Five friends and a bag of rice

Makes for a good title, but we actually had way more food than a bag of rice. It started with a bag of rice though…and a great idea; to climb one of the peaks of Mount Kenya, namely Point Lenana at 4,985m (16,355ft) above sea level (I can't take credit for the pic below - its from the net).


Not even thinking about hiring porters, we were determined, ambitious, and frankly, crazy. Bags all packed – food, sleeping bags, tents, clothes, toques, gloves, whatever else we think we might need, five of us from the Crew set off with a guide, Mohammed, from nearby town Nanyuki for what we thought would be a 3 day trek. 2 days to climb to the summit, and 1 day to descend.

It was supposed to be that way. For me, it wasn’t.

It wasn’t the steep inclines we climbed, it wasn’t the difficult terrain we walked, it wasn’t a lack of potable water - thanks to Alex’s UV filter and the mountain’s yummy glacier fed water sources – it was the change in altitude that got me. Thinking about the possibility that it was all in my head, the physical manifestation of something only mental – and maybe it was, I don’t know, since either way somewhere near halfway on the second climbing day, I didn't want to admit that it felt as if my head and heart had switched places. The beating headache combined with a loss of appetite, and a lack of sleep due to the cold shivering previous night’s sleep, put me completely out on our lunch break. I didn't understand how everyone could be hungry since all I felt was the extreme need to lie down and nothing else. I could have sworn I only closed my eyes for a minute; I think I fell asleep since all of a sudden I heard my name and I opened my eyes to see 2 sets of blinking eyes asking me if I'm ok. I wondered if they might be shinning a flashlight directly in my face, since everything was painfully bright, but it didn't seem like the right time they would play a cruel joke; I realized it was all in my head.

My friends talked to the guide, turns out in Mohammed's 14 years of guiding, he had also taken a 28 day course in altitude sickness. He has probably seen it all. He talked to me with the full confidence that I would make it, but on one condition. I was to give him my pack to carry. I couldn't believe it. He was going to carry my heavy pack, tied up to his own, on top of some of the other items he was carrying for us - litres of water, shoes, etc. The guilt set in me, but I wanted to summit, and Mohammed convinced me there was no other way.

And so I fell in pace with whoever was leading and kept walking - higher and higher. I had taken diomox and 4 extra strength pain killers (not all at once of course though I wanted to), but nothing seemed to helped. I kept walking trying to think of anything but who might have forgotten the knife they stabbed in the frontal lobe of my brain. I tried to believe and think positive that the pain would go away soon. The higher we went though, the worse it got and it spread to my entire head. We were luckily kind of close to our second overnight base - Shipton's camp, and Mohammed was determined to get us all there. I kept walking, eventually losing sense of what I was seeing and all I could really do was follow the tracks of the person directly in front of me. It must have been annoying for the Crew member in front of me to have a shadow directly behind them, but I didn't give him much choice.

I arrived at Shipton's with everyone in the late afternoon. Mohammed pointed out a bunk I could lie down on - we hadn't planned on using the lodges since it was more expensive and we had brought our own tents. I didn't care though, I followed Mohammed's advice, and sought comfort in my sleeping bag on the bunk. I don't recall much more except a round robin of friends checking up on me, giving me tea with lemon (Mom – sound familiar?!) and force feeding me per se. We have a damn good crew of people, everyone looking out for each other - would make a good Tim Horton's, or AT&T commercial!

The intial plan for summitting from Shipton's was to wake up around 2am, get ready, and set out at 3am. From Shipton's, it is a straight 700m ascent in the dark, to catch the sunrise at 6:30am. And so the alarms were set for 2am, with clothes and flashlights laid out for quick retrieval.

2am came and went, there was no way I could summit. Another member of the Crew felt the effect of the altitude and the challenging hike from the day before, and decided it was best not to summit either and we would have to miss another day of work to summit the following day. The other three were set on the early morning's insanity, and set off with Mohammed.

I awoke to the sounds of their voices upon their return around 9:30am, though still not feeling quite at par, I arose to greet them. The look on Kate's face was priceless. It was a look of accomplishment, relief, happiness, exhaustion, and bewilderment. Amazing, I was so proud of her. Equally happy and accomplished, Alex and Sean's faces were also beaming. I was so happy for all of them, hugs all around.



We discussed the next set of plans, James and I were set to summit the following early morning, and Alex – a man made for the mountains - was to join us for a second journey up the final lag. Kate was in her words "done with this madness" and left to descend with Sean and Mohammed to head back to Lewa.

Set up with another guide, Elijah, the three of us stayed behind and headed back to our sleeping bags to continue to sleep off the pain of the altitude. Later in the day, we hiked up 200m to acclimatize a little more in the hopes it would help ease us into the lunacy of the summit.

2am comes around, and the three of us are already awake due the fierce winds of the night shaking the flaps of our tent. The night is cold, and the windchill takes our breath away – I hear someone say it is in the minus 10s Celsius. We eat lightly, try to warm up with tea, and meet Elijah. We head up the trail at a quick pace and stop intermittently for very brief moments to get used to our surroundings and get our bearings. Its impossible though to stop for as long as we really need since the winds are too brutal and we need to avoid frostbite. We keep trekking in the dark. At one point, Elijah took a wrong turn and we were momentarily lost until we retraced our footsteps and looked up to see other headlamps and flashlights from other groups climbing the same summit. We keep our pace quick and ambitious, and finally look up to see the last bit of pointed rock to climb over. We clamber over the last challenging section, and we finally stand on the point. The view is exhilarating.



It feels as though we were on a plane, and stepped out on the wing. The clouds are beneath us, the sky is endless, and the climate is ferocious. The feeling is baffling, overwhelming, amazing and breathtaking for where we are and what we’ve been through to get here.

Turns out our pace was too rapid, and we are too early for the sunrise. We have to wait another 30min, which we do with caution. The subzero temperatures are dangerous and we are aware we need to descend rather quickly. We wait for the sun to rise – I have never seen this kind in my life. It seemed we could see the entire sphere emerging at the horizon, we could see beyond just a face of the sun – and we now understand and forget the displeasure of waking up in the wee hours of the morning for this moment.



The sun is up now and its no joke to descend as quickly as possible for fear of yielding one of us to the cold. We head the quick route, down a scree slope back to Shipton’s. High fives and hugs all around, the three of us are likely expressing the same feelings that I saw on Kate the previous day.

After a few hours nap, we commence our descent and final journey home to Lewa. It’s a long day’s hike and today’s soreness reminds me of what it took to get through it all. Mount Kenya won’t look the same to us; even just the name’s mention will likely remind us of the expedition that took us to mental and physical extremes in ways we might not have been ready for but welcomed and overcame nevertheless.