UPDATE: At 9:13 on 24th August we reached Uhuru Peak, the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro!! After 5 days of trekking 50km to Basecamp, we woke at 11pm for our final ascent from 4,600m to the 5,900m peak. 

Summit night was mentally and physically the toughest challenge any of us have ever undertaken. As we walked through the early hours of the morning we had people struggling with stomach issues, sickness and on the verge of passing out, not to mention the constant headaches and difficulty breathing - all consequences of being at such high altitude.   

As the sun came up, we reached the crater rim (Gillman’s Point - 5,700m). At that altitude it takes a tremendous effort just to put one foot in front of the other and we had to keep this up for another two hours in the wind and snow to reach the final peak. 

We passed group after group of trekkers turning back, due to both the harsh conditions and extreme altitude. But none of us were ever going to give up...

With a helping hand from Dad, we persisted and achieved our ultimate goal.

Thanks to everyone who has already donated. Having your support helped motivate us to keep on going when things got tough.  

For anyone considering taking on this challenge; it was really worthwhile and I can thoroughly recommend Team Kilimanjaro and the amazing support team who guided us through this journey.  

Our story:

On 24^th August 2017, we lost a very special man – the best father and grandad that anyone could wish for; a man who lived his life quietly and without pretension, but whose devotion to his family has left a gaping wound, slow to heal.

Always an active man, who found it difficult to sit still, Dad taught all his grandchildren to ride bikes, play football, cricket, rugby, tennis, whatever their sport of preference might be; he ran the London Marathon at the age of 66; travelled the country to see his grandsons compete in athletics championships, rugby and football matches and his  granddaughters perform in dance or music shows; and was still trying to keep up with boisterous games of football and cricket in the back garden well into his late 70s!

With great reluctance, when the aches and pains and loss of balance simply couldn’t be put down to the ageing process alone, Dad gave into medical intervention and was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Although this inevitably slowed him down, he still battled through the increasing daily pain to live as active a life as possible, an unfortunate accident, resulting in a broken hip while visiting the First World War Battlefields, finally putting paid to the last of his reduced mobility. With that came other problems related to the Rheumatoid Arthritis, principally breathing issues, and less than a year later, Dad contracted Pneumonia and Sepsis. A fighter to the end, he battled against the odds for six weeks longer than we were told to expect, but lost his fight in my home, surrounded to the end by his loving family, on Thursday 24^th August 2017.

Knowing that he didn’t have long left with us, and discussing our life without him, Dad made us promise to keep smiling, to talk of him with happiness and laughter, and most of all, to ensure that we achieved, in our lives, all our greatest desires. In conversation, days before he left us, the subject of Mount Kilimanjaro arose, a couple of us, almost jokingly, saying that we’d love to have a go at climbing it. Dad, having always had a love of hiking, conquering most of the Lakeland High Fells over the years, asked us to promise that we would do what we could to make it happen and that he would even give us a helping hand up to the top!

So it is that on 19^th August this year, six of us will embark on the biggest challenge of our lives – to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest freestanding mountain in the world with the aim of reaching the summit on 24^th August 2019, the second anniversary of Dad’s death.

The Wilson Kilimanjaro Team consist of me, Joanne, together with my sons, Matthew and his girlfriend Agne, Nicholas and Dominic (all in their 20s) and my youngest daughter Ciara (a mere 13 years old!). As well as approaching a milestone birthday, I also have severe osteoarthritis in both knees, making the venture a little more challenging for me, which is why serious training is already well underway! We are determined to summit together, as a team, at dawn on Saturday 24th August…….and with Dad by our side, how could we fail?

Thank you for any donations that you feel able to give for this excellent charity. Hopefully, any money raised will help to spare the suffering of loved ones ravaged by this disease and the pain of families bereaved as a result.