The high sight expedition - A little human wear & tear!
The High Sight Expedition was a joint South African / Australian adventure which was set up by my son, Stephen, who is now living in Brisbane, Australia. Planning started in late 2007 with the aim of the expedition being to provide the eyes and guides for up to 14 blind people from around the world whose dream it was to climb Kilimanjaro - the highest mountain in Africa, close to 20 000 feet above sea level.
The word was spread through various organisations for the blind, friends and contacts and gradually a team of interested people emerged. To some, climbing Kilimanjaro had already been a dream looking for a trigger - to others, this sounded like a great adventure - let's do it!
The work then really started - how much would it cost? When would we do it? How fit would we have to be? What kit would we need to cope with the cold? Would there be snow and ice? Everybody's secret doubt - am I up to such a challenge? Could I die on this mountain?
Stick in a bunch of blind people from all around the world & you add another dimension to all these questions asked by any aspiring adventurer...
Steve and I had done Kilimanjaro together some years ago - we could deal with some of these issues. Debbie Bouwer, of Nomadic Adventures, herself an experienced Kili climber, took us under her wing & put it all together for us. Quotes, dates, kit lists, training schedules then swanped cyberspace when she got going and, by the end of 2008, we had an expedition!!!
Everyone would meet up in the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa on 10 March 2009 for 2 days final altitude training, leave for Kilimanjaro on Friday 13 March and summit at dawn on Wednesday 18 March. Anyway, that was the plan - time & preparation would tell!
Act 1, Scene 1, 10 pm on Tuesday 10 March - the bar at National Heritage Nature Park, Drakensberg...
The 25 members of the High Sight Expedition have finally met - some after many, many hours of travel. We have 8 blind people from Australia, South Africa, New Zealand & Belgium - all very excited about the days ahead! Half of the South African team are school pupils - five boys from the Westville Boys High School - Steve's old school - as well as my 14 year old daughter, Andrea, from Hillcrest High! The Aussies seem to be nice folk, but the blokes are much louder than the ladies - perhaps they have had more beer? Severine Reynard - one of our 3 blind lady climbers - all the way from Belgium - is such a tiny, quiet person - how will she be on the mountain? (Little did we know - dynamite comes in small packages!) And so the night sped by - what kit do we still need? Are you going to take pills to prevent altitude sickness? Do we really need to take our own toilet paper? Will our water bottles really freeze on summit night? Are there any beers left?
When everyone finally hit the sack, Steve and I heaved a huge sigh of relief - it had been a logistical nightmare getting everyone together - boots and all! Tomorrow would see us all getting a little stress on the hearts & lungs - a little oxygen fright is necessary for the bod before trying to survive on the thin air at the top of of Kilimanjaro...
Wednesday & Thursday passed in a blur - a lot of hard walking in the beautiful mountains with some game viewing, trout fishing & much, much team building taking place - how important this was to prove on summit night!
Those of us who wanted to sleep were in bed early on Thursday night - we were leaving by bus at midnight for the 7 hour drive to Johannesburg to catch our flight to Tanzania. Some of us were sending E-mails & sorting out kit instead of sleeping - do we ever learn?
Steve and I spent that time together preparing the technical kit. While many of our sighted team members had cameras and videos, I was keen on testing some equipment for the blind. I was going to test the Trekker Breeze - the first talking GPS - at real altitude and going to record interviews with team members using the Victor Stream - a mp3 digital talking book player/recorder for the blind - believing that puffing and panting is more realistic when you can hear it as opposed to seeing it on a picture... We had also been loaned a very potent and small laptop - The Webbook - on which we were going to download photographs, write a daily diary and hopefully email our updates as we went up the mountain. We needed to keep the batteries warm, the solar panels safe and ensure the kit would work throughout the trip and that nothing bust if we stumbled.
Act 1 Scene 2 - Departure for Kilimanjaro.
We flew from Oliver Tambo airport, Johannesburg, at 10am on Friday 13th after a seven hour bus drive from the berg. We had a 4 hour flight to Nairobi where we had a short stop-over and explored the shops, then an hour flight to Kilimanjaro airport - followed by yet another bus drive to Springlands Hotel in Moshe! After a very late supper, followed by a short briefing from our chief guide, Juma, we finally, finally got our heads down after an incredibly long day!
An early start - another bus trip to the park gates where we met our porters and guides. After signing in, sharing out all the basic kit, food, etc, we passed into the Kilimanjaro National Park - with well over 70 in the whole expedition, was this how David Livingstone felt in the old days?
Act 2 Scene 1 - The Climb
We started walking on the route through the rain forest and before long, the rain set in and began to filter through the canopy of branches & leaves that often met right over our heads - we had to wear our rain suits & felt good that we had taken advice at the hotel & wrapped our packs in thick plastic - who needs a wet sleeping bag at night? We were constantly being told about the beauty of the lush rainforest with breathtaking sights which included streams and avenues created by tall moss covered trees which surrounded us. In the trees above us, some Columbus monkeys leapt from branch to branch foraging whilst their calls echoed through the forest. As we climbed higher, the forest gradually thinned - the once moss covered trees had now become bare & more light filtered through.
I recall that this first day was around 12 kilometres - the going was pretty slow & the rocks & slippery tree roots made it tough for us blindies!
We were all pretty bushed when we finally stumbled into Marambo Camp - after all, we had been travelling for 21 hours the previous day!
Day 2 saw us finally break through the rain forest and the vegetation changed quickly from sparse trees to light scrubland with bunches of ankle high grass. The clouds rolled in early on and we were constantly putting our rain jackets on and taking them off again. The clouds transformed the landscape into a misty, chilly, mysterious environment and our visibility was reduced to less than 50 metres in some areas - anyway, that was what the sighted folk said....
We passed 3000m ASL and after a stop for lunch, everyone started to feel the altitude. Breathing got heavier, strides got shorter and conversation decreased. A few people experienced light headaches but we all pushed on to Horombo camp. During the day, many of the sighted climbers took turns in guiding the blind climbers and with only a few falls and scratches, everyone did wonderfully. A few sighted climbers even took a leap of faith and tried walking blindfolded while being guided along the path. It was an exercise in trust and communication and gave many of the sighted climbers an insight into what we were experiencing. While this leg was not as steep & slippery as the previous day, it was just as long & seemed to have literally thousands of narrow gullies to divert water & twist ankles - much swearing from all the blindies!!
We arrived at Horombo camp - 3 720 metres - shortly after 4pm and after having a hot drink & fresh popcorn - seemingly a mountain delicacy - we all retired to our cabins for some much deserved rest before supper!
While we had all been warned that altitude sickness could affect any of us during the climb, none of us really believed that we would get it, seeing as we had done lots of preparation for the climb. Consequently some of the team were perturbed to see a person from another team on a one-wheeled stretcher being rushed down the mountain at high speed as we were relaxing at the camp. It brought it home to us that this was a very big mountain and we still had to ascend over two kilometers in height before getting to the top. At our briefing that night we decided that since some of our sighted guides had become pretty tired from the previous two daysleading, we would change guides around and do a fairly short acclimatisation day on the morrow.
Day 3 was cold and crisp and we only went as far as Zebra rocks - just overfour thousand metres. This allowed our bodies time to adjust to the altitude and lessened the chance of altitude sickness than if we had gone straight up. After lunch we went back Horombo camp with everybody invigorated and happy.
Day 4 was going to be the start of the tough stuff! We had to walk from the Horombo camp to Kibo hut, a nine kilometer trek which took us up to 4 700 metres. The terrain here was barren and alpine desert as we were walking on the saddle between two Volcanoes - Mawenzi and Kibo. The temperature had gradually dropped to freezing point and our breathing had become more and more laboured. We reached Kibo in the afternoon and rested until dinner.
Final Ascent: We started at 11pm in the bitter cold, trudging seven hours up a steep slope covered in loose scree and large rocks. This, as everyone knew, was the really tough part - it was very cold with a biting wind & the path just zig zagged on forever with no end in sight! While it got steeper & colder, the worst of it was the rocks that we literally had to scramble up at times in the last hour before the crater rim - Gilman's Point - how we really, really cursed the name - we just never got there! Fromthat point, we still had two kilometers to walk for the final two hundred metres ascent to Uhuru Peak - just under 5 900 metres! A 200 metre climb over only 2 kilometres should have been a "walk in the park", but it was well below zero & we just couldn't breathe! Everybody was very, very tired, cold, partially brain dead and just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. At this altitude, there is only 58% of the oxygen in the air compared to sea level, so for every two steps you would normally take, you only have breath for one and have to literally stop after every twenty steps to catch your breath. The going here was not easy for us blind folk with ice and slippery rocks just waiting to snag our dragging feet. When we finally made Uhuru peak - after over 2 hours of this slog along the crater rim - the others described the most magnificent sights of the Glaciers greeting us as the sun rose on the summit. It's difficult to explain the blend of weariness and excitement that we were all experiencing in different amounts. I personally found the photo sessions went on for an eternity, all I wanted to do was turn around and find some thicker air to breathe.
Act 2 Scene 2 Going down... down... down...
8am Day 5: I think its fair to say that the walk down to Kibo Hut is murder for blind people. Stepping down off rocks and sliding down the loose scree is almost enough to make you cry. I didn't fall once on the ascent, but fell countless times on the way down the scree - some five kilometres of treacherous, very steep slippery stuff! We were all back again at Kibo hut by lunchtime with a feeling of quiet, tired, happiness throughout. We were sad to hear that Rusty, one of our blind SA climbers, had turned back at Gilman's point - still a huge achievement. Some hot soup and a warm sleeping bag were all we needed. We had been on the go all night!
Getting up after only three hours rest and being told that it was snowing outside was met with mixed feelings - going out into snow was the last thing I wanted to do - a feeling shared by many. However once we were up and going it was absolutely amazing! Being pelted with snow and a strong wind while hearing how the landscape had changed from the lava colours to white with the black rocks punctuating the snow was amazing. It took us three hours to travel the nine kilometers back to Horombo camp and most of us jumped straight into our sleeping bags - blow supper, we weren't getting up again. We had just gone from 3700m to 5900m and back again in 34 hours - a total distance of 32 kilometres with no sleep.
Day 6&7: The return to the park gates over the next two days was not easy - walking downhill with tired legs - and you can't see - keeps you on your toes - you definitely can't daydream! But, with spirits high after having conquered Kilimanjaro, nothing could put us down.
Act 3 scene 1: Warm tropical night at Springlands hotel, Moshe
A night to remember! After supper, and the presentation of our official certificates we sat outside around the swimming pool with palm trees rattling in a warm wind! Had we really been freezing just three nights ago? We spent hours sharing our feelings - and much red wine - about the whole trip and the relationships that had been born through the common experience of getting to the top. All of us had made it to the rim of the crater & 24 had summited - a really admirable feat! I have no doubt that our success was totally due to the preparation & team building before we left - the support for each other was pretty unique! (We were told later that close to half the folk who went up the day after us didn't summit - while it was put down to "probably personal anxiety" by our head guide, I know that our strength came from our support for each other)...
I recorded everyone's impressions of the whole expedition on my faithful Stream that night. To me, a memory more fitting than the thousands of photographs taken. Our equipment had worked well throughout the whole trip - I sometimes had to fight for the right to recharge the Breeze and the Stream from the solar panels' batteries because most of the blooming kids wanted to charge their own music players and cell phones!!! We all appreciated the generosity of Humanware and Elonex for sponsoring the Victor Stream recorder, talking GPS & laptop which stood the test of the dust, wind and extreme cold.
In looking back, was it just about the climb? No. It was about the friendships that developed and the personal growth we achieved by knowing that we had, after the all the dust had settled, made it to the top of Africa's mightiest mountain.
Together, we had made it!
Geoff Hilton-Barber.
Shongweni, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.
April 2009.
