The stats:

• Summit Day!!! It is 5 km to the Uhuru Peak; sounds easy, right? Nope. It was our most technical climb through the Frozen Ice Desert.
• 8 hours 20 minutes from 11:18pm (on Day 5) until 7:40am.
• We gained 1300m and we made it to the top at 5985m/19600 feet.
• The air was thin. Felt like we were on the moon (I imagine!).

Our day truly started last night. Five of us gather at the trail head – Jason, me, Charles, Ola and an extra porter, Ally, who is bringing the oxygen tanks, just in case things go south on the trail. The first steps of our summit hike began at 11:18pm on Monday, May 12. It is dark out, but the moon is full and easily illuminates the ground before us. Nothing to do now but keep going.

You might be wondering why the summit hike usually happens at night. We sure did. There are a few reasons for it:

1. It is nice to be at the peak for the sunrise, and the only way to do that is to hike through the night.
2. The weather at night is typically much more predictable. It is usually calm and manageable.
3. The moon is a great light source.
4. Hiking up this high during the day is very hot and people burn out with heat exhaustion, the night temperatures are much more conducive for the climb.

The trail starts off nice and easy. We switch backed across the mountain in nice terrain. We are now fully in the Frozen Ice Desert and the ground is like black sand/dirt/volcanic dust(?). Hard to explain, but it is very easy to walk on as it just absorbs all the shock from each step. But make no mistake, we are climbing.

You’d think we’d be spending our time, especially on this nice and easy terrain, looking around and taking it all in. But no, it is so exhausting that all you can do is focus on the person’s feet in front of you and remember to breathe. Other than the odd break, we trudged onward and upward. We didn’t know this, but Charles and Ola had planned on taking our daypacks for us. When they took them from us at the second rest stop, we were very surprised and grateful. Now we absolutely can’t fail! When I say we have no pictures of most of our climb, I mean exactly that. I took all of our energy just to put one foot in front of the other.

It was a few hours of this before the terrain changed, gradually at first, but then large rocks and boulders were all around us and we were forced to climb them. It was a bit of a blessing that we didn’t know this was coming. This was, by far, the most technical and difficult part of the climb. As we looked up to see how far this section was going to last, we were very pleased to see that it was only about 300 meters of distance. Easy-peasy.

Until we began. There was nothing easy-peasy about this. Each rock we had to climb onto left us as breathless as running 10 steps. And every other step had us climbing a new rock. It was brutal. It took us well over two hours to get through this tiny section of land. Triple brutal. But we got through it, finally.

Gillman’s Peak greeted us at the top of those rocks. We stopped for a very quick rest, but wanted to continue pushing forward. It was about 5:30am. We’ve been climbing for 6 hours. The end is in sight. Apparently, it is here that many people stop altogether. There is only about 200 meters of elevation left from here, but you are so tired, and if you have any altitude sickness at all, it is almost impossible to convince yourself to keep going. We did not want to stop long enough to have those thoughts creep in.

We are told it is only about 2 more hours before we’ll reach the summit. Let’s do this!

Walking (Crawling? Inching? Snail’s pacing?)  towards the next peak, Stella’s Peak, Jason’s nausea wins and he hurls the contents of his stomach, meager as they are, down the mountain side. Ew. But, within seconds, he is feeling so much better and is eager (ready? prepared? resigned?) to push on.

This part of the hike, while no longer technically difficult, took a ton of mental fortitude. We are so close that we can see the finish line up ahead, but we are still so, so far away. The last 200m of elevation happen over about 2km so it is not necessarily steep but, it is covered in snow and you have already been climbing for 6 hours. Just one more step. And then another. And another.

We reach Stella’s Peak just as the sun was cresting the crater. It was stunning. I am ashamed to say that we didn’t have the strength to care, let alone pose and take pictures of the beauty going on around us. If it wasn’t for our amazing guides, we wouldn’t have any tangible memories of this epic scenery. They grabbed our camera and ran around making sure to get as many pictures as possible for us. They knew we’d want to have it, and they knew exactly how we were feeling. There was no judgement, only compassion and understanding. They turned out to be some of the most amazing pictures of our entire trip.

We have 100 meters of elevation left to climb, about 1km left to hike and we are so over it. We can literally see the peak and the sign; can this just be good enough? We’re tired, we’re sore, we’re spent, and quite frankly, we stopped caring hours ago. As I am writing this, sitting in my warm house in cozy slippers with a dog at my feet, I am having a hard time comprehending these feelings and remembering just how real they were. It’s unbelievable to me that you can be so close to the finish line after so many days of hard work and truly not care. But it was true. Once again, if it had not been for our hero guides, we might have turned around.

Instead, we trudged on. One foot in front of the other. Hundreds and thousands of times.

Until, after what seemed like a lifetime, we are mere steps away.

Charles, Ola and Ally sang us in, clapping, cheering and singing their traditional song in Swahili. The emotions bubbled to the surface and we couldn’t contain our tears as they flowed.

We did it.

We are at the summit.

The top.

The end.

And now it all makes sense. Why we push ourselves to do hard things. This goal we didn’t even know we had showed us just how strong we are. The feelings of pride and accomplishment completely erased the feelings of apathy and dismissal we were having just minutes beforehand.

High fives, group pictures, hugs, kisses and genuine congratulations to all of us. This is when we finally took the time to appreciate our surroundings. And wow, what a sight. We could see right into the snow filled crater. The sun is bouncing off of it so beautifully, it is breathtaking. There are glaciers surrounding two sides of the outer rim which were a gorgeous surprise. Someone had taken the time and energy to build a snowman.

It was an amazing experience being on top of Africa at 19600 feet. It is chilly, the air is thin but that sun…that sun is letting us know that everything is amazing.

We did it. It matters. We were overcome with pride, joy, wonder, and pure amazement. Nobody can take this away from us.

Now, how do we get down?