A Physical and Emotional Adventure to the Top of the World

As you can surmise by the fact that I am writing this post, I have returned from Tanzania and Mt. Kilimanjaro alive and well. Despite a serious sunburn/windburn that continues to linger on my face, I made it back to Cape Town on Sunday evening somehow feeling refreshed after the most exhausting week of my life. Perhaps I felt invigorated by the constant praise and congratulatory sentiment that I, along with the two others that climbed with me, met from others upon arriving back in South Africa. As I am constantly reminded by those around me how intense my experience on the mountain must have been, I cannot help but mull over the unforgettable memories this once-in-a-lifetime (assuming that I won't climb Kili again) experience has bestowed upon me. While the details of each day of the climb are not worth describing here, it is important that I note the level of excitement I felt throughout the beginning of the climb as the summit attempt approached. I was able to think about the prospect of reaching the summit constantly during the first few days of the climb, as they were not too physically taxing. All of the anticipation that built up inside me over these four days, however, caused my emotions to become completely out-of-whack in my state of delirium when I finally arrived at Uhuru Peak (5985m), the tallest point on the African continent.

Unfortunately, I cannot articulate precisely the emotions I felt while atop the mountain as the altitude and ridiculously cold weather (-23 degrees Celsius with a windchill) blurred my ability to remember much of what happened while I was there. Whatever these emotions were must have been quite overwhelming, though, because they have been consuming my thoughts ever since I began descending from the summit that day. It is hard for me to grasp the fact that I managed to arrive at a destination (the summit) that cannot and will not be reached by even a small majority of the world. To be more specific, according to the certificate that I received at the end of the climb, only 43,553 people have successfully reached the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro since this time last year. I can now say that I am among those people, which, in retrospect, is worth all of the physical and emotional stress that I endured during the climb.

While the beginning of the climb did not challenge me physically to the extent that I had anticipated, Day 5 (the day of the summit attempt) pushed me far beyond my comfort threshold to the point of exhaustion, dehydration, and delirium. In order to arrive at the summit, I needed some kind of motivation other than the joy of finally achieving my ultimate goal of conquering Kili. This motivation came in the form of a blind Turkish man who we constantly ran into throughout the climb. Learning of his personal goal of climbing the highest peak on every continent provided me with the physical and emotional boost that I craved. As a result, he became a hero in my eyes, as well as in the those of the others climbing with me. To me, he epitomizes the phrase that I repeated in my head over and over again as I ascended and descended the mountain: "It's not your aptitude, but your attitude, that determines your altitude." While I am far from a seasoned mountain climber, I have successfully climbed the highest peak in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world as a result of a positive attitude and a will to achieve my goal of overcoming the physical and emotional hardships that I encountered en route to the top of the world.

The above description does not even scratch the surface of my overall experience on the mountain. Check out my pictures to follow my 6-day experience from Machame Gate up to Uhuru Peak and down to Mweka Gate (with stops along the way, of course!):

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbrisk01/MtKilimanjaro#

While I devoted this post t my Kilimanjaro climb , there is so much to say about my trip to Johannesburg and Soweto beforehand. Look forward to that in my next post!