Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.
We did it! all 10 of us in our group reached the top of Kilimanjaro, a day early!!
On the afternoon of day 3 sitting on a ridge above our camp at 4450 meters above sea level John, our Chief Guide announced he thought we were ready for our summit attempt at midnight the following day, that statement was met with a lot of nervous glancing around as this would mean us attempting to reach the top a day early!! However as John had been to the top of Kili over 300 times we thought he should know!!
After very little sleep that night we went back to top of the ridge and started to cross the plain to the egde of the crater. Early afternoon we reached 'School camp', our base camp for the summit attempt. A nervous few hours of attempted sleep and food followed until midnight when we started our climb to the top, exceptionally cold and very slowly we zig zaged across the volcanic scree until we saw the sun come up at 6.00am and then 2 hours later we reached the crater edge at 5600 meters called Gilman's Point. Only 2 hours to go!
After a brief stop we walked around the craters edge until finally at 10.00am we all reached the summit together at 5895 meters above sea level!! An extremely emotional moment!
I would like to thank all my fellow climbers as we did it together as a team and we all needed one another at one point or another and each and everyone of you for you support. Will I do it again? Not until the kids are old enough to carry me!!
Daniel is our nephew and my partner, myself and our four kids love him dearly. Daniel was born with a potentially life threatening heart condition that required an immediate operation, another operation recently and at least one more before his 5th birthday!
Daniel has had, and in the future will have, all his operations at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool. Whilst Daniel was at Alder Hey his Mum & Dad stayed at the Ronald McDonald house. This is an amazing place, Daniel's Mum & Dad and thousands of other Mum's & Dad's can stay, free of charge, at the Hospital and be with their kids throughout their entire stay at Alder Hey, can you imagine how that helps entire families cope with possibly the worst time of their lives??! Most of you are parents, just think what it would be like to have to leave your child at Hospital, alone, for any time at all, Ronald McDonald House means no one has too!
So please dig deep and donate now.
