28 Things I Learned While Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

Hi everyone! Dustin is working on a detailed play-by-play of our incredible trek up Kili (with pictures!) and should have it up sometime soon, but in the mean time, I thought I’d share some of the things I learned while climbing the big mountain…

1. Between taking Diamox and drinking 4 liters of water each day, Christi and I had to stop to pee on the trail approximately every 30 minutes. I’m not sure our bladders will ever forgive us.
2. I never managed to learn the difference between the Swahili expressions “mambo” and “jambo,” so I just used them interchangeably. No one seemed to mind.
3. The mountain we climbed is actually called Kibo, and the highest peak on Kibo is called Uhuru, which is what we summited. Kibo is in the Kilimanjaro region, along with two other sister peaks: Mawenzi and Shira.
4. As our guides constantly reminded us, you get up Kili by going pole, pole (“slowly, slowly”) – the mountain climber’s equivalent of the Old Man Shuffle.
5. Our head guide Evans has summited Kili 111 times in 9 years. That’s over 12 times per year, once every month, for 9 years. We love Evans, but we think he’s a little cocoa for cuckoo poops.
6. There is a white, waxy flower that lives at 15,000 feet. It shimmers in the sun, and somehow manages to keep blooming despite brutal subzero temps, limited oxygen, and essentially no soil. I love this flower.
7. You know it’s cold when you wake up inside your tent to ice crystals falling on your face and a Camelback tube that has frozen solid.
8. Our guides had cell service at 16,000 feet on Kili, but Dustin and I still can’t manage to make a call from our dining room in San Francisco.
9. Zip-together sleeping bags are romantic unless your spouse hasn’t showered in 7 days. 
10. Humility is watching a porter sprint past you up a 19,000 foot mountain carrying a picnic table on his head while you stumble along, carrying only a daypack, gasping for air with every little step.
11. If you forget to put 55 SPF sunscreen on your earlobes when climbing mountains in the bright alpine sunshine, you will end up with earlobes that look like Bacon Bits by the end of the trek.
12. The Milky Way is so bright on Kili that at first I thought it was a long, white cloud in the night sky.
13. If your sleeping pad keeps running out of air, Evans will give you his to sleep on. If you’re freezing and in need of more layers, Evans will loan you his gloves and coat to wear. If you’re too tired to take another step, Evans will carry your bag for you. Everyone should have an Evans in their life.
14. After not showering for 8 days, I had a fist-sized rat’s nest in my hair that Dustin had to cut out with a Swiss Army knife. 
15. My “vomit free since 2003!” streak has never been in more jeopardy than it was in the final 200-meter push to the summit, but I am happy to report that the streak still has not been broken!
16. I love Swahili, if only because it has given the world this expression: powa kachizindizi, which translates roughly as “cool, crazy like bananas.”
17. Arriving at Stella Point after a grueling, seemingly endless 5-hour climb up a sheer wall can make some people cry. Not that I cried. I just had something in my eye.
18. Macmillan the Cook makes the best zucchini soup in the world.
19. Having to get up at 3AM in -5°F temps to use a chemical toilet 15 yards away from your tent is why God invented hotels.
20. You don’t hike down from the top of Kili; you ski down a slope made of scree and go weeeeeeee!
21. My resting heart rate in our tent at Crater Camp (18,750 ft) was 140 beats per minute. 
22. Thanks to thousands of hikers who haven’t figured out how to use a trowel or pack out toilet paper, the trails up Kili have turned into one big latrine. It is SO GROSS.
23. At one particularly frozen point, I was wearing the following: 2 pairs of gloves, 2 hats, 5 shirts, 4 pairs of pants (including an especially attractive look that involved long underwear worn over bell-bottom yoga paints), and 3 coats. And I was still cold.
24. Whenever I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make it all the way to the top, I repeated this mantra to myself: Jessica f-ing Biel climbed this mountain. Get your ass in gear, Maestrelli. Not exactly Zen, but it worked. 
25. We missed the World Cup Finals while we were on Kili, but we did hear someone playing a vuvuzela at 18,000 feet.
26. The glaciers on Kili are so lovely. I really wish they weren’t leaving us.
27. Dustin said climbing Kili was harder than doing an Ironman, so I guess I can start saying that I’ve done an Ironman.
28. The only way I’m going back up to 19,340 feet again is in an airplane or on a spaceship.

Comments

[Bill]

well done! will the pictures include your stylish new hair do?

[Barry Zito-Asante]

Meanwhile here at Dustin's house, we've got out own puke streak going- a baseball player has puked here every night since I moved in!!!

[Ilan]

I forgot about pole pole!! Love that!
'Cool bananas' will never escape me though..hearing that was one of the first times I really felt understood.

[katy]

best post ever!!! and i say go ahead and get yourself an ironman tattoo, you've earned it

[Ginny's mom]

powa kachizindizi!
What a trip!

[Greg F]

Now that's what I'm talking about. Thanks for putting together such an awesome list. David Letterman watch out!

let's see... 140 bpm: OMG that's up in hummingbird territory. I love that the relative lameness of Jessica Biel was your inspiration. And I LOVE that you have a puke-free streak going. Holy mother of god that's awesome.

Thanks so much for sharing.
Greg F (not Barry Zito)

[Ginny]

Laura, I love you. Today I got Mark to re-up my inhaler prescription because I can't breathe in Philadelphia (elevation: 39 feet...I did NOT make that up). I pushed Ellie one block up Chestnut Hill yesterday and almost passed out. I am in awe of you. And of Jessica Biel.

[Christi]

Would like to add an amendment to point 7. Other things that freeze at Crater Camp if you forget to put them inside your sleeping bag include contact lenses.

7B: Frozen contact lenses work remarkably well after thawed with body heat. Which evidently was not something Evans had learned in his 111 trips to the summit and was one of the many times that powa kachizindizi seemed a perfectly natural response.

[Alec]

Can't wait to see the pictures. Definitely worth missing the world cup final for (I think) :-)

[Laura Maestrelli]

Hah, thanks for all the great comments! :) I thought I'd share a quote from a UK magazine I found in our hotel this morning with none other than the lovely Ms. Jessica Biel on the cover. This is the opening paragraph of her article:

"Jessica Biel likes a challenge. The actress climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro earlier this year to raise awareness for the global water crisis. 'That was incredible,' she says with a flick of her sleek hair. 'But it definitely didn't feel good at the top, I wanted to turn around and get the hell off that mountain,' she laughs."

So it seems Dustin, Christi and I have something in common with Jessica. Somehow the world seems a little brighter knowing that, says Laura, with a flick of her frizzy, out-of-control hair.