07/19/2010 Summit Day

Last night Tosh got worse and was shaking hard with a fever just before breaking out in sweat and burning like on fire. He couldn't eat and I again had to force him to take some Ibuprofen against the pain and the fever. He is still persisting to go up on the summit at midnight, with a injured hand and severe symptoms of altitude sickness - I really don't see that happening right now.
Anderson and I could not talk him out of it and I have kind of given up trying to convince him since it is absolutely useless. The man is almost as stubborn as me..
So at 11:30 pm our guide wakes us up with some hot tea and cookies. We pack our day packs with water, cameras and all the warm clothes we have.
So our guidebook for Kilimanjaro was not underestimating when it stated that the summit ascend is absolutely grueling and painful.
We start walking at midnight at 4600m up a steep gravel-sand-ash-trail. The higher we get, the colder it gets. We start off at maybe +5 Degrees Celcius and slowly cool down to about -20 Degrees at the summit. We walk with our head torches in the pitch black night (beautiful stars above, if you have the breath to look at them) and even through ten layers of fleeces, hiking under and overlayers and outer shells, I start shaking uncontrollably with the cold that slowly sinks into your bones after about 2 hours.
A few hours on in the mind numbing tumbling in the dark on a ground so soft that it lets you take half a step forward while you slide two steps back on the loose gravel we are all covered in ice crystals. The ones on the eyelashes are actually very pretty and I wish I had the energy and the light to take a picture of them.

At about 4 am I hit a complete wall and start shaking all over. We rest more frequently now but the cold only allows a few minutes of non-motion before you get into serious trouble. Tosh and I both feel the altitude intensely - Tosh getting dizzy and uncoordinated (more than usually so) and stumbling over rocks and his own feet, me getting nauseous and having to puke every five minutes, with no success.

The six hours it takes to Stella Point on the ridge of Uhuru Peak are the longest six hours of my life and I have no idea how I made it up there.
From Stella Point it is another 45 minutes to Uhuru Peak and that does not sound a lot, but you have to imagine being frozen to the bone for hours, absolutely exhausted and tired, out of breath, dizzy, sick to the stomach, confused and desperate and then having to walk over a spiky ice field, where every wrong step can either twist you ankle so badly that you won't be able to walk down or you just fall off the narrow ridge.

Tosh and I are both delirious and unable to talk or really appreciate the breathtaking views by the time we reach the summit. Anderson quickly takes a picture of us (I can't even bring up the energy to open my backpack to get out my camera, or hold it) and urges us to move down quickly. Tosh has severe hypothermia by now, his lips being completely purple and him not responding to anything said to him. Anderson takes his pack and guides him onwards.

Getting to the top of a mountain is always only half way and I am terrified at the thought of the long descend. Surprisingly I come up with the energy from somewhere and feel better every meter we get down. Tosh is quite the opposite, he completely breaks down soon after Stella Point and is unable to walk.
Anderson and I have to force liquid and some sugar into him and push him on. He collapses every few meters, even with Anderson holding him. I have never seen him in such a state and am really worried the injured hand is too much on his organism together with the exertion and the altitude.
We somehow manage to get Tosh down the mountain in 4 hours instead of 2 and a lot of hard work pushing him on. We are supposed to walk on to a lower level forest camp, which is about another 4 hours away after a rest at Barafu and some food. Tosh has gotten worse in the meantime, lying in the tent, not responding, not eating, and certainly not listening to any reason. He wants to stay at Barafu and not move on, which is understandable in his state, but I know that the only way to make him better is to descend as quickly as possible.
Anderson and I come up with the plan to go to a closer camp, only two hours away but 1000m lower than our current camp. Somehow we convince Tosh to get up, get dressed and start walking (don't ask me how, it was hard work). We finally make it to the lower camp and he is sleeping in the tent now. I hope he will feel better tomorrow.

Right now it is 18 hrs later as I am writing this into my journal and I can truly and honestly say that the past day/night has been the most physically and mentally challenging in my life. I am pretty amazed at myself that I can still sit upright and hold a pen.