After having walked 25 miles over the last two days I was quite content never to leave the house today, so whatever you were getting as photo of the day was going to be very close to home — until the Moon showed up.
Taken from Cold Fell, on the very western edge of the Lake District, looking out to the Irish Sea. I’m very aware that this is a subject that can cause mixed reactions; maybe it would help to know that if the camera had panned a couple of degrees to the right, Sellafield nuclear power station would have loomed large in the lens. It’s a choice, a very conscious one in a lot of ways.
Allowing for the fact that the first one of all, August 2011, was depicted only partially, September 2015 will be the fiftieth calendar month of this blog. How many times in those fifty months has this view (or ones like it) saved an otherwise drab day?
On some days you’ve just got to go with a particular shot simply because it’s exactly the picture you wanted to take when the shutter was pressed. This was one of those days.
What goes up must, of course, come down, a job that from the summit of Kili takes another day-and-a-half of walking. The final few hours, down from Mweka camp to the park gate, was done, for us, in pouring rain, something I’m very glad we didn’t have on our ascent through the forest on day one. Anticlimactic? Of course, a bit, but it was always going to be. I got down in one piece with no ill effects and all in all must count it as one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
So here it is, the culmination of this walk, the highest point in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world, Uhuru Peak, the summit of Kilimanjaro (5,895m or 19,341 feet above sea level).
You were getting a photo of it for today even if it had been as flat and featureless as a bowling green, but in all honesty this was the most beautiful, spectacular summit of any mountain I have ever visited. Believe me though, the effort it took to get here was intense. I don’t mean the five days of walking which had proceeded it which — if one can avoid altitude sickness (and I did) was not all that difficult — but the final climb up the ash slopes of Kibo, done between about 11.30pm and 6am, because during the hours of daylight it would be a) too hot and sunny and b) next-to-impossible anyway because one needs the ash to be semi-frozen in order to have a chance of ascending it. I had heard reports of people saying that one took about three steps up and then had to rest for about twenty seconds before having a chance of moving on, and dismissed them as exaggeration, but I can assure you they are not. That is really what it was like.
But once up there… time it right and one is there at sunrise. The light gradually reveals a wondrous landscape of delights, all over three-and-a-half miles up in the air. Here, the summit itself is on the far right of the picture, just caught by the sun which has also (I love this) projected a shadow of the whole summit cone onto the far horizon, neatly laid over Mount Meru, Tanzania’s second-highest peak, which at 4,565m or nearly 15,000 feet is no dwarf but from here is quite overshadowed (literally) by Kili. On the left is one of the mountain’s remaining glaciers, although don’t expect it to be around for much longer as within ten to fifteen years the ‘Snows of Kilimanjaro’ reported by Hemingway will most likely be gone — maps and pictures that show the whole summit area as covered in ice are now obsolete. Still, it’s a landform I’ve never been so close to before, and added an unearthly, or at least an un-African, element to the scene. The full moon above, which had illuminated our climb, is just the final touch.
What a place. Will I be back? Who knows, perhaps. I probably would do it again. If you do get the chance, and fancy putting in the work, I highly recommend it.
In no way was this climb of Kilimanjaro a solo effort, and I mean that beyond just the fact I went up as part of a group of walkers. We had four guides, then also a team of porters, who took most of our luggage up the mountain, not to mention the tents, cooking equipment and other such gear. These guys (and occasionally girls — saw two or three female porters during the week) put in an astonishing amount of work and without them the climb would not have been possible for us. Here, some of them are pictured on day 3, which was one of only two fully sunny days during the week. Kibo, the main peak of the Kili massif, is in the background — getting closer… We approached it today through this Mars-like landscape.
Day 2 ended at Shira Camp, 3,810m (12,500 feet, or 2.37 miles) above sea level. It probably looks nicer than this in decent weather, but most of the second half of this day was spent in the rain, a slightly dispiriting experience. Should you ever climb Kili, don’t necessarily expect it to take place in some kind of glorious African sunshine — a lot of the time the weather was rather reminiscent of the Lake District.
From sunset in Turkey to sunrise the following morning in Tanzania. Taken from the back of the minibus into which I and seventeen of my fellow walkers were packed, on our ten-hour journey north to the Kilimanjaro region. No idea where we are at this point, so the records will have to show the location as “unspecified”, but the beautiful landscapes we passed through boded well for the walk to come.
Estate agents would describe this as ‘in a highly desirable location with a world-class view, but in need of renovation and lacking certain amenities’. In other words it isn’t on a road and doesn’t have mains anything, which is probably why it’s been abandoned for many years. This is Clough Head Farm, off the Widdop road above Hardcastle Crags near Hebden Bridge. I’m still in training for the walk I will begin a week from today.
Being 42 