“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai ‘Ngáje Ngái,’ the House of God.”
We would begin on the Lemosho Route, but that was all I knew about our expedition. The first time I’d heard anything of the Western Breach, I was looking up at it. At its base, there’s a sign wooden sign with gold painted letters: “Warning: climbers must begin ascent before 5:30 AM”. That’s when I started asking questions.
I turned to our guide. His name was Samia but the porters called him Simba—“lion” in Swahili—a nickname he’d earned after winning a 1999 race up the mountian. He’d climbed with the legendary Scott Fischer and had summited Kilimanjaro more than three hundred times.
“I put it up myself. They asked me to, you know. The national park.”
“Why?” I asked.
Samia gave a sigh. “There was this group climbing the mountain, four years ago. They started climbing, 7:30 in the morning. But that time is no good. Soon, the Sun came over the mountain and the ice started melting. The rocks began to come loose, you know, then some people higher up set off a rock fall, and a woman was hit in the head. She died.”
From Arrow Glacier Camp, the Breach didn’t look so steep, or dangerous. The afternoon Sun lathered its snows and stones with a golden sheen that masked any trace of cruelty. A fiery staircase to the heavens.
Earlier that day, when we first arrived, the campsite had looked much different. One of its two outhouses had been shattered by high winds and its remains were strewn all across the ground we could see. 16,000 feet was too high for a maintenance crew, so wreckage was never repaired. Consumed by cloud, sprinkled with snow and splintered wood, the scene was ominous. But later that afternoon the weather had changed, as so often was the case on Kilimanjaro, and the mid-day clouds had slid down off the mountain leaving just enough space to see the African continent unfurling out to the West, but not enough to see the horizon. And in front of me, the Breach pushed up into the air.
I finished chatting with Samia and went on a walk. As the Sun raced off the edge of the sky, I mounted one of the ridges that sandwiched our camp, where the porters had perched themselves trying to find cell phone service. I went for the view. Huge puffs of rolling white surrounded the little plateau, and beyond them, storm clouds swirled. Thunder rolled in the distance, but instead of high above my head, it came from below. It was a short walk, not more than a hundred meters, but I was panting when I reached the top. At this elevation, even a few steps uphill can knock the wind clean out of you. That’s when another boom echoed off the mountain. The chatting porters turned quiet and looked up at the Breach. Avalanche. We sat in silence...watching. Our route was still, but make no mistake, that sound was close. Just over the ridge at the southern edge of camp, I figured. The mountain had given its warning.
At dinner Samia made it clear, once we began hiking tomorrow there would be no stopping until we were out of the "kill zone,” and there would be no turning back. He used a more diplomatic term, but that’s what it was, a kill zone. His voice was gentle, but I could sense he was concerned. Others had died on this route, not just the woman Samia mentioned. I found out later that a porter recently lost his leg, and in 2006 the park closed the ascent after a group of climbers died. Above where we ate, clinging to the slope of the Breach was the Arrow Glacier. The snows of Kilimanjaro are melting, and like an aging man who realizes he can’t do the things he used to, the shrinking glacier could no longer hold back the rocks it once did. Tired and sweating under the Sun, it slowly relaxed its grip, and in 2006, it released an avalanche of stone.
Samia split us seven climbers into two groups: I was part of the first, along with two honeymooners, Clay and Diane, 30 and 29, and my mother, 57. We were divided by fitness. This way, we could move at a faster pace, and make our tenure in the kill zone as brief as possible. Our four would start first.
I came to Kilimanjaro with my mother. Climbing the mountain was on my bucket list before I knew there was such thing as a bucket list. I’m not sure how the romantic thought of the mountain became stuck in my head, but it was lodged in there tight. There are many things I want to do in life, but that doesn’t mean they made the list. Kilimanjaro was the first of four. That said, I didn’t expect to cross it off so soon. My mother had pushed for this trip. Although she had been instigator-in-chief, between the two of us, I had the most qualified opinion. My mother hadn’t been camping since college, and at one point she asked me if it was worth sleeping in a tent out in the backyard, in the winter, to prepare for the cold. I gave her a curt response, “there is no preparing for that; it just sucks, and you get through it”. The night at Arrow Glacier Camp would mark our sixth night on the mountain, each one colder than the last. To pass the time, I would count how many were left until it got warmer. But as the number grew smaller, the nights grew colder.
Her conviction surprised me. She is a woman of conviction, that is undeniable, but she’d never done anything like this before. Her eagerness was partly driven by a bad knee, and she wanted to make the attempt before she no longer could. But why Kilimanjaro? To be honest, I don’t think she even understood why. Maybe it was the same thing that called to me: an infatuation with tallest peak on the “dark continent,” the name given by the early explorers trying to chart its unknown interior. With its lions and jungles and huge beasts with white tusks that trumpet across the plains, Africa seemed a proper place for an adventure. And Kilimanjaro itself, while not the highest, it is unique, and the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. It sprouts from the ground, unconnected to a chain of similar relatives. Its square top and gradual slopes look less like a mountain and more like God reached out his hand, grabbed on to the earth itself, and gave it a long pull upwards. The horizon disappeared, and once where there was sky, the ground itself pushed past the clouds, and into the heavens. Against the African plains it stands alone.
But during the climb, I had mixed feelings about Kilimanjaro. I had been on several expeditions in the last year and discovered getting off the beaten path and taking the hard road was where adventure lived. In July, I’d been dropped off on a beach just outside the Arctic circle. My buddy and I trekked, four days in the wilderness, to get to sea cliffs that marked the edge of the world, and then to meet another boat that would bring us back to a small town, far from civilization. We had been lost in the fog, tried following a trail that disappeared every few minutes, climbed snow caps and fjords, some days never seeing another soul. And the whole time we were alone with only our wits and a map and a compass to guide us. It was a proper adventure. A few months later, I went out into the desert. I went with another friend, and we left the trails behind, going deep into the backcountry. Once again, we were the guides. In both instances, we went into the unknown and we took the path less traveled.
Kilimanjaro felt different. Before I left for Africa, I started to hear about other people that had already made the ascent. They weren’t what I considered serial adventurers, and that took away from the mystic that I had built around this mountain. The idea of porters slinging our supplies over their backs, didn’t sit well either. Adventures are about proving something to yourself, and how much could I prove with an army of helping hands? Six days in, the climb was proving less rigorous than hoped. We’d been eating off plates; someone was cooking our meals, collapsing our tents, and building them up again each night. The elevation was challenge. Somewhere around 15,000 feet it had run away with my appetite and left behind a series of crushing headaches. And the cold . . . but that was the extent of the challenge. Each day I watched our porters doing all the work; they would break down camp after we left, then pass us on the trail, each one bending under the weight of their haul, only to have everything set up again before we made it to the next sleeping site. The trail had been gradual, and there was that lingering thought about all the other people I’d heard of who had climbed the mountain. After all my years of anticipation of this moment, I was souring on it. I needed a proper challenge, and a road less traveled.
After Samia’s briefing we left the dining tent. When the Sun went down, I pulled out all the stops and layered into my warmest gear. The cold at tomorrow night’s camp promised to put all the others to shame, but I had no more armor left to add.
In the shadow of the Breach I slept poorly. When I stumbled out for each of my nightly bathroom breaks, I could see the lights of Moshi and Arusha glittering far below. I was awake and packing before the morning call ever went out. Our climb began at 5AM. In the dark, we shuffled slowly uphill, zigging and zagging, our headlamps providing the only light and only in small patches, just enough to see where our feet landed. We needed to be out of the Kill Zone by 8:30 AM, the point at which the Sun would poke up over the summit, and creep up the Western Breach. The same reason I couldn’t wait for the Sun on most days, was the very reason we were rushing up the trail: its warmth. It only takes one loose rock to start an avalanche and even with the ice, the stones wiggled beneath our steps. Our party of six was the front line: four climbers, Samia, and Alysse, who carried a small tank of oxygen. It was less of a path, and more of where Samia decided we should tread. At first he seemed to be following some invisible trail, we’d be moving back and forth in a predictable patterned, then he’d mumble to himself and make a sharp turn in the opposite direction. And when a larger stone would dislodge from underneath our feet, Samia would hold his breath, as if the extra force of his exhale might be the final straw to set off a chain reaction that would end up consuming everyone below. We took no breaks, and once an hour in, there was no turning back. The only way off the mountain was up. Each step was slow and measured. “Rest steps”: one foot in front of the other, pausing in-between, all the weight positioned over one foot, flowing like an electrical current down a straight and locked leg into the ground. The most efficient way to climb. In the dark, rocks and ice crunched underfoot.
My toes went numb first, and not long after, so did my hands. After thirty minutes, I discarded my trekking poles, strapping them to my pack. My hands were frozen solid, and thick ski gloves were unable to meet the challenge. My only hope was to shove them into the front pockets of my Gore-Tex shell. Soon, feeling returned, but my toes remained numb. I wiggled them vigorously between steps, but my effort did little other than tire the muscles in my feet. It went on like this for hours. Eventually my toes were so numb, I couldn’t tell them from my boots
By the time we reached the end of the Kill Zone, dawn had broken, and almost three hours in, we returned to solid rock. Samia yelled out in joy. He started singing in Swahili, or perhaps his native Chagga, but whichever it was Alysse soon joined him. To their chanting I put away my headlamp and took out my camera to capture the day’s first light. We had made it past the most dangerous part, but that was only the beginning, and now there was no turning back.
Although protected from rock fall, the climb we had left behind was easy compared to the climb that lay ahead. We weren’t even halfway done, and to finish we’d have to push twice as hard. Hand over hand, we clung to the slope as it shot into the air. Our hike turned into a scramble, and my weekends spent rock climbing instead of conditioning proved useful. Searching for handholds and footholds, on half the oxygen I’m used to, I climbed. Walking that ridge the evening before no longer seemed such a chore, and whenever Samia turned to address the group, his words were lost in a fit of panting. But while we were celebrating and moving forward, the second group was stuck.
I didn’t know exactly what was said in each frantic radio call to Mhenia, but I understood. Mhenia was trying to drive his exhausted party out of danger. It was past 9 AM, and the Breach was bathing in sunlight. “They take 10 steps and stop,” Samia told me as he arranged a rescue party, a team of porters that would go down and literally push them up the mountain. Scrambling up jagged stone, I was worried for them, but it wasn’t the Kill Zone that bothered me, it was the other side. If they were struggling there, no way could they make it up here. The air was thin and the climb was hard. Even if they could make it to Crater Camp would they have the strength to survive the night? Later that evening, when they stumbled into camp, one of the climbers told me he had asked to go back. The problem is, there’s no turning back on the Western Breach. Only forward.
Most never take this route. They leave from the crowded Barafu Camp at midnight. In the dark, they ascend from 15,200 feet to 19,340, see the sunrise at Uhuru peak, touch the sign, take a picture, and within twenty minutes are scurrying back down the same way they came. Not used to the altitude, their bodies can only spend a few minutes at Africa’s highest point. Trail itself is a slow uphill slant, made in its worst parts with some loose dirt and pebbles. But the Breach is forged of stone and ice.
Carved into the mountain, we followed its steps higher, a staircase built with no regard for men.
Heaving ourselves up the jagged rock, the group struggled to keep an unbroken pace. My mother, the oldest in our group, was the least willing to stop. On one of our breaks I asked her what she thought of the route.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said.
“Harder than childbirth?”
She laughed, “Oh yeah! Well, mine was pretty easy, but yes.” She is no stranger to struggle, easily one of the most tenacious people I know. She’d even been known to call me a wimp, like that time I got suckered into running the Turkey Trot. But here on the Western Breach, she’d met her match.
The tan wall of jagged rock, got smaller and smaller, and the sky became darker and darker, until our climb became a hike, and so much light had been filtered out in the heart of the cloud, we were left walking in what seemed like the edge of night. Snowflakes fluttered down into the grey. As far as we knew, the world ended a hundred feet in front of us, and if the ground had not leveled out, there would have been no way to know where we were. Then, as we passed through the tepees made from dust colored canvas, where the porters slept, and approached our own bright orange tents, the sky pulled back her shroud and we found ourselves on top off the world. We had arrived. At 18,800 feet, Crater Camp was stunning, and desolate. A wasteland of ash and volcanic rock. Thanks to our early morning start, we strolled into camp around high noon. Over the last six days, the weather on the mountain had been anything but static, but up here, it flowed as easily as waves on the open ocean. With so little atmosphere to trap in the heat or protect from the Sun’s fire, temperatures swung violently. When the Sun was out it burned exposed skin, and turned my face flush, but every time a passing cloud sailed over the mountain, the temperature would plummet and I’d start to shiver.
Once at camp, while the other climbers went to lay down in the comfort of their tents, I pulled up the first chair I could find. My skin was roasting from the equatorial Sun, but the discomfort it brought was an easily forgotten. It felt good to be warm. I sat staring at the ash and ice with a faint smile edged across my face, the look of satisfaction. My doubts about this place and what it would mean to me were gone. After the day’s struggle and the world that surrounded me, Kilimanjaro had lived up to that spectacular story I told myself all those years before.
Crater Camp lies five hundred feet below the summit, and after marching up the Breach, that’s where you pitch your tent. But camping is dangerous, even going to the bathroom can kill you. After a day’s climb, when the others retreated to their tents, I’d often seek out Samia. I liked speaking to him alone, asking about his life, hearing his stories. Especially the ones he prefer not to share with the group. Up at Crater Camp was no different.
“Samia,” I said. “Tell me about this camp. How does the altitude effect people? What’s the worst you’ve seen?” My curiosity was one part academic, and one part self interest.
“It’s hard, you know,” he said in his soft voice. “Everybody different.”
“Do people die up here?”
“Yes. Yes, it happens. I had someone die a few years ago. It was very sad. I liked him a lot, a very nice man.”
“How did it happen?”
“He left his tent in the night, but there’s no oxygen up here, you know. He opened his eyes, got up and left the tent and then he collapsed right outside . You see, you got to breathe a little, get the oxygen in you, and then you start to move. He collapsed and we found him in the morning. It was a so sad, he was such a nice man...yes, it was a very sad thing.” After that it was clear to me: man was not meant to be here.
I took note of this piece of important information, and let him go rest a little and avoid my prying questions. While everyone was hidden in away their tents, I skipped around the campsite trying to find good patches of sun and boulders I could climb.
For lunch we had my favorite meal in the rotation: grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, and a watery soup that served as the perfect side-kick. There were mangos and sweets spread out across the table, but the usual tray of meat was intentionally absent. At this elevation, meat was too hard to digest. I was more than happy with just grilled cheese. Tearing off bits of sandwich and submerging piece into the broth, I asked Samia to take me on a hike, and tried to drum up additional interest among my companions. I had my heart set on seeing the Ash Pit, and no one was going to tell me otherwise.
For thousands of years, lava flowing up from the center of the earth spilled out onto the land, over and over again, and as it did, Kilimanjaro stretched into the sky. The Western Breach gets its very name from the hole it makes in the crater's western wall. And although presently sleeping, the mountain still had a beating heart.
We left for Ash Pit promptly after lunch as I had managed to drum up full attendance among our three other climbers. But only ten minutes in, the hike had already proved exhausting, and although our destination sat as clear as day ahead of us, we were learning it was much further than it looked. As we moved toward the slope of the Pit we came across three Brits in brightly colored mountain suits heading in the opposite direction. The two leading the way, who I took to be the client adventurers, were just as colorful as their jackets and if had I met them anywhere else in the world, I would have assumed they’d recently stumbled out of some pub and were enroute to the next watering hole. When we stopped for a word, it turned into them telling us all about their day and this new route they had found. The third man however, trailed by a few dozen paces and did not draw attention to himself. While us Americans talked to the red blooded Englishmen, Samia engaged the quiet one hanging back. Pretty soon they were hugging each other and although he was not African himself, I could hear them chatting away in Swahili. When we said our farewells, Samia trotted over to us with a smile spreading wide across his face.
“Wow I can’t believe it,” he said beaming and panting, “That was ‘so-and-so.’ That is really something. They must have paid good money to get him!” I couldn't recall the name, but he was, apparently, a mountaineer of some note. “I asked him about the route, I said, you know that’s one of NOLS’. That isn’t new.” He started laughing. “He knows. That is what I'm saying when I talk to him in Swahili, so the others couldn't hear.”
It was at this juncture that my mother took advantage in the pause to think over our current endeavor and decided it was not for her and that she would be turning back. One to never turn down a challenge, she let out a forced laugh and shouted “No thank you! I’m done for today.” Diane defected as well. Peeling off from our group, they took the two porters with them, making a slight detour on the way back to climb on one of the malnourished glaciers near camp. Clay, Samia, and I continued.
Those five hundred meters up the loose slopes of the Ash Pit were the hardest of day. The ash fell away beneath my feet as I tried to push against it, like grains of sand slipping out of a closed fist. But the effort was worth it, for when we made it to the top, we looked down into the eye of the Kilimanjaro. Despite sharp winds whipping across the summit, the smell of sulfur clung to air leaving no doubt that life boiled within the mountain. On the far side of the pit, the Northern Ice Field, the mountain’s largest glacier, layered like a wedding cake, glittered in the sharp Sun. This was the apex of my trip, the real summit. There was no sign and no one else to be seen. Nor people taking selfies nor cameras other than the one I had in my pocket. We stayed there a moment. I looked out across the wind-burnt ash to where a ring of white clouds surrounded the mountain like a halo. There were no leaves to rustle in the breeze, there was no life, there was no shelter from the elements. It was cold and sterile and utterly without comfort. The heavens are not meant for the living.
After a few minutes the weather looked to change, and we were far from camp. We galloped down the slopes of the Pit, lunging into each step so that we slid downhill off the ashen mound. The trip back was brief compared to the trip up, and on our way we explored a shrinking block of ice, the Furtwangler Glacier. I wanted to see the snows of Kilimanjaro before they were gone, but sadly they already are, and the ice that remains is in full retreat. They say in twenty years, the Furtwangler will be gone, and the Arrow Glacier as well. Walking along its edge, I traced my hand along its white wall, my fingers dipping into each bump and smooth hole chiseled away by years of wind and warmer temperature. It made me sad thinking about how the mountain would look without them, and how much of its majesty might be lost.
Exhausted and invigorated we lumbered back to camp. Our arrival coincided with that of the other half of our climbing group, and as we approached we could see their outlines struggling to finish the final steps, but before we could say hello, they had collapsed onto their tents. The Breach had taken it’s toll. We donated what sugar gels, stroopwafels, any energy-rich food we could spare.
Our dinner was early and not well attended. Two of our seven climbers were too sick to join us in the dining tent. The jubilant vibe we shared during lunch had turned somber as we learned details of the others’ day on the Breach. Whether an informed opinion or not, I was worried that they wouldn’t last the night. Samia and Mhenia know best. They must see this all the time, I thought. But even if there was something wrong, they never would have said. Once the eating was done, we did not linger to talk. The cold was coming, and even though the Sun was still above the horizon when we fled into our tents. I wanted to be hunkered down before it arrived in force. Before I zipped up the tent flap, the cooks arrived with bottles filled with boiling water to stuff into our sleeping bags to keep warm into the night. Shivering, I kept my jacket zipped tight, and maneuvered into my bag contemplating whether or not to wear it to bed. I’ll just get a little warm, I told myself, but before I could I was asleep. I woke only once during the night. Before I got up, I took in a minute’s worth of deep breaths, snatching what oxygen I could out of the thin air. Even so, I was winded before I left the tent. I spent no extra time muddling about in the biting cold, save one good glance across the moonlit summit. My parka still on from dinner, I quickly returned to my sleeping back, and drifted off.
I rose for good just before the Sun. The ice that coated the tent, forming during the night, cracked and splintered as I swung open the flap and fell down onto my back as I finessed my way out into the dawn. The moment I was clear of the entryway, I started a series of incessant movements, like someone waiting in line for the bathroom. Jumping, squatting, doing anything to get warm, waiting eagerly for the Sun to pierce the horizon.
Unlike the night before, all the climbers made to breakfast, and at 7AM, after a bowl of gruel, we started climbing the final five hundred feet to the summit. As we entered the last shadow of Kilimanjaro cast by the summit wall, my toes again went numb, but after less than an hour of heavy breathing we were there. I told Samia I wanted a picture of him, the champion of Kilimanjaro, posing like Usain Bolt. However, he called others to join him, and somehow the ostentatious pose of victory deteriorated into what looked more like a dance number from the Spice Girls reunion tour. I took the picture anyway. Holding on to the famous sign, my mother and I got our own summit shot, triumphant. And of course, never one to let a silly moment to escape, I stripped off my hat, wool buff, gloves and sunglasses, and in their place slid into a Lululemon headband. Less than a month past, I had organized an office gift-exchange, and after all the trades and steals were made I had lost my beloved zen garden and been stuck with this useless accessory. I sat at the end of the conference table wearing my consolation prize, deciding whether or not the only gift left, a winter hat meant to look like a tiger’s face, was worth stealing. While deep in deliberation, my coworkers shouted out that I looked identical to Ben Stiller in Zoolander. I then knew that it was my destiny to bring that headband to the top of Kilimanjaro, and strike a pose of my own. My mom didn’t get it. At 19,340, the wind and cold digging into my skin I yelled, “Mom, would you just take the damn picture already!”
But despite the photo-ops and social media gold I now had sitting in my pocket, waiting to be deployed to my various online profiles, what should have been a pure moment of victory and pride was lacking. Just like I had feared, the summit was not a place of pure elation. As various assortments of people took pictures with the sign, I looked North, across the crater below, toward the Ash Pit and the Northern Ice Field. That was why I came to the mountain: I came to see its snows. A place most climbers only see from a distance, and for only twenty minutes. But not me. Because of the route we took and extra nights in the cold, I spent an entire afternoon exploring that magnificent place. I didn’t climb the mountain to prove I could do it or to have a photo-op, I wanted to walk in the House of God, spend a night in the heavens, and have a proper challenge to make the moment that much sweeter. Standing in front of that sign felt like a cliche; heaving my way up walls of stone, and looking over the lip of the great Ash Pit was anything but. As far as I’m concerned, the day I summited Mount Kilimanjaro, was the day I climbed the Western Breach.
My favorite shot