Kilimanjaro part 1: The Shira Plateau

Leaving the deep jungle and our gorilla friends, our next stop was the rooftop of the continent.

You go out on a limb any time you ask someone to walk with you for eight days nearly four miles vertically into the sky, to altitudes where normal hearts and lungs sputter and choke. I tactfully leveraged Jen’s proclivity for walking up things, and popped the question: “Jen, will you climb Kilimanjaro with me?” The answer was yes. Neither of us knew what we were getting into.

Why do we climb a mountain? Some people (George Mallory) say “because it’s there” (he later died trying to summit Everest). To us it is more than that. Mountains test you mentally, push you physically or physiologically, and usually have nice views.

Miss Kilimanjaro (it’s a girl), the rooftop of Africa, is the highest freestanding mountain at 19,341 feet high. We arrived via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, catching a glimpse of her from the airplane window, the pilot commenting how rare it was to see the summit so clearly.Our luck continued with more clear skies on our ride into Moshi, giving us a nice, though intmidating, view of our goal. The next morning, we met our guide, Mathayo, and the rest our crew, and took a long, bumpy van ride to the Lemosho gate. Here we are, all innocent, with no idea what we were in for.
There are a handful of routes to take up Kilimanjaro. After some deliberation, we chose Lemosho as it is supposed to be one of the most scenic, and has the highest summit success rate as it is by far the longest route, helping the body acclimatize to low oxygen.

Most tour companies recommend it as an 8 day trek, but Jesse made an executive decision and booked it for 7 days. Jen had some trepidation but went along with it.

On day 1, we started off in the afternoon – an easy 7 km stroll through the forest, ending at our first camp, Mti Mkubwa.We saw several monkeys, including this guy, who was quite habituated to people and lurked around camp most of the night…and a shyer and cuddlier blue monkey.Decision #1: At dinner, Mathayo laid out the options for making the typical 8 day Lemosho climb into 7 days: We could do the long hike early and stay at Shira 2 on the second night, or the long hike through to Barrafu (base camp) the night before summit day. We chose to make our longer day at lower elevation, and prepared for a double day’s worth of hiking to Shira 2.We climbed through the rainforest…to the low alpine zone, with sparser and lower vegetation, giving us a nice view of our path up the Elephant’s back…which was rewarded by a spectacular view of our end destination, Kibo peak, over the Shira plateau.The Shira plateau used to be a volcanic peak like Kibo, but collapsed over a million years ago. On the way between Shira 1 and 2 camp one of the porters, Michael, came down with a debilitating case of muscle cramps. His load was split between the other porters, and despite vigorous protests, Jesse shouldered one of the tents too.We were extremely lucky with weather and had amazing views of the peak the whole day, with an occasional fluffy cloud passing through.We arrived at Shira camp relatively early and feeling great, despite the altitude (12,800 ft).We saw a beautiful clear sunset and were graced with a view of neighboring Mount Meru.In the morning, we took a group photo with the whole team (including Michael – he was feeling better and continued on): head guide Mathayo, assistant guide Alkard, cook Nicodemas, waiter/porter Chrizostom, and porters Frank, Michael, Roman, Manase, Sadiki, Baraka, and Christopher.Next up – more ups and downs and decision #2…