Mission accomplished!!!
At 9am on September 9th, we reached Uhuru Peak, the highest point on Kilimanjaro, standing at 5895m. Now we've done it, it is an excellent achievement, despite the nausea, headaches, loss of appetite & not being able to breathe properly even when standing still.
We followed the Rongai route taking 6 days to reach the summit. The first 3 days were long, walking up to 7 hours a day, but nothing too strenuous. The pace was steady, trying to get us acclimatised to the higher altitudes. By the second day, the views of the summit were fantastic, but a slightly daunting sight! On the third day, we climbed above cloud level which was beautiful, especially at sunrise.
The real hard work started on day 4. After reached base camp in the afternoon, we had an early tea, then went straight to bed, only to be woken again at 10.30pm for breakfast!! We started the summit climb at 11.30pm that night, walking through the hours of darkness, reaching the crater rim at sunrise. Here, even breathing is hard work! It's only a further 200m higher over 1.5km to the summit from there, but it's the hardest walk any of us have ever done. Just walking 50m is exhausting and our hearts were pounding as though they were going to explode!
We made it finally & it was definately worth it. The views were spectacular, beautiful glaciers & a rather eerie, desolate crater. We didn't stay long at the top as our guides were keen to return us to a land with more oxygen and soon we started the long descent, taking a further 6 hours to reach our camp for the night, a total of 15 hours walking that day!
It was something we're both proud of doing, but if asked whether we'd do something similar again, Andrew's response is a rather certain 'NO', mine is 'well....maybe!!'
We would like to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has been so kind in sponsoring us so far. If anyone would still like to donate, the links are below for our three chosen charities:
Tiger Awareness - click ' Donate Now'
The Institute for Cancer Research - www.justgiving.com/kiliclimb-cancerresearch
The British Red Cross Society - www.justgiving.com/kiliclimb-redcross
You can donate towards the Tiger Awareness on this page. Once you donate, JustGiving will send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation.
If you prefer to donate to either of the other 2 charities, please click on the links above.
We've put what photos we can on this website, but if you want to see more, they'll be going on our facebook pages soon once we've recovered from having to go back to work!
