Mountain Climb That Takes Your Breath Away : Africa’s Legendary Kilimanjaro Is Physically Punishing but Offers the Ultimate Reward

I hadn’t suffered my first altitude headache, hadn’t camped one night. In fact, I hadn’t even seen Mt. Kilimanjaro’s summit when the reality of climbing Africa’s highest mountain hit me.

Almost literally.

I was enjoying my first day of fulfilling a dream. Whistling merrily through Kilimanjaro’s lowland rain forest, I waved at villagers gathering firewood. I played staredown with the monkeys in the trees. As a French woman approached me, heading down the path I was ascending, I could see she had just attempted the 19,340-foot summit. She had a backpack, a walking stick and the expression of a cadaver. I prepared to be friendly.

“So, how was the climb?” I asked.

She turned her weary eyes toward me . . . and threw up at my feet.

That fun, huh? Can’t wait.

I could’ve turned back. Viewing rhinos from a safari bus sounded pretty good at that point. But climbing snow-crowned Kilimanjaro had been my secret goal ever since my first view of the Himalayas five years ago. I was in western Nepal at the time, staring out toward the Annapurna Sanctuary, a bowl rimmed with six mountains between 23,000 and 27,000 feet.

I said to no one in particular, “This must be the most beautiful spot in the world.”

A Swede nearby turned and said, “It is not. Try the view from the top of Kilimanjaro.”

And now, here I was, five days from keeping a promise to myself. Or was the Swede mistaken?

Starting with the glazed-eyed French woman, I heard daunting war stories. Sick, exhausted, bedraggled hikers making their way down the mountain told me that one woman was carted off on a stretcher. Another hiker was airlifted out. Only about half made it to the top.

This wasn’t the image I had when I arrived in June. I took red-eyes from New York to London to Nairobi, then a five-hour bus ride south into Tanzania. Then I took another 90-minute ride to this farming village near the base of Kilimanjaro by the Tanzanian-Kenyan border.

I had heard and read about the mountain’s legend. Highest mountain in Africa. Highest point, in fact, between Ojos del Salado (22,572 feet) in Argentina and Communism Peak (24,590), just north of Afghanistan in the former Soviet Union. That’s a distance of about 10,000 miles.

But Kilimanjaro is a hike, not a climb. I was told to bring warm clothes and trail mix, not crampons and an ice ax. What I didn’t know were the effects 19,000 feet can have on the body. The climb takes five or six days, depending on whether or not you take a day to acclimate at 12,000 feet. The treking route is 25 miles from the trail head to the summit, and the clearly marked path is evenly broken up by three campsites. Each camp consists of about a dozen Scandinavian-style A-frame huts that have two sides and four cots to a side.

Another A-frame twice as large as the others serves as a mess tent, with another hut serving as a kitchen where the guides cook the meals. It isn’t very fancy, but it beats pitching a tent every night.

Annually, about 3,000 people try climbing Kilimanjaro (which was made into a national park in 1977), and the trek is simple to organize. Three companies in Marangu and Moshi, villages near Kilimanjaro, organize climbs and assign the mandatory guides and porters for various fees.

I went through Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT), a Cambridge, Mass., adventure company that handles the red tape before you arrive. It’s an expensive alternative, but it guarantees that you won’t waste a day combing villages for a guide with strong legs and strong English.

The journey, however, begins at the Kibo Hotel in Marangu, a sprawling 50-year-old colonial structure that serves as the jumping-off point for many climbers. If you don’t have a guide, you can find one here. Local youths seeking work hang out in a pack in front of the hotel’s huge garden. But they also serve as a reminder of how little this socialist country has advanced since independence in 1961. One guide had polio and walked with a cane. Another was a dwarf. Another an albino. I met my guide and three porters, assigned by the hotel in conjunction with OAT, on the morning of the climb. The porters not only carry all your food and water, but also their own and the guides’. I carried only a day pack with water, extra clothes, a sack lunch, munchies and my camera.

The only time my stomach turned was on the first day of my climb--and I hadn’t taken my first step. On the truck ride from the hotel to the mountain gate, we pulled in front of a villager’s home.

“Why are we stopping?” I asked.

“We’re getting your food,” the driver said.

I walked down a ratty lawn alongside a ramshackle house and there was dinner: a cow, freshly slaughtered, spread-eagled and sliced from head to hoof. A villager was cutting thick slabs of beef from the inside. The cow’s eyes stared aimlessly into space from a head that dangled from the butchered body like a sick Halloween mask.

Fortunately, the first day was literally a walk in the park. After passing through a huge gate at 6,000 feet (here, hikers without guides are removed and heavily fined), we climbed 2 1/2 hours through thick rain forest. I climbed nearly 3,000 feet and still never saw the majestic, snow-covered summit. The cloud layer was thick as San Francisco fog, obscuring all but the dense foliage, the last villagers on the mountain and ankle-deep mud.

The first campsite, at almost 9,000 feet, is called Mandara Hut, a collection of a dozen A-frames scattered around a grassy clearing. It’s not your basic KOA campsite, but it’s really very comfortable. The water, which comes from mountain streams and pours from three spouts in a concrete basin, is clean at this elevation. There is no shower or real wash-up area at any of the huts, each of which has a latrine toilet facility.

The next day, the climb wasn’t much harder but at least it looked like a mountain and not the jungles of Zaire. We emerged from the rain forest in 20 minutes and finally saw it. Rising over a hill like a giant throne was the flat, snow-covered summit of Kilimanjaro.

On a clear day it looks like something from an Oriental tapestry, and this was a clear day. Seeing my prize was a true adrenaline injection, and I marched through barren steppes and forded creeks for four hours to the second campsite, Horombo Hut, at 12,205 feet.

Here, the beauty of Kilimanjaro collides with its hardships. The temperature at dinner dropped to about 35 degrees, and the tales of failed expeditions filled the mess hut.

Two Texans reached 18,700 feet and collapsed. A Norwegian got violently ill an hour into his final ascent. I passed one hut and heard the crackling static of a short-wave radio.

“Just in case anyone needs an airlift,” a guide said.

Over 12,000 feet, the human body is susceptible to altitude sickness. Anyone who has climbed one of Colorado’s “fourteeners” knows the joy of climbing with a throbbing migraine. Throw in nausea, shortness of breath and a dash of dizziness and you know what Kilimanjaro can do.

The only thing you can do to help is drink water, lots of water. Three quarts a day is recommended and that’s not easy in 35 degrees.

I took the third day to acclimatize. My guide, Zakaria Mtui, and I went on a three-hour hike to 15,000 feet and returned to Horombo. I was in no hurry to get sick,and hiking alone has its own strange appeal.

Mtui spoke fairly fluent English and we would occasionally talk. He is a 37-year-old husband and father who, like everyone else in Marangu, grew up on a farm. Kilimanjaro was his escape. He climbs it, incredibly, about twice a month.

The mountain, like an old mansion, has quite a history. It was an active volcano until about 200 years ago, having emerged as lava spewed from three volcano centers--Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira, in the Rift Valley. Kilimanjaro grew to a height of 18,000 feet when a violent eruption 360,000 years ago filled Shira with black lava. It reached a final height of 19,356 feet, then began to shrink as eruptions subsided. The last volcanic breath came in the late 1700s.

I would climb over much of this volcanic rock the next day as I attempted the final ascent. This is where preparation is crucial. I was feasting on Mtui’s great dishes of lentil soup, local green vegetables and, of course, beef in every preparation imaginable.

The next 36 hours were the longest of my life. I climbed 7,000 feet on no sleep and no food for 24 hours. I’ve pulled some all-nighters in Las Vegas, but blackjack tables aren’t at 19,000 feet.

The fourth day begins with a morning climb across the “saddle,” the barren, lunar-like landscape that separates Kilimanjaro’s highest peak, Uhuru, and Mawenzi, the jagged 17,000-foot peak nearby that kills ambitious climbers every year.

In five hours I was at Kibo Hut, a cement blockade at 15,520 feet. No tap water is available here. Arriving in early afternoon, I looked behind it and up--straight up--4,000 feet to a summit I couldn’t quite see. I gasped and not because of the incredibly thin air.

The trail I would climb looked like a snow-covered elevator shaft. It was about a 70-degree angle and the same height as three Empire State Buildings on top of each other. The last 1,000 feet were covered with snow, ice and jagged boulders.

“You sure we don’t need ropes?” I asked Mtui.

“No problem,” he said. “We switch back. Polly, polly (slowly, slowly in Swahili).”

Our porters took leave of us at this point to return to Horombo; we would meet back there the next day for the descent. All climbers leave Kibo for the summit at 1 a.m. It sounds nuts, but climbing at night is how you catch the sunrise. It’s worth it. It’s just hard to imagine when you’re already cold, tired and sick in the afternoon.

The rest of the day consists of an excruciating wait. At 5 p.m., I ate a bowl of beef stew (I believe I’d eaten everything but the cow’s gizzard by now) and crawled into my sleeping bag in the dormitory-style bunk.

I was told to rest, but that was absurd. My head throbbed. The thin air makes even drowsiness farfetched.

I was curled up in a down sleeping bag with long underwear and a sweatsuit and still cold. In a few hours, I would have to get out in sub-freezing weather and climb to more than 19,000 feet.

When 1 a.m. arrived, 10 climbers from around the world gathered with their guides. Bundled with up to seven layers of clothes and armed with nothing but flashlights, we looked like 20 people going to rob a ski chalet.

This was where I thought conditioning would be crucial. I had trained like crazy. Three days a week for two months I climbed my 20-story condominium building five times in a row, rode my bike 10 miles and swam 30 laps.

On other days I lifted weights and exercised on a stair machine. On weekends I hiked. My chiropractor also cured my aching back in six weekly visits.

Then I found out that conditioning may not mean squat.

Altitude affects different people in different ways, and climbers were dropping like mallards. A Hungarian, suffering from a queasy stomach in Kibo Hut, didn’t make 2,000 feet past it.

A Canadian woman reached Myers’ Cave, the halfway point at 17,000 feet, and turned back with nausea. A Houston medical student told his guide he was feeling sick.

“Many people vomit,” his guide told him. “Go ahead. You’ll feel better.”

He did and trudged forward.

Nausea never hit me, but by 18,000 feet I felt like I was breathing syrup. I stopped to adjust the drawstring on my sweatpants and had to wait a minute to catch my breath. Even eating trail mix took effort. My head, pounding since 16,000 feet, felt like that monster from “Alien” was growing in my frontal lobe.

I was lucky in one respect. The weather, which can reach 10 below with wicked winds, was unusually warm at 25 degrees. But the trail was nothing more than a vertical gravel pit, and the moon was only half full, making the climb even darker than imagined.

It didn’t help matters when my flashlight batteries froze, and I found myself following only my guide’s footsteps, feeling along for footholds the last 1,000 feet.

At 6 a.m., after five hours of climbing, the headaches and doubts paid off. We had reached Gilman’s Point. At 18,651 feet, it’s the highest point on the eastern rim of the crater and the first place you can view the incredible sunrise. However, we’d made better time than I expected. Sunrise wasn’t until 6:40.

I was told this is where many people turn back before reaching the summit. I was also told they regret it forever. I wanted to walk away with images, not regrets, so I plowed along as the sun was starting to peek over the horizon, painting the black sky with gold streaks and making the ice glisten like a Popsicle.

I started racing along the rim of the crater like a kid in a playground. I clambered over rocks and ice to get new camera angles. But this wasn’t a sandbox. This was 19,000 feet. I began to hyperventilate and nearly dropped my camera down a glacier.

Uhuru is Kilimanjaro’s highest point. It’s only a 600-foot climb from Gilman’s but takes 90 minutes. You walk along the rim staring down at the volcanic crater to your right and an ice glacier to your left as the sun slowly rises behind you.

It’s dangerously seductive. A German, hit by a sudden wave of altitude sickness, lost his balance. He began to wobble. You can’t really fall off Kilimanjaro, but if you roll far enough you can take a 4,000-foot slide.

This guy started to lose his balance and his guide grabbed him. The German made it to the peak but was literally carried back down the 4,000 feet to Kibo Hut.

When I reached Uhuru, I collapsed under the sun. When I finally opened my eyes, the view from 19,340 feet took my breath much more than the altitude did. Few views on the planet can match the sight of sunrise over Africa from the top of Kilimanjaro. I’ve hiked in the Himalayas, Andes and Alps, and no sight comes close.

There I was, looking “down” to 12,000 feet at a blazing sun hanging in the bluest sky I’d ever seen over a sea of clouds that looked as thick and soft as my favorite mattress. I felt like I was on an airplane wing.

A sunken crater, with jagged rocks protruding from a blanket of snow, was in front of me; an ice glacier, sparkling like a giant crystal, slid into the clouds behind me.

The Tanzanian flag was by my side. In a symbolic gesture, I took my chiropractor’s business card and buried it in the snow. Mtui gave me a locked-thumb soul shake I hadn’t seen since 1972. Africa has 662 million people and I was higher than all of them.

In “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Hemingway couldn’t do it justice. Lord knows my camera couldn’t. And as I stood there snapping off three rolls of film in 15 minutes, I was hit by one inescapable conclusion: That Swede was right.

GUIDEBOOK

Scaling Kilimanjaro

Organizing a climb: Adventure travel companies in the United States and Europe can arrange a climb before you arrive, or you can organize your own in Tanzania. The adventure companies cost more but guarantee you’ll leave on the day you want and the red tape is cut before you land:

Overseas Adventure Travel (800-221-0814), out of Cambridge, Mass., charges $950 plus the mandatory $150 in park fees.

Mountain Travel-Sobek (800-227-2384) of El Cerrito, Calif., combines the climb with a three-day safari for $2,990 plus $275 in park fees. There’s a $360 surcharge for groups of eight to 11. Mountain Travel also uses its own guides, not locals.

Guerba Expeditions (800-227-8747), based in Westbury, England, has a sales office in Emeryville, Calif., and charges $1,110 for a five-day climb. Guerba also has travelers take part in daily chores.

Nature Expeditions International (800-869- 0639) in Eugene, Ore., offers a five-day trip for $990, based on sharing a hotel room at the beginning and end of the trek--also available as an extension to a Tanzania and Kenya safari of 16 days for $3,690, including park fees.

There are several local sources of reliable and relatively inexpensive climbs. In Marangu, the Kibo Hotel (local telephone Marangu 4) arranges six-day climbs (including a day of acclimatization and park fees) for $450 and five-day treks for $350. The Marangu Hotel (Marangu 11) offers five-day treks for $445 (one climber), $430 (two climbers) and $414 (three or more climbers). That includes park fees. In nearby Moshi, Trans-Kibo has a five-day climb for $380 for one climber, $360 for two and $350 for three or more. It’s $80 for each extra day.

None of the above includes tips, which should be about $40 for the guide, $20 for head porter and $10 for each of the two other porters.

Getting there: You can fly from Los Angeles to Nairobi, Kenya, on major American carriers connecting with British Air (through London), KLM (Amsterdam), Air France (Paris) and Lufthansa (Frankfurt), or you can fly all the way from L.A. on the above foreign airlines. Current fare is about $2,700 round trip with 30-day advance purchase. It’s about a 2 1/2-hour bus ride south from Nairobi to the Tanzanian border, with the mountain immediately south of that. You can also fly from European capitals directly to sparkling new Kilimanjaro International Airport near the mountain, for about $2,900 round trip; however, most of the airlines have only one flight a week into that airport.