Mawenzi Peak, viewed from Gilman's Point on Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
‘Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves’ – George Mallory
Although neither in the same continent, nor the same league, the above was something I began to understand a little at around 3,500m above sea level on the side of Mt Kilimanjaro in 2008. I was hiking one of the easier routes to the summit. As someone who spent her younger years hiding away in books and was only just discovering that she possessed a respectable amount of physical ability, hiking Kili was challenging enough. This was going to be a fight that I didn’t want to lose - especially halfway up the mountain. I looked up to see Uhuru Peak glaring icily down at me through the clouds. It had been far away for a long time but suddenly, three days into the hike, I felt I could reach out and touch it. So it was me against the mountain – and every expectation I had of myself.
Over the next few days I fought growing symptoms of altitude sickness and later the prospect of failure, which was closing in around me. People far fitter and more experienced than me were turning back. The night we spent at the base camp was so tense that none of us sharing that bunk room spoke to each other, so self-absorbed were we in our own personal fears of feeling sick and not making it to the top. It's hard to describe now, in a more rational setting, what that desperation to get to the top feels like and why it's suddenly the most important thing in the world.
In the end the credit goes to my guide, Hamisi for getting me up there. He was unfazed – he had seen it all before. As I dragged myself up the crater, he made me sugary tea, jostled me and cajoled me and at one point even pulled me up over a couple of the rocks. All around me were bodies of people, crawling and hauling themselves over boulders. Finally, I reached the roof of Africa and stood in the snows of Kilimanjaro just as the dawn broke over the Serengeti, though we were so high up I couldn’t see much other than the dimly glowing horizon and I couldn't feel much other than the icy air buffeting me. I was incredibly cold (not long out of uni, rather unwisely I’d gone for cheap gear due to lack of funds) and could no longer feel my feet. By this point the altitude sickness had got so bad that my head felt it would crack and I felt a bit sick. So I made the decision then and there to go down rather than carry on to Uhuru Peak, the highest point of the crater – although it was just 300m higher, it was at least another hour away. As I ‘skiied’ down the volcanic shingle, the sun moved higher, growing stronger and warming me and I began to feel elated as I realised what I’d managed to do.
So why on earth put yourself through this?
Quite simply, I enjoyed the walk. One minute you can be hiking in humid rainforest, the next across misty moorland or through desert-like conditions like the surface of Mars. It was beautiful. I chatted to Hamisi who taught me Swahili (my parents grew up in Kenya and sometimes spoke it to me as a kid, so it was fun to compare and learn more). I met other trekkers on the way up, each with their own stories – a German couple and their son who was due to go to medical school, an Italian couple who’d trekked in Bhutan.
But I suppose, in the end, this is another example of projecting your own, sticky issues onto nature, hoping for resolution. I went there and proved something to myself, without the mountain saying a word to me. I can only hope I tried to do it with respect to the mountain, to those who helped me get up it and to my own limitations.