by Rob Simpson
“They’re in excellent shape,” Chára said, awed. This from the man considered to be the NHL’s fitness maniac, with a six-foot-nine inch frame, less than 10 percent body fat on his 255 pounds, and a legendary work ethic. “These guys are carrying thirty-, forty-, fifty-pound loads on their heads. Look, on their heads. Incredible shape. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to do this without them, so all the credit goes to them.”
The first half of our day involved a relatively vigorous uphill hike through rocks, along thinning brush, and across little volcanic valleys running downhill from the mountain peaks. At one point we stopped at a cave, which had been used as shelter by various peoples over the millennia, and took photographs and video. Aloyce pointed to the hoof and paw prints of the local fauna that had passed through.
“Dik-diks come in here and chew,” he said.
“Any snakes?” Brender asked.
“Anything that can eat us?” Chára volleyed.
Much to the relief of his wary charges, Aloyce pointed out that no deadly snakes or animals would be passing along at this altitude on this side of the mountain.
Throughout the day, we’d stop and allow Berg to get shots he needed for the documentary. Naturally, the focus was on Chára and his trek; the rest of us were the supporting cast. Needless to say, the visuals were impressive; Berg had an incredible natural environment in which to work.
“We’ve passed 11,500 feet,” Chára pointed out as we neared the end of the morning portion of the day’s climb.
My footwear choices were backwards the first two days. Due to the dustiness of the trail on day one, I should have worn the hiking boots. Instead, I wore and trashed my running shoes. Day two, the shoes would have been perfect, with less dust, a solid trail, and a relatively rock-free environment. I went with the rental boots, and thus developed my first of many blisters.
After four hours, we stopped for lunch. Kibo, the snow-capped volcano of Kilimanjaro, loomed straight ahead of us.
“You can almost reach out and grab it,” I said to Chára.
Our group started to bond. We really began to appreciate the experience we were sharing. We laughed about the fatigue and marvelled at the porters and the scenery. I also began to get to know the Bruins captain a lot better. As the TV beat reporter for NESN in Boston for the past three seasons, I travelled with the team, but I always kept my distance from “Big Z” and the other players, as part of protocol. Sure, we’d have fun on various feature shoots and such, but for the most part, I very rarely socialized with the hockey players.
On this trip, I gradually learned about Chára’s sensitivities, particularly for those less fortunate, especially children. Also, he is far more intelligent than most athletes (he speaks six languages), and, despite his bear-like size, his fitness level, and his on-ice demeanour, he was, simply, a very nice guy. We’d eventually talk off the record about Bruins personnel, as in what players were keepers and who would have to be replaced before a championship was realistic.
“If you repeat any of this, Simmer, I will kill you,” he said, smiling. “No, seriously,” he’d add a few steps later.
After lunch, we turned left and levelled out. Most of the day’s ascent, 3,200 feet, had been accomplished. We hiked at just below 12,000 feet for the next three hours toward the Mawenzi crater. We were angling our way south along the east side of Kibo, gradually acclimatizing, and gradually moving toward our position for summit day. By the time we finished this flatter, rockier portion of the trip, Kibo was actually farther off to our right, and we were still three to four hours from Mawenzi in the distance.
“I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself,” Chára told the TV camera. “I’m thinking one day at a time, take care of business every day. Make sure that you eat right, drink enough fluids, that you don’t go too fast, and [that you] get enough rest.”
Night two camp was set up on a hillside under some huge, barren trees, near a stream that ran to an area of caves called Kikelewa. A pair of large black ravens perched nearby, keeping watch.
We ate, sat, and chatted in the dinner tent until
dusk. No cell phones, no internet, just the group, just conversation.
Chára felt a bit lightheaded and exhausted. Berg, Lepik, and Brender had varying degrees of dizziness and headache. Me: I just couldn’t sleep.
I began my nightly custom. At dusk, I’d remove my socks, and with Brender’s pocket knife I’d slice open the two or three blisters on each foot. After dabbing away the bloody, copper-coloured fluid, I’d touch-up each spot with an alcohol wipe Chára had provided from his
medical kit.
Then I’d strip down, climb into the sleeping bag, and try to doze off. Without a mat beneath me, I’d feel every single pebble or stone through the floor of the tent and the sheer layer of my sleeping bag. When lying on my side, my weight created a form of hip pointer. The bone was aggravated, and I couldn’t stop rolling back and forth.
On this second night, after tossing and turning and repositioning and listening to Brender snore for a couple of hours, I couldn’t take it anymore. I began to wonder if I’d ever sleep again.
“Shit!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Son of a bitch!”
No one heard me.
~
Our start to the climb on YouTube: Summer with Zee: Climbing Kilimanjaro Part 1
BIG Z ON THE MOUNTAIN
Part 2
“For sure, one of the toughest things, if not the toughest thing, in my life, that I’ve done.”
Boston Bruins Captain Zdeno Chára, after six days on Kilimanjaro
After night two on Kilimanjaro, I had slept a grand total of about three hours. Not a good formula when you’re trekking four to seven hours a day at altitude. I was becoming legitimately concerned about how this fatigue might affect my way to the top, and I wasn’t the only one. Producer Darryl Lepik was also complaining of sleep issues. The other climbers were suffering from general fatigue, mild dizziness, and headaches, the details and extent of which they didn’t share.
Overcoming the challenges and symptoms was made easier by being immersed in the incredible natural surroundings. On day three, we added another 2,400 feet of altitude. We crisscrossed a number of streams and volcanic valleys as we worked our way to Mawenzi. We saw dik-dik antelope running on a hillside, encountered a handful of birds, stumbled across a lizard or two, and were constantly surrounded by bees.
The environment became drier and more desolate as we continued up, and the scenery became more surreal and dramatic, with the ominous presence of mountain peaks on either side of us. When we stopped for a water break, we’d look back down the slope of the mountain, above the clouds that surrounded Kilimanjaro. The view was awe inspiring, but also eerily isolating.
Our straightforward and vigorous four-hour trek brought us to the Mawenzi crater at 14,200 feet. We lunched here, took an afternoon acclimatization hike up and down a ridge, and then camped here as well. This hike was more of a rock climb, our most perilous of the entire trip, requiring the use of all four limbs. The ridges of the crater were made up of strewn, jagged volcanic rock. We switch-backed up the lower portion and then pulled ourselves up the rocks along the western rim. Before returning to the crater floor, we sat on this rocky perch for about a half-hour. Looking out across the “saddle” at Kibo — the prize, the roof of Africa, the summit of Kilimanjaro —
we truly began to ponder the task that lay ahead.
“It’s been pretty tough at times, but the toughest is yet to come,” Mark Brender said.
“I’m trying not to think about it yet,” Chára said. “We’re just sitting there trying to get used to the altitude. Looking out at Kilimanjaro sitting in front of you, it doesn’t get any better than that. Just sitting there and relaxing; those are priceless moments.”
Summit day (or night) was about thirty-three hours away.
The trek up th
e ridge provided magnificent scenery, an exciting and adrenaline-filled climb, and another 700 feet or so of acclimatization. Aloyce had maximized our preparation to avoid altitude illness, and he led us around the landscape to some amazing spots. Each night, there were fewer and fewer “other climbers” on our path. The first camp had a handful of groups, the second night maybe three or four, and on night three, beneath the spires of Mawenzi, it was just us and one other small group.
Compared to this spot, beside a small pond on the floor of a volcanic crater a couple of miles high in Tanzania, it was hard to imagine a more dramatic campsite.
“This has been amazing,” Darryl Lepik said as he spoke into my handheld camera. “Just the scenery and the experience, it’s been absolutely phenomenal, and I expect that to continue for a couple days.”
Lepik’s occasional nickname during this trip was “lip balm,” because he seemed to be the only guy who remembered to pack it. Brender had some ChapStick, but not much, and who wants to share that? Lepik had a small jar of the stuff, and I was like a junkie. I didn’t want to push my luck by asking too often, but at the end of each day, begging for balm became mandatory. At one point on day three, I thought my upper lip had shriveled off my face.
Things were looking up by day four, in more ways than one. I managed about three hours of sleep overnight and most of the next hike was relatively flat.
It was time to cross the saddle: the seven-mile plateau ridge between Mawenzi and the base of our ultimate destination. Ten minutes into the hike, we had wound out of the Mawenzi bowl, crossed a small ridge, and just like that, it was as if the previous night’s camp didn’t exist. It was gone; the isolated landscape had disappeared from sight.
As discussed by the group at the previous night’s dinner in the mess tent, that night-three campsite would be our last “normal” campsite. Each morning, we had enjoyed the routine of waking up, eating breakfast together and discussing the day ahead, venturing out, reaching a camp, settling in, relaxing, exploring, eating dinner, and then turning in when the sun went down. That would all change on night four. It would be a night awake on the mountain.
The trek across took us exactly five hours, gradually leaving Mawenzi in our past and drawing Kibo imminently into our future.
“That was a pretty nice hike,” Chára said. “Nothing too hard, it was almost relaxing as we get used to the climate and altitude. I tried not to think of the summit too much, but it was tough because you’re staring right up at it.”
We arrived at what our guide, Aloyce, called the “School Camp,” base camp, off the beaten track of the main path at 15,400 feet. It was a spot that was established and previously used by the organization Outward Bound. We were the only trekking party at the site. Instead of putting us with potentially a half-dozen other trekking groups at the Kibo Hut on the main trail to the west, Aloyce allowed us some privacy and an exclusive view of the surroundings.
It was at base camp that I came to another realization: I hadn’t taken a dump for four days, since before the entire journey started. Nor had Chára apparently. When I weaved my way through some boulders just to the west of our campsite to find the “outhouse,” I was surprised to find Zdeno had beaten me there. Three little steps led up to a four foot-by-four foot piece of wood with a football-sized hole cut out of the middle — this was the floor of the outhouse. There was no door or wall on the front, just three short tin walls on the sides and back, and a four-by-four foot tin roof above. The walls and roof were rattling in the wind. The act of crapping involved target practice and squatting over the hole like a baseball catcher while looking out over the grandeur.
Upon seeing Chára, I turned back around and said, “Oh, hey, I guess I’ll wait ’til I see you come back to camp. Nice form.”
He wasn’t smiling, but I don’t think he heard me. A new term popped into my head: human giraffe yoga excretion.
Base camp was very windy and wicked cold, even in the daylight. Such is life at 15,000 feet above sea level. There was nothing to do but to bundle up, eat quickly, and wait for the sun to go down. There was plenty of nervous energy in the mess tent. Aloyce sat in and briefed us on what was going to take place.
The plan was to try to get a little sleep starting at seven p.m. before gathering outside again at eleven p.m. for a quick snack and departure. We’d leave for the summit before midnight.
Why midnight? Because the climb to the crater rim of Kibo took six hours. After arriving there at sunrise, the trip to Uhuru, the mountain’s highest point, was another three-hour round trip. After that, a three-hour descent to Kibo Hut on the main trail, followed by three and a half more hours to the next overnight campsite. For those who went the distance, it was a sixteen-hour trek.
Our climb to the summit would first involve working diagonally westward and up, to join the main trail well above Kibo Hut, and then to finish like most everyone else, at Gilman’s Point straight up the mountain. Gilman’s Point sits at 18,650 feet.
During the last few minutes of daylight, my fellow trekkers offered up some extra layers for me to wear, another pair of socks, and a few extra Band-Aids.
We enjoyed one last mountain sunset, with a view back to Mawenzi across the saddle, and a view down through the clouds to some faraway village lights on the East African plain.
When the sun sank, the temperature went with it. We wore three layers to bed, two pairs of socks, and a toque. I would add a third pair of socks before leaving, not so much for the cold, but to ease and prevent blisters.
By dark, we had packed up the materials we wouldn’t be taking up, and left them aside for the porters to carry to the next campsite. We laid our last layers next to us in the tents, along with our headlamps.
There was no chance in hell I’d be able to sleep.
After squirming around for what seemed like four hours, I heard Brender awake and asked him what time it was, expecting and hoping to hear something close to eleven o’clock.
“Five to nine,” he said, much to my disappointment. We had two more hours to kill, and I surprised myself by actually nodding off for half an hour. Apparently nervous anticipation can be exhausting.
Day five for us on Kilimanjaro officially began a few minutes before midnight. When I popped out of my tent with all of my gear in place, all of my layers heaped on, and my headlamp functioning, the rest of the group was already standing by.
It was pitch black. We had a dramatic panorama of stars overhead, but no one really noticed. With our headlamps on and our focus entirely upon the ground in front of us, we didn’t care a whole lot for the stars.
For the next six hours, we’d be climbing in the dark. Vertically, we had about 3,200 feet to gain. Slowly: pole, pole.
“Kind of like the anticipation before a big game,” Chára described. “Really nervous, cold hands, cold feet, getting ready to basically start the walk.”
Aloyce, the head guide, led the way out of camp. I was next for no particular reason, then Big Z, then Darryl, then Bergy, then Brender, then the three porters carrying the TV equipment, and then the assistant head guide.
The journey redefined “patience is a virtue.” We literally walked with our lamps shining down upon the set of feet in front of us and took something slightly larger than baby steps for six hours. Each of us had a spiked walking pole in one hand to help with balance. Occasionally we had to navigate our way along ledges, around boulders, and over rock outcroppings, but most of the time we trudged upward through scree (loose rock). The talus gave way a little bit with almost every step, and each of us would periodically slip to a knee or almost fall over when the rocks shifted under our feet.
There was no talk other than to ask about each other’s well-being during water breaks, of which there were many. Despite the fact that the landscape within the range of our headlamps was fascinating and ever changing, the stepping and trudging became monotonous at times, almost trance induc
ing.
At one point, after I almost clipped Bergy with the follow-through of my walking stick, I said, “Sorry, you alright?”
“Shut up and walk,” he answered. We were all feeling a certain level of disbelief and frustration at the progress. What I didn’t realize was that the others were also experiencing annoying, maybe even painful, levels of altitude symptoms. I wouldn’t know until hours later who was completely worn out already, who had a wicked headache, or who was ready to quit.
Mark Brender, who would later experience extreme disorientation symptoms on the crater rim, was actually at this point the spunkiest. He offered enthusiastic words of encouragement at every stop.
After two or three rests, we changed up the order. Chára went immediately behind Aloyce. The big man had some trouble with his footing and found the going tough. He explained later that the slipping and sliding on the scree dramatically added to his fatigue.
On one hand, the pace tested everyone’s patience; frustration stemmed from often having to halt due to the man in front of you slipping. At other times, when a rhythm was established, left-right, left-right, crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch, the climb was almost soothing. Those stretches didn’t last long.
About three hours in, we came across another line of headlamps to our left. Another group was making its way up to the summit via the main path. A few minutes later, we’d merge onto that path just behind them. Soon after the merge, we took another rest.
“It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” said Chára later. “I’ve done a lot of hard training, many kinds, but nothing compares. You’re baby stepping behind one another, climbing, zigzagging, losing balance. It’s dark, you’re tired, and your feet are slipping on loose gravel. We must have stopped to rest fifteen times.”