Thursday September 25, 2003
We spent as much time sleeping as possible yesterday afternoon (not very much). We had dinner early, around 5 pm. I could hardly eat anything. We rested in our tent until midnight, then had some tea and cookies, and we were off.
The climb started out well, though we had headaches and a touch of nausea. We felt strong and caught up to other climbers who had left earlier. But about half an hour into our climb, it started to fall apart. Chad began vomiting every hour or so. I began dry heaving. We were miserable. All of this in the freezing cold and pitch black. My headlamp didn’t even go 20 minutes before it broke.
Somehow Chad pulled through and we kept going. We missed the sunrise from Gilman’s Point, but we saw it from a little further down on the mountain.
We finally did make it to Gilman’s around 7 am. At that point I was glad to at least know I would be getting a certificate from the park for getting to the crater rim, even if it wasn’t the true summit, since it had seemed like such a long shot just a few hours earlier.
We practically had to be dragged to Gilman’s – we would only take 2 or 3 steps at a time before stopping to rest – but we made it.
Once we got there, we sat down to have something to eat and drink. Stephen had brought a thermos of hot water for us which was wonderful! Somehow we got our second wind, and Chad decided he wanted to push on to Uhuru.
I was still exhausted, and said I would maybe go just a little ways further. That ‘little ways’ kept stretching out further and further. The scenery was spectacular – glaciers ringed the crater rim and we could hear the ice calving in the sun.
We could also see down into the ancient volcano’s ash pit. By the time we were close to Uhuru, we were completely exhausted again. We were so close, but completely sapped. Every time we crested a ridge I thought that was the final one, but it wasn’t. When we were only 5 or 10 minutes away from the peak, I sat down and almost started to cry, thinking I just couldn’t do it. And Chad was in similar shape. I hadn’t eaten enough the previous day to get me through this, and Chad had thrown up everything that he had eaten.
Somehow, we got there. We laughed and cried and hugged and took photos. At that altitude though, you just can’t think straight. We were pretty out of it. We turned around and started to high tail it down the mountain.
By the time we got back to Gilman’s Point 1.5 hours later, Chad was in bad shape. He was stumbling and saying some things that were incoherent. Even with the use of a hiking pole, he was having a hard time staying on his feet. It was fairly dangerous for him to be like that, since the ground was all gravel and boulders, and quite steep. Finally Stephen and Niklas stepped in. They each hooked one of Chad’s arms around their shoulders and essentially slid him down the steep scree slope at breakneck pace. I came down behind them; another 2 hours of hiking.
By the time I reached Kibo Hut, Chad was sleeping in our tent. I got a round of congratulations from our crew and then went to bed myself. We slept for about an hour, then had lunch, and still had to pack up camp and walk down to the Horombo Huts, about 3 more hours away.
Chad was well enough to make it on his own by then. Luckily the ground was pretty flat and the path was wide and sloped gently. Arriving at Horombo Huts, we ate dinner in the dark and went right to bed.
Cook Family Travels 