Day 7 - Summit Day!
Getting Ready to Go. Our guides: Manny (left) and Singha (Center) along with the Camp Waiter, Juve are all set to go at 12:15am.
Looking back down the trail, we can see a train of hiker's follow us and the city of Moshi far below.
Just starting the trek downward as the sun slowly rises.
The reality of heading down starts to sink in. The views were incredible, but as the elation of getting to the summit fades, we started to realize the amount of work we needed to yet to get down.
After Barafu Camp we were treated to a little flat land. It didn't last but it was welcome.
Map of our ascent and decent
The routine we've gotten into for the evenings was broken pre-summit day. Our normal, dinner at 6:00pm, in the tent and reading by 7:30pm and likely asleep or at least lights out at 8pm was pushed back even earlier on summit eve. I was in my sleeping bag by 6:30pm attempting to read a few pages of Marcus Aurelius' book, Meditations, but really just staring at the words and thinking about whether or not I really can do this climb.
We were to be woken up at 11:30, but Mike's alarm inadvertently went off at 11am. He was in the tent next to me, but he had noise canceling headphones on and I did not. With likely only 2 hours of sleep, we were getting ready for the summit push. No coffee in bed today, but a quick snack in the dining tent after we geared up and we were off. We were told to expect near zero temps (Fahrenheit) and stiff winds so layer up we did. As you may have read elsewhere, the summit push is a slow, methodical effort so you do struggle to stay warm. You're breathing heavy but you're not sweating or generating a lot of extra heat.
Both likely due to fear and lack of sleep, the hike started off very surreal. Your vision was limited to the person's feet in front of you and a small circumference around them illuminated by your headlamp. The night reduces your vision and and use just focus on the path unveiled in the shadows in front of you. We would take breaks every 20 - 30 minutes. I was trying to remember to keep drinking fluids. Glancing up during the breaks, the mountain continued to loom rather large above us and I didn't seem to gauge any progress for the first few hours.
We did pass a few other parties. Earlier as we were getting ready to go, we saw quite a few parties go past our tents. They got up even earlier than us and were coming from Barafu camp about an hour below our tents at Kosovo Camp. That gave us a distinct advantage. The other advantage I didn't realize until Summit day is being a small group of two, we moved at our pace and Mike and I seemed to go at a shared pace we were both comfortable with. You could see the larger groups getting rather strung out by the fitness levels and acclimatization of each member and they often needed to wait for the slower people in their party. Until today, I always appreciated any rest stop: catch your breath, take a drink, soak in the surroundings, but summit night was different. Within 5 minutes of each stop I was getting chilled, it was hard to stay out of the wind, and I was itching to keep going.
By 3:30am we had passed all the groups that started before us but that created a new problem. We were ascending faster than our guides thought we would. They had timed our start to get up to the top at dawn but were now tracking to get to the top noticeably before dawn. This "problem" was greeted with the realization in my head that we were going to make it. At that point, I knew for the first time that we were indeed going to get to the summit.
We attempted to slow our hike up, but the cold kept creeping in. We got to summit still in the dark with only one other group already there. Our guides suggested we wait till sunrise, but I was a hard no vote. I was cold and struggling to breath. While a picture in the sun sound great, heading down sounded even better. We opted to watch the sunrise as we were getting back to Stella Point.
Heading down brought me joy. I made it. No, together we made it. And I really felt one heck of an accomplishments. That lasted for a good half hour, but slowly the reality of heading down and the work involved in doing so started to creep in. We had spent 5.5 hours going 3 miles up to the summit, but now we had a 12km decent and a decent where we would give up 9000ft of elevation. It was steep going downhill with the last few kilometers going through a dry boulder strewn creek bed. As our guide, Manny confessed, "no one ever trains for the downhills.
When we finally got to Mweka Camp well over 12 hours after we started, I was never so happy to see my tent. The sun was out and the tents were stifling hot but I didn't' care. We made it and now we could get a rest! Both Mike and I fell asleep somewhere around 6:30pm that night and slept till 5:30am. It was the best sleep of the trip. Sleeping at 10,000 ft never felt so good!