Ever wondered if you could climb a mountain? Maybe one of the Seven Summits? What if you are a middle-aged, unfit, inexperienced business woman with a sedentary job? This is the story of one such woman who decided to leave her office job in Sydney and go climb Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa. She tells the tale with wry humour, undaunted – well, only a little daunted – by the difficulties of spending nine days and eight nights on the slopes of the mountain, dealing with no running water, hours of uphill slog, high altitude – and what do you do about the toilet thing, anyway? The African mountain is a very dangerous place and several people die up there each year. But this is the story of how and why anyone in their right mind would try to touch the snows of Kilimanjaro.
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Annette Freeman. Mt Kilimanjaro & Me
Chapter 1: Preparations
Chapter 2: The Great Barranco Wall
Chapter 3: Motivations
Chapter 4: The Training Continues
Chapter 5: Arusha
Chapter 6: Helping Out Africa
Chapter 7: I Take Up Running
Chapter 8: Limping On
Chapter 9: In Lincoln’s Steps
Chapter 10: We Assemble
Chapter 11: Getting Into Gear
Chapter 12: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day One
Chapter 13: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day Two
Chapter 14: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day Three
Chapter 15: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day Four
Chapter 16: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day Five
Chapter 17: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day Six
Chapter 18: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day Seven, Summit Day
Chapter 19: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day Eight
Chapter 20: The Diary Of The Climb -- Day Nine
Postscript
Acknowledgements
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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
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Driving out to Roland takes you through patchwork farm fields where potatoes and hay grow and the occasional flock of sheep grazes. The journey travels along winding back roads, in and out of pine plantations and up over the farm hills until the mountain itself rears in the background, purple and rocky against the soft foreground. As you approach the foothills, the craggy rock face is hidden from view while you find your way through its skirts of rough bush and diminishing farm fields. You draw up at the side of a dusty country road, which ends where a narrow bush track beckons upwards.
There are two alternative routes up – the easy way and the hard way. As to the easy way, you approach the mountain from the southern side and have a long but less steep trek. The intrepid trio (having fortified themselves with a Devonshire morning tea at a country café in the little town of Sheffield, Roland’s closest metropolis) were instead planning an assault on the north face. Here we now stood, I looking like Mallory or Irving as they attempted Everest in the 1920s, with a heavy pack (for training purposes), my trekking poles, and faithful old Scarpa leather boots. Neil had his lunch in a small day pack and Jimmy had a baseball cap. We set off.
