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看到2月8日The Globe & Mail刊登了12名平均年齡四十多歲的婦女從
多倫多出發到非洲, 爬上位於妲桑尼亞5880M的Mount Kilimanjaro。
這山雖叫"Everyman's Everest", 不需要特別技術, 但也有一定困難。原創者Gayle MacDonald 形容這個旅程比生孩子還辛苦。据統計, 每年只有約40 - 50%登山者可成功登頂。
看完這篇游記, 好像把我的hiking目標又推高了，我也希望可以衝出local mountains, 放眼世界。 :wink:
Camony
Moms v. The mountain
We got shots. We cleaned out MEC. We left behind families and jobs. Why would 12 fortysomething women sign up to climb Kilimanjaro? As Gayle MacDonald found out, it was the hardest thing she's done in her life - worse than giving birth
GAYLE MACDONALD
From Friday's Globe and Mail
February 8, 2008 at 8:48 AM EST
We are only 45 minutes from Uhuru Peak, the pinnacle of Mount Kilimanjaro. But the wheels are beginning to fall off. We have been climbing since midnight and now the blazing sun, reflecting off the pristine snow, is almost blinding. Our pace has slowed to a crawl.
Breathing is laboured. A few have crushing headaches. Everyone is dying of thirst.
Two women are puking every five minutes. My friend Katie, an eight-time marathoner, whose lips are now a weird black and blue, is seeing small pieces of lava rock scattered around the trail turn into mice and turtles.
A German climber walks past and gives us a big toothy grin, "You're almost there," he says, jerking a gloved thumb farther north, around the last jutting piece of ice.
If I had the energy, I'd drive my pole through his thigh.
Most of us were strangers, meeting for the first time in the KLM waiting area at Toronto's Pearson airport last month. Twelve fortysomething women: some stay-at-home moms, two doctors, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, a writer, a marketing and public relations executive. We have all signed up for a 58-kilometre, five-day trek to try to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, a snow-capped peak in Tanzania standing slightly higher than 5,880 metres.
Showered, blow-dried, with lipstick and clean clothes, none of us particularly look the rugged, mountaineering types, apart from Alison Wiley, who organized the trip and has climbed to the summit before.
We size each other up at the airport: Who will succumb to acute mountain sickness (symptoms include nausea, vomiting, headaches, hallucinations)? Who will get wild diarrhea from the water? Will we all get along? And why the hell did we sign up for this crazy excursion, leaving kids, spouses and jobs behind?
Kilimanjaro is called "Everyman's Everest" because it requires no technical climbing skills. Just lots and lots of walking. But it is a peak that leaves a few people a year dead. (Locals put that figure closer to 10.) And park authorities estimate only 40 to 50 per cent of climbers reach the summit.We're attempting this as part of a fundraiser organized by Ms. Wiley to raise money for the Amani Children's Home in Tanzania, a facility that houses, feeds and teaches 120 street kids who have fled abusive homes. But for most of us, the decision to climb Kilimanjaro is part philanthropic, part gut instinct.
We want to climb for the climb's sake. Set a goal. Test our mettle. Totally remove ourselves from our comfortable lives.
Kate Wiley (Alison's sister), a family doctor who lives in Ancaster, Ont., later tries to unravel it this way: "I knew I had to do this for some undefined reason. I knew I had to blow my world apart for a while, as a good friend of mine said to me when I told her I was climbing Kilimanjaro."
So we all boned up on tropical diseases (six shots needed), nasty diarrhea from unclean water, blisters the size of golf balls and rank outhouses - rumours that would all prove to be true, if not underplayed.
We dutifully cleaned out Mountain Equipment Co-op for Gore-Tex and layers. We bought the baby wipes to "shower" ourselves and a weird, plastic, pee-catheter thing to use in the tent at night so you don't stumble off the edge of a cliff.
We filled out prescriptions. We climbed hills. Ran laps. Sweated in spinning classes. And traipsed around the city in our pathetically matching blue Vasque hiking boots so we could properly break them in.
On the day I leave, my parents arrive to help with the kids. I hand them a 10-page note, detailing car pools, pick-up times for schools, directions to half a dozen hockey arenas, guitar lessons and orthodontist appointments. My mom looks at my 23-kilogram duffel bag and somewhat grim demeanour, clearly thinking this fully grown woman - who is afraid of heights - is out of her mind.
Twenty-four hours later, we are in Moshi, staring at the mountain that Tanzania's Masai people call the "House of God" or the "Roof of Africa," ready to begin our ascent. We are coached and guided by Angus Murray, an outdoor education teacher at B.C.'s Shawnigan Lake School who is on a yearlong climbing sabbatical (he heads to Everest in May), and Michael Nelson, who owns Chagga Tours in Moshi and has climbed Kilimanjaro 200 times.
Mr. Nelson meets us at the Machame Gate with 34 porters, aged 16 and up, to carry on their heads up to 45 kilograms of gear (tables, steel chairs, tents, 150 eggs, water, our bags) that they take to each camping site. The porters fly by us daily in Nike sandals, shirt tails flying.
Over the next five days, we will follow the Whisky Route, which winds through four ecozones, from rain forest to heather and moorland and finally the ice zone at the top.
We listen carefully to Mr. Murray's and Mr. Nelson's instructions: sleep in our wet clothes (only way they can dry), wear double socks (for blisters), drink four litres of water a day (causing us to rename Hemingway's story The Yellow Snows of Kilimanjaro), and walk slowly, breathing deeply along the way, especially when dizziness hits.
By Day 2, the temperatures have dropped, and the path becomes dustier, steeper and more rugged.
So we walk and talk. And crack jokes. When half the women get their periods, we christen the muddy campsites the Red Tents.
Mr. Nelson is dumbstruck by the incessant chatter, at one point muttering under his breath that he'd never had a group who "could talk this much."
The rain and sleet arrive by Day 3. We are drenched to the core. Group pees are common. It's too miserable to do "the business" outside so one intrepid woman steps into the outhouse. We hear her gagging back to the food tent. A fellow mountaineer had missed the hole, and left her a snake-coiled gift, which she'd stepped in and then tried to scrape to the side with a rock.
The next day begins with one of us falling into a mud bath. Then we start one of the most challenging segments of the trail, a near-vertical scramble up the Great Barranco Wall, where you stash your walking poles and use your hands to haul yourself up the slopes.
We arrive at Barafu Huts to rest a few hours before summit night, exhausted by eight hours of climbing in a thunderstorm and finally, snow. We're all a little quieter than usual.
Summit day: We are woken by clanging pots at 11 p.m. We strap on headlamps and walk, single file, up toward the top. The moon is full and the Southern Cross constellation is crystal clear. Finally, as breathing gets laboured and a few start to puke at 5,000 to 5,500 metres, we finally shut up. A porter named Gerard, who has taken over one of the women's backpacks, starts singing hymns.
Just before 6 a.m., the sun comes up, giving us all that spurt of energy we need to make the final, steep ascent to Summit Peak. Once there, most of us burst into tears. My friend Katie McLean, though, is seeing the small furry things.
Yet we still have another 45 minutes to climb to Uhuru Peak - the very top of Kili with the wooden sign where everyone has their pictures taken. Mr. Nelson wants to send three of us down. The women affected won't have it. At this point, it becomes all about rhythm and pace. We ignore the sounds of people retching.
The final 45 minutes feel like an eternity.
It is breathtakingly beautiful, but the hardest thing I've done in my life. Worse than childbirth.
With help from the four porters, every single one of us - even the sick ones - make it to the top with dawn breaking on Rebman Glacier on the left. As we trudged along, the sky has gone from black to a misty grey to a brilliant blue.
Our resounding success rate shocks the hell out of all of us. The taciturn Mr. Nelson, who was part of the 1999 expedition that found the body of George Mallory who died on Everest in 1924, dubs it "very strange" that we all reached the summit.
Mr. Murray says we all succeeded "because the collective sum [of the group] was stronger than the individual parts."
The day before we leave Africa, we visit the Amani school, play some games with the kids and hand in a $60,000 cheque.
The climb didn't make us better people. But it made us stronger characters.
I'm still afraid of heights. I will never tackle Everest.
I walked out of Kilimanjaro National Park in my baby-blue long johns (the only thing dry). And I didn't give a damn. Because I now have a bond with 11 slightly wacky women - one brought along her electric toothbrush - who didn't let a mountain overtake them. |
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The group takes a break at the final campsite before climbing to the summit.
(Photo: Dale Hewat for
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The sun-kissed snowcap of Mount Kilimanjaro
(Photo: Alison Wiley for The Globe & Mail)
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The Group treks on, leaving dense rain forest for the next ecozone.
(Photo: Martha Reeve for The Gl
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The group grins and bares the final 45-mins hike to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro
(Photo: Jane Rosmu
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