To the Roof of Africa and beyond...

One of my lifes ambitions is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa and one of the worlds largest volcanoes. I mean its some achievement to climb it, so i did.

I was so lucky to have such a nice group and such a fantastic set of guides and porters, because i know i would never have made it to the top of the mountain without them.

The first 4 days were pretty easy. I was really lucky that i didn't suffer from altitude sickness at all, the food was really good and apart from it being a bit cold at night i was fine. We had pretty good walking weather and it was surprisingly warm considering we were walking above the clouds from 1700m - 4600m.

The penultimate day of our trek, was the day that we attempted the summit and boy was it tough. We started at midnight and walked in a zig zag up a 3km scree slope of a 1 in 3 gradient for 6 hours. - Its a lot harder than it sounds and i'm so glad i did it in the dark otherwise i would not have thought it possible. To make matters worth, once you pass 5200m, there is less than half the density of oxygen than there is at sea level, so its tough. Its basically like walking up a height of 3 empire state buildings with only one lung. The altitude finally got to me when i reached Jamaica rocks at 5400m, where i started vomitting, but luckily that was it.

I made it to the top at 8.15am on 11 July. The view of the glaciers up there was amazing, you just had to look beyond all the people keeling over and vomitting around you.

Descending the peak, Kibo was almost as tough as getting up it as it involve scree skiing down 3km, which is really tough on the calf muscles.- i was exhausted, but there was no rest for the wicked. after an early lunch, we had another 4 hours walking down hill to get to our last camp on kilimanjaro, which totalled 15 hours of walking that day.