I climbed Kilimanjaro – altitude sickness scared me but everyday task was worse

THE toughest thing about scaling Kilimanjaro isn’t the ever-thinning altitude that turns your lungs to prunes.

It isn’t the eight hours a day trudging and scrambling through scree, rock and bush.

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It isn’t the final ascent that starts at midnight and forces you to fight the body’s instinct to sleep while you’re walking up a 26 per cent incline.

It isn’t even the sheer scale of the highest stand-alone mountain on earth, a nose-bleed 19,341 feet.

No, if we’re going to be properly honest and realistic here rather than making ourselves sound all windswept and interesting, the toughest thing about scaling Kilimanjaro is: Going for a pee in the middle of the night.

Now, if you actually are the windswept and interesting type, this might not be an issue.

Ditto if you’re young and your bladder isn’t as annoying as a toddler on a car journey.

But as someone who got his bus pass a couple of weeks before heading to Tanzania, it would be hugely unfair not to warn fellow travellers about such practicalities on this trip.

We’re talking practicalities like not tying your laces without feeling like you just ran a marathon. Like packing and repacking your gear every morning when it’s cold and dark.

Like carrying a dead-camel smell about with you after six days up and two back down without washing. Like shoving down so many calories that you’re sick of the sight of food. Like the unspeakable modern horror of no phone signal.

If these and so many other basics that the brochures don’t mention really, really matter to you, then trust me — going up Kilimanjaro will be beyond horrible.

But do it anyway. Because it’s also utterly awesome in far, far more ways.

The staggering sunsets and sunrises. The feeling of doing something truly special with your pals. The camaraderie when the graft’s done each day. The phenomenal support from your local guides. The overwhelming emotions of achievement and pride when you reach the summit. And, yes, the stories you swap about night-time peeing disasters.

I was one of 15 from the phenomenal Team McKeown who went through all this in aid of MacMillan Cancer Support, but whether you’re doing it for charity or for the thrill, planning for Kilimanjaro is no different from planning a fortnight in Tenerife; as in, who you book with can make or break the whole shebang.

That’s why we’ll be forever grateful that wherever our fundraising efforts take us, we always trust Welsh-based company Adventurous Ewe — love that name — to look after all the stuff that matters.

They sort your flights, accommodation before and after the climb, can rent out any kit you don’t have and provide the very best support team to take care of everything else.

Being with Adventurous Ewe meant we got co-owner Sue Blunt with us every step of the way — she and husband Jim Young have done Kili 35 times between them — and a team leader in Jo Bradshaw who’s an Everest veteran and whose attention to detail was invaluable in those moments where daft little mistakes with kit or food or hydration or even the pace you move at can wreck your chances of reaching the top.

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As for the ‘everything else’ their support crew supplied, we’re talking pitching tents, cooking meals, setting up chemical toilets, even carrying your big pack every day so all you’re humphing is a rucksack full of essentials.

Their work ethic, the logistics of their operation and the pride they take in everything they do is unbelievable — right down to the moment you stagger into camp each afternoon and not only is everything ready for you, but they sing and dance and give out hugs until even a naturally grumpy wee sod like me is almost smiling.

Believe me, you can boast about dining out in the poshest restaurants on the planet. But until you come in after a grinding shift on that mountain to find a wee chef has knocked up cauliflower soup and spaghetti bolognese on a two-ring gas burner at 15,000 feet, you don’t know the true meaning of haute cuisine.

Though when Sue and Jo and all the crew really come into their own is on that midnight haul to the summit at Uhuru Peak.

Writing this a few months on, my brain only chooses to remember the bit where, close to physical and mental breaking point, we reached the summit at Uhuru Peak just as the first sliver of sun blinked through in the East while the moon still hung cold in the West. All the stuff the brain blocks out?

GO:TANZANIA

GETTING/STAYING THERE:

GETTING/STAYING THERE: Fly British Airways to Addis Ababa then Air Ethiopia to Kilimanjaro International before bus/jeep transfer. A 12 day, nine nights adventure from £2,795pp all inclusive. See adventurousewe.co.uk/trip/climb-kilimanjaro
We stayed at Weru Weru River Lodge for one night before and after see weruweruriverlodge

The one-foot-in-front-of-the-other bit, the water freezing in your bottle bit, the falling asleep standing up bit, the wanting to stop and lie down and cry bit?

The bit where my wee tentmate Robert refused to take another step until he’d finished his Creme Egg Twister?

Without Sue and Jo and the crew, we wouldn’t have got through it all, no argument.

They coaxed and cajoled — and, just occasionally, bullied — us beyond what our minds and bodies wanted to do and for that we will all be forever thankful.

Because when you’re sitting there in front of the signpost that confirms you made it to the roof of Africa, every inconvenience becomes irrelevant. Every moan is rendered meaningless.

You even kind of realise that without the nightmare of being 60 and getting up to pee when it’s 2am and -5°C, the adventure wouldn’t have been quite the same.

Oh, and a quick tip on that subject to finish.

If you’re going to be smart and save yourself a trudge to the proper loo by doing it into a ziplock freezer bag, make sure there isn’t a hole in the bottom.

Your tentmate will be thanking you.

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