Team MotionBased

With the cycling season wrapping up at the end of September, I was looking forward to a little time off the bike, as I was my wedding and of course my honeymoon. For our honeymoon Amy and I wanted some adventure mixed in with relaxation so we chose a trip to Africa, a climb up Kilimanjaro, followed by a short safari ending up on a beach in Zanzibar.

For those not familiar with it, Mt. Kilimanjaro is the highest point in Africa at 19,341 feet and is found in the northern part of Tanzania. What makes Kilimanjaro special is that since it is close to the equator and the base of the mountain is at 6,000 feet or so, is has 5 distinct climatic zones presenting a wide variety of geography and vegetation along the way. There are several routes up the mountain ranging from 5 to 9 days. We chose one of the more scenic, less traveled treks, the 7 day Lemosho Route. Though we have been atop a few 14er’s, “Kili” is a mile higher and we wanted the extra day to acclimatize.

To climb Kilimanjaro you are required to be accompanied by a registered guide. Liberate and Renatus of Nature Discovery provided us this service. Also with us on the expedition were 17 porters who transported our food, water, tents, clothing etc. I imagine you put one of these porters on a mountain bike he would hold his own in the Snowmass NORBA. Our guide Liberate makes over 40 summits a year! As far as the difficulty of the climb, it was hard but it could have been a lot harder if it was not for the support of the crew from Nature Discovery. Liberate and Renatus kept the pace slow aiding the acclimatization process stuffing our faces with good food and a seemingly never-ending supply of water.

As you would expect the most difficult day was the Summit day. We were woken as usual with “bed tea,” a thermos with hot coffee and/or tea at 12 AM (usually it was 6:30). Then we strapped on our headlamps and began our 4 mile crawl covering 4,000 feet vert to Uhuru Peak. Though we were scheduled to summit around 6 AM, Amy was too cold to ever stop and rest and we reached the roof of Africa at 5 AM, the first group of the day and hour before sunrise. Thankfully, Renatus and Liberate toted a couple thermos’ of tea to the top, that and adrenalin kept us warm to sunrise.