THE WEIGHING

7/10/07

before heading out to kili's official national park boundary, the group's belongings must be weighed and distributed. we had three in our climbing party--myself, julia, and john.  as such, we had to have 1 lead guide and 2 assistant guides. the lead guide acts as the main path blazer, especially on the final ascent day. the assistant guides are primarily needed as a fail safe if anyone becomes hurt or too ill to continue. if one of us quit, an assistant guide could trek down the mountain with us while the others continue on.

in addition to the 3 guides, a reputable climbing crew will also have a cook who oversees all meals for us, the guides, and porters. with a party of now 7, you have to have a whole slew of porters to carry clothes, tenting, and food and water, etc.

kilimanjaro law has restrictions on how much weight each porter can carry. if a porter is forced to carry too much he can become exhausted and literally die from a whole host of accidents. all the porters' bags must be weighed, though you might not be aware of it. by comparison, john, juls and i were each carrying very little. and then there were the moments when you just thought you would die, and one of the guides would relieve you of your one tiny bag or camera to make you just that much lighter.


reminds me a bit of the weighing of souls. the whole "21 grams" theory-- that when we die, we loose 21 grams of weight, presumably, our soul.



we met all our porters and guides before we started. here john, as our leader, the baba (father/man) meets Ernest, our head guide, who will ultimately be responsible for our safety. he is responsible for evaluating our ability to continue up the mountain, an under appreciated skill. the symptoms of high altitude pulmonary edema can be very difficult to spot. what stands between you and that endless sleep is only an experienced guide.




as all this continues... i begin to have second thoughts... and third... and fourth...

RAINFOREST

7/11/07

we gear up to begin

i'd just like to point out this porter's awesome pants.

there were a fair amount of people climbing the mountain. at various stops we'd catch up to them, especially at the campsites.

we quickly realized that we fit in better with the porters than the other mzungu (white/euro) climbers, the majority of whom wore fancy climbing outfits and carried high tech gear. we were equipped with old jeans, sweat pants, borrowed long johns and snow jackets. but really, we've always been the 2nd-hand group in every country, on every safari. no big whoop.

the path on the first day was quite beautiful. it reminds me some of climbing in ireland and the old celtic forests.

day one is rainforest, though we were lucky to miss the rain on the way up. you have to hit it at the right time of day, and you can usually miss it. i don't really understand that, but the porters did.





the first time we climbed kili back in 2001, we only climbed to the "First Hut" which is the "Coco Cola" trail's first campsite. that time, not just Julia, John, and I, but also mother and Isaiah climbed. the first day's climb (on both that trail and this one) is only supposed to take a few hours up and an hour or so down. back in 2001, however, we went VERY slow.

by the time we returned , we were "too late". that is, our guide on that long ago day, knew that we had missed the window of no rain in the rain forest. that time, on our way down we were caught in the deluge that gives the forest its name.

on this trip, however, we made good time. we could have gone faster and indeed saw many people speed past us. but we were advised to go pole pole (slowly) even on the first day. and really, why not? we could only go as far as our first camp regardless.

better to reserve and enjoy. julia was very good at this, though john had trouble slowing down. julia and i tried to use the "picture excuse" to keep the pace slower. we both have hundreds of pictures through the rain forest.


our first campsite gave us a view of the mountain far away in the fog. it was also freezing, we thought. which didn't bode well for when it would truly be freezing.

the dinner tent with tastiness, i'm rockin a hot hat, thanks to my friend meghan