Kilimanjaro — Congrats to Linda D. — Aug. Climb

“Look who is stand­ing on the roof of Africa… why… it’s me!” Con­grats to Lin­da D. who shares some of her expe­ri­ence here from the August Kil­i­man­jaro climb.

Lin­da on the sum­mit of Kil­i­man­jaro, via the West­ern Breach.

I have been so busy since I returned from my amaz­ing Moun­tain Mad­ness Kil­i­man­jaro trip to send this before now. I just want­ed you to know what an unbe­liev­ably life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence this was for me. Every­thing was sim­ply fab­u­lous. The food was far beyond my expec­ta­tions. The cook even made me a birth­day cake (my birth­day was on the day of the sum­mit)! Look­ing back, the whole thing almost seems like a dream.

I must con­fess that the West­ern Breach wall almost did me in; but with the sup­port of the group and par­tic­u­lar­ly the incred­i­ble guides and porters, I made it to the sum­mit. I will nev­er for­get the words of encour­age­ment offered to me by Ben, our head guide, when I was strug­gling to breathe on the day of the west­ern breach ascent and found myself actu­al­ly say­ing out loud (not in my head!) that I did not think I was going to make it. He said, ​“Lin­da, there are mil­lions of peo­ple in the world who will nev­er do what you are doing right now.” With that, I scram­bled upward with unpar­al­leled zest for at least a good ten minutes! 

We ascend­ed 1−1÷2 miles that day (about 3,000 feet), but it was an almost ver­ti­cal climb for nine con­tin­u­ous and ardu­ous hours. It was not fatigue or any lack of strength that caused the doubt, but, rather, the thin air that was tru­ly affect­ing my head that day. The day before, we had camped at the base of the lava tow­er; and I had the unex­pect­ed plea­sure of mak­ing that climb, again with the help and guid­ance of two of the porters. The view from the top of the lava tow­er was aston­ish­ing, and I was so hap­py to have reached the top. Such an inno­cent … no idea of the day ahead!

I chose just a few pho­tos (although I have hun­dreds!) that I thought you might enjoy

West­ern Breach wall, at the top the crater

Lava Tow­er.

Top of Lava Tower.

Thank you so much for every­thing! It will be hard for me to ever top this.