I consider myself an outdoor lover, but I never did much camping while growing up.  Regardless of my limited experience with camping, this past year I gratefully took advantage of the opportunity to hike to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Our amazing porters worked so hard- packing up camp after we left, and still beating us to the next site to set up and cook.

Luckily for me, the Kili Climb does not require technical climbing knowledge.  In fact, it’s the tallest mountain you can climb without special gear.  All you need to do to reach the top is keep on walking.  Each route to the top has a slightly different difficulty due to length, terrain, and time constraint.

My expedition took the Machame Route, which is the most popular route.  It is nicknamed the “Whiskey route” to describe it’s difficulty, however it also has a high success rate.  In my experience, most of the route was not too difficult.  Long days of walking uphill were certainly tiring, but it was manageable.  The first few days were all just walking up a trail, paced by our guide.  We had to walk fast enough to get to camp in time, but slow enough to acclimatize.  Rising up altitude too fast doesn’t allow the body to get used to the low oxygen content and can cause altitude sickness.

The hike was a true “roughing it” experience.  We camped overnight in tents and sleeping bags, did not shower, the used a “bathroom” that could be anything from a hole in the floor of an outhouse to hidden side of a large boulder.  The days consisted of walking uphill for hours, then walking back downhill to camp.  This feeling of backwards progress (two steps forward, one step back) was frustrating, but necessary for acclimatization.

The early mornings before we left camp were only times the peak wasn’t cloud-covered.

The only part of the hike that truly pushed my limits was the final stretch to the summit.  That hike started at midnight and summited at sunrise, so we only got three or so hours of sleep before starting a hike in the dead cold of night at the highest elevation we had ever reached.  Between the cold, the dark, the thin air, the steep grade, and the fatigue, I started to doubt my willpower to finish the ascent.  Every time I looked up ahead, the dark shadow of the peak looked farther away than before.

After hours of shuffling slowly in zig-zags up the last steep face, the sun began to rise and we could see the peak was only a gradual slope away.  Tears of exhaustion and relief streamed down my face when finally reached the top.  Though I was in a thoroughly upset mood at the time, I look back on those moments I stood on the “roof of Africa” with feelings of pride and nostalgia.  The experience is a memory I will treasure for my whole life.

Note my crying face on the right, I was an emotional mess.