The Climb

It's 4am on day three of our climb of Mt. Kenya, we are one hour in for the day's climb to Peak Lenana. It's below freezing, windy, I am nauseas, we both have killer headaches, we have not eaten breakfast to avoid puking on the way up, Neha's legs have never been in this bad of pain, and little do we know we still have 5 more hours and 600 meters to climb to reach the peak. It is at this moment we both decided this is officially the hardest thing we have ever done in our lives.

4 days, 3 nights, 4,895 meters high, Neha and I's brilliant idea to climb Mt. Kenya turned out to be a bit tougher than expected!

We should have known that we were in for tough times just by my first day in Nairobi, it rained, and rained and rained and I managed to pick up a stomach virus of sorts within my first 36 hours here. Everyone was nervous about us climbing in the rain, and we spent a good chunk of time packing all of our stuff in garbage bags and waterproofing everything possible. (Real professional mountaineering skills here...garbage bags...o what we learned.) The first day of the climb we drove to Nanyuki, a town near the gate to the mountain and then drove to the entrance....while watching the sky get darker and darker, and while starting to hear lightning. At the gate we had our first wildlife spotting of baboons, and our porters started loading the cooking equipment and food onto our bags we would be carrying (there is a pic of me attempting to carry what they carried the whole time, it took an extra person to even put it on my back). We put on our rain gear and then started the treck. Five minutes in I told Neha I could already tell the difference in breathing in the altitude, and she was like no way, whatever. Fifteen minutes later we were both panting, and the four hours we climbed that day to our first camp seemed awful, extremely steep etc, we were out of breath the whole time. (Of course by the way back when we came down the same route we were like this doesn't even seem like a hill). Our first camp was Old Moses camp, it was better than expected, there were actual bunk beds with a small mattress, and they cooked us a nice meal of fried fish and mashed potatoes (no heat though, thank god for our intense sleeping bags). We met a large group of Irish that we ended up being with for most of the rest of the trip, and a few Swedes who had already been to the top. The Irishmen had actually run into a stampede of elephants before getting to the camp! We both actually slept this night, which was the end of sleep for me, but great at the time! We woke up at 5 or so the next morning to start our longest day of trecking. It was a really long day going in and out of valleys, and taking rests before we would spot the steep areas we had to climb. There was plenty of rain as usual, and a little hail thrown in too. We had a nice dry lunch under a rock overhang though, and the transportable cooking skills of our porters continued to impress us. It was today that Neha started to wonder about the "awesome" rain jacket her Mom had given her to use....turns out it was a windbreaker and not waterproof at all, she ended up having to barrow one from our porter, after finding out the hard way. The terrain also got really interesting this day, it turned into desert looking with red rock formations, weird cactus, and small mountain animals, something along the lines of a chinchilla and some mountain "rats" that looked more like bunnies (which was nice because they lived alongside us in our next camp, and I definitely prefer bunnies to chicago rats.) So we reach our next camp, Shimpton's camp, right before dusk and had a clear view of the peak we were going to climb to the next morning. I asked our guide, Sammy, to explain to me a couple times how we were going to make it up there, from the looks of it, it looked like a lot of technical climbing would be involved and it would be really steep. He just responded in his usual answer, "pole pole," slowly, slowly, which was how they responded anytime we came to a massive steep hill and were like uhhhhh.

We had a fun night at the camp playing cards with the Irishmen, and went to bed by 7pm or so, because we were going to be up by 3 for the final ascent. The next morning was my morning of hell #1, I woke up with chest pains, extreme nausea, shakiness, headache, etc, it honest to god was difficult for me to stand up and make small movements, altitude sickness had hit. So then it became the debate of whether or not to try to make it, I checked with our guide, and an one of the irishmen who was a regular climber, and they said it was physically safe to go until I had pain in the lower part of my lungs or severe coughing (then you come down immediately for fear of your lungs essentially collapsing). I was very ready to crawl back into bed and die, and told Neha to go on without me, she refused to go without me, saying she would stay with me, so I decided I would at least try for her sake, because it wasn't fair to her, who at this point hadn't slept at all either, but was feeling relatively okay. So we started off, and I just kept saying how I thought I would feel so much better if I puked, and our guide told us that many people puke after 450 meters. So I was like okay, I will make it that far and puke, and then if I don't feel better I am quitting. (All of this was alongside many pep talks from Neha as well...very movie esq...we didn't make it this far for nothing...its all mental at this point...etc, she must have been a football coach in another life...). So we reached the 450 meter point, by having some of the strangest conversations to keep us going (top ten things you are excited for when we get off this mountain, best sunrise you have seen in your life, how much money would it take to have our other friends do this, who, if any would make it.) And miraculously, I didn't puke and somehow felt better, and it was at this point Neha was getting a little unsure, but I was like I didnt make it through all that for nothing, we can do this, etc etc. So after a good hour or so, and a gorgeous sunrise, the peak was in our sight. I started to feel sick all over again, but at this point we were both like we are so close we can make it. The peak did this to us numerous times in these final hours. We kept thinking we were so close to it, and then an hour would go by, and another hour, and we'd be like wait, what's going on, I swear we were closer than this. The pep talks slowly dwindled and everytime we asked how many more meters, we were just like f*** this peak, it never gets closer. The climbing got more difficult at the very end (who would have thought that was still possible?) where it was a bit more technical with rocks we had to manuever up and use our arms, etc. 6 1/2 hours later, we made it, (I think we took pole pole to a whole new level, it is suppose to take 3 hours, or maybe they just say 3 to make it seem more feasible, who knows.) We enjoyed some time on the top, enjoyed the views of Kenya and Mt. Kilamanjaro. We also probably gave our faces some of the worst sunburns of our lives, (sunscreen was way too much thought and effort at this point, I could barely stand to move to take photos, and our guide had been carrying our bags for us for the last leg.) Then we began our decent back down to Shipton's camp, 3 hours, more hell, but we moved quickly because I just wanted to lower altitude soooo badly. We got to camp and I actually felt decent, I ate my first meal in 24 hours, and we decided we were too tired to make it another 9 hours to the lower Moses camp, and we were okay in the altitude...hahaha. We took naps and by dinner we were both nauseas (Neha finally understood why I hadn't been eating all trip), my dinner failed to stay down that night. So we just went to bed, I didn't sleep, as usual. And even though the morning of the ascent I never though I had felt that bad in my life before, I out did that feeling the morning of the descent. The sickness had really taken over me, I couldn't breath, think straight, balance properly when walking, it was awful and so strange. I didn't even let Neha attempt to eat her breakfast, and I made our guide leave with us without our porters. I had to get down, I was a mess. We left at 5am before the Irish were even awake. I didn't talk for a good two hours of descending that morning, it took too much effort and breath (in which time Neha created a lovely photo montage of photos of herself in the back of the line, I had no idea til later...they are quality though.) She made me pose for one photo, which I am glad she did, because it shows me in this state, and I hadn't seen myself in a mirror for 4 days. Looking at the photo later, it explained why I had a really sore face for two days after the climb, apparently it had been pretty swollen from the sickness. The climb down got better and better as we got lower. we would get so annoyed with the slightest uphill parts though! In general we made really good time this day, because we both just wanted off the damn mountain. We made it, and were back in Nairobi by 5. Needless to say, our next day in Nairobi we did nothing, literally nothing besides, sleeping, eating and showering. (We actually were suppose to have a 5 day four night climb, but decided to skip the extra day or hiking around another side of the peak to see a different view of it...hahaha, yeh right.) In genral though, I would have never made it through this without Neha, I have so much respect for her for making it as well, her legs had been in pain since day one and the altitude got to her a lot too. It was a crazy experience but we were both glad we did it!