. Still, she recovered quickly and off we went.

Wild life? What wildlife

For our first day of trekking, we had a pleasant walk through farmland and pine forest, giving way to scrub and heather. Much was made of the prospect of seeing elephants, buffalo and mongoose that day. My excitement somehow did not match that of some of my colleagues. Growing up in rural Sri Lanka, the Buddhist temple down the road boasted a working elephant I was allowed to feed from time to time, the paddy fields around us were full of water buffalo, and a whole family of mongoose lived in our back garden.

We arrived at Simba Camp after an agonisingly slow seven kilometre walk that took us a full four hours. The guides kept the pace very slow so people could get used to the altitude, telling us to “poly poly” (Kiswahili for walk “slowly slowly”). Dom had only two rules. First, never overtake the lead guide, and second, never fall behind his sweeper. I am an avid walker and used to a pace that sees me finishing 100-kilometre treks in under 24 hours, so to go at the “poly poly” pace was, to put it mildly, a tad boring. So much so that I ended up taking notes about our trip on my BlackBerry while walking. Still, as a result, we all felt fine by the time we got to Simba Camp at an altitude of 2,757 metres.

Long and winding road

Saturday, June 26 saw us starting off at the crack of dawn again. Our target for the day was Kikelewa Camp at 3,679 metres. This was supposed to take us six to seven hours of trekking, ascending through heather and moorland to the jagged peak of Mawenzi. A stop for lunch at the “Second Cave Camp” was all the respite we would get before returning southeast along a path that ambled through heath-land and rocky outcrops, with fantastic views of the Mwenzi and Kibo peaks, and Kili’s northern ice fields.

As it turned out the different paces of various members of the team – whose ages ranged from the early 20s to the late 50s, saw some of our slower team mates hobble into camp after having spent a full 12 hours on their feet. The beauty of a pitch black sky lit by every star in the Milky Way did little to ease the suffering of some.

Into thin air

The next day saw us getting our first real taste of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). Our camp at Mwanze Tarn, was at 4,300 metres. Slow, deliberate movements are critical until one acclimatises, and our plan was to spend two nights here to let our bodies produce the extra red blood cells we would need to allow us to make the most of what little oxygen there would be in the thin air around and above us.
Altitude affects different people differently. Fitness and youth are no success criteria. On my Alpine expeditions, every time I would breach 4,000 metres, I would start coughing violently, and this time was no exception. The difference on this trip was that I could not control my hunger and thirst and was eating and drinking incessantly. This was to be my saviour.

Larry Campbell holds up the Sri Lankan flag from a ridge of Mwenze Tarn. The summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro stands behind him, still two days' walk away.

On June 27, our acclimatisation day, the altitude claimed its first victim. Richard Barnsley, one of the strongest young men, was carried down the mountain on the backs of our porters. The day before, Richard had started showing signs of AMS, and his condition worsened during the night. Team doctor Bret made the unenviable call to send Rich down. It was with much relief that we learned later that evening that Rich had reached the foot of the mountain safely and was recovering well. That’s the thing about altitude … it will lay you low, even kill you, rapidly, but if you head down fast, chances are you will recover just as fast. Our mortal coils are simply not built to, shall we say, soar with the eagles.

As we gathered for breakfast on June 28, it was clear that the following 24 hours had us all worried. We were to trek across an arid plateau and climb up to Kibo Camp at 4,700 metres, rest the afternoon, and begin our summit bid before midnight. Apart from the guides and Action Challenge veterans, one of my colleagues who had made it to Everest Base Camp last year, and I, nobody on the team had been this high, and even I had just passed my vertical best. How our bodies would react was the big unknown. Despite being a "non-technical" climb, there is no doubt that Kilimanjaro is a challenging one. About 15,000 people from around the world attempt it every year, and frequently more than half fail, mainly because of its altitude.

In October last year, a study quoted by the BBC said that climbers scaling Mt Kilimanjaro were taking considerable risks with their health, mainly because of the mountain’s altitude. The study, carried out by Edinburgh University scientists, warned that many climbers attempting to scale the mountain "know little or nothing" about high altitude, which could be fatal.

At 5,895 metres above sea level, "Kili" is well over a vertical kilometre higher then Mont Blanc, the highest Alp at 4,810 metres. It is even higher than Mount Elbrus, which is generally accepted as Europe’s highest mountain at 5,642 metres above sea level. Like Mt Elbrus, Kilimanjaro is one of the Seven Summits coveted by climbers worldwide: each of the tallest mountain peaks of each of the seven major continents.

The Edinburgh University study found that almost half, or 47 per cent of those who had climbed Kilimanjaro, were suffering from altitude sickness before they reached the summit.

Signs of altitude sickness include vomiting, headaches, difficulty sleeping and sometimes problems with co-ordination. Effects can be felt from as low as 2,500 metres above sea level and 75 per cent of people will have mild symptoms at 3,000 metres or higher, the study said.

Acclimatisation is advised as the best way to combat the problem. We had our acclimatisation day at Mwanze Tarn, spending two nights at close to 4,300 metres, and climbing up to about 4,700 metres and back down in between. Despite that we had already lost a colleague to AMS.

Fast forward

Three days later, I sent this update to my friends and family. “It is done,” it began. “The team is back home safely. Recovery began almost as soon as we got off Mt Kilimanjaro and hit the hot showers, had a good meal and a great night's sleep in real beds for the first time in a week at the Hotel Arusha.”

Twenty two of those who set out from Kibo Camp between 10. 30 p.m. and 11.30 p.m. (my group) on the night of Tuesday, June 28, made it to Uhuru Peak, Kilimanjaro's highest point at 5,8 95 metres above sea level, between 8.10 a.m. (my ascent time) and just before 10 a.m. The others made it up different stages of the mountain before succumbing to a variety of conditions, including AMS, one case of the deadly high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE), fatigue, and a near-fatal asthma attack.

John and I hung around at the top for a good 40 minutes (recommended time for first-timers like us is 15 minutes) to get as many of us in a team photo as possible. At our pre-ascent safety briefing we had been advised among other things that coughing up blood was a sure sign of the early onset of the dreaded high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). I had secretly just hawked up some rather bright red gunk, so decided to do the safe thing and asked John and a guide if they would mind heading down with me.

We left our flags for the others with Dom. A five-time Kilimanjaro veteran and accomplished high-altitude mountaineer, Dom was best equipped to hang around for the others in the thin air and -15 Celsius temperature. John and I had also both run out of water and were acutely aware the porters with extra water were a good 1,500 metres and about two to three hours below.

John, an experienced cross-country skier, literally skied down the horrible scree slope that our side of Kili turns into in the blazing sun. It is frozen solid at night, making ascent more practical. I don't ski and had a horrible time. The dust alone was a killer. John and our water porter Joe were good enough to keep to my pace, which was, of course, disrupted midway by the lethal boulder that nearly killed John.

It isn’t over yet

Any good mountaineer will point out that getting to the summit is only half the journey. One must leave enough fuel in the tank to get back down, or the climb isn’t over. Only one’s life is over. We made it down to Kibo Camp, our regrouping point, and collapsed for a solid two hours while the other climbers got there.

A quick meal and Dom had us on our feet for the gruelling trek down around Kili's arid base to Horombo Camp where we would spend the night. For the first time on the entire trip I decided to skip dinner and got straight to my tent. By now I felt I was running a fever, which the good doctor confirmed, adding that he believed that had I stayed up top for 10 minutes longer, I would have had HAPE proper. He blamed my ascent rate for it. He also dished out a course of antibiotics to fight the chest infection I had by now come down with thanks to the dust.

A few Ibuprofens later I went on to have the best night's sleep on the mountain yet. The next thing I knew was Dom getting us up at 6 a.m. for a quick breakfast, the porter tipping ceremony, and the eight-hour trek (including a one-hour lunch break) back to our buses.

A wash, a wash, my kingdom for a wash

I was writing some of this on the way back to the Tanzanian town of Arusha. With no exception all conversations were about the showers that awaited us at the hotel.

The adventure was over. Our bodies were depleted. Most of us had lost up to five kilograms of body weight. We smelled so bad that all of us seemed to have evolved the welcome inability to smell anything. Yet, by the time we reached the Arusha Hotel, we had received word that our efforts had raised more than £175,000 for Marie Curie Cancer Care, and the joy of our achievement began to sink in.

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