This series marks three major milestones: surviving 10 awesome years of mountaineering, ticking-off one of the Seven Summits of the World, and finally crossing out my ultimate bucket list destination: Peru's Machu Picchu - and in doing so, reaching two new continents! As I inch closer to the one hundred mark, let me run you through mountains 71 to 80 - from the African titan to the Philippines' southernmost mystical peak.
#71: Mt. Kilimanjaro (5,895 MASL) | Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
We had our first glance of Kilimanjaro on our way to our hotel in Moshi town from the airport. The sheer size of the mountain juxtaposed by the vast farms of sunflower and corn in the Tanzanian flat lands can be very intimidating.
'I'm finally here!' - I thought - watching the snow-capped titan from the roadside. It was my first time setting foot on a continent outside Asia and it was a quite a long and tiring journey from Manila to Bangkok to Addis Ababa to Kilimanjaro which took around 15 hours long (excluding layover time), crossing 5 time zones.
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| The imposing Kilimanjaro rising above the African plain. |
Normally, Kilimanjaro is climbed at a minimum of 7 days to have ample time for acclimatization considering that the summit is at almost 6,000 MASL and if you're taking the Machame route, you'll need to gain around 4,000 meters in altitude (Machame gate is at 1,700+ MASL). But considering budget constraints (middle class Filipino mountaineers are normally stingy when it comes to climb budgets. hahaha!), we took the 6-day Machame-Mweka route which just have a dismal 75% summit success rate compared to the 85% when doing the 7-day itinerary. True enough, only three out of our 5-person team was able to reach the summit.
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| Almost half of the marker is buried in compacted snow! |
High altitude climbs are especially challenging to Filipinos since our country's highest peak is just at 2,900+ MASL - which is not high enough to prepare for the thin air of altitudes beyond 4,000 MASL. In fact, in Nepal, 'mountains' below 3,000 MASL are just considered 'hills' - how's that for a comparison. This climb has been challenging due to the compacted snow towards the summit assault which nearly killed me when I slipped and slid on the icy slope in pitch-black darkness at 3am. This climb will definitely be part of my campfire stories.
