The Hike Like A Woman Podcast
Hi, I'm Rebecca 👋 I'm a guide, ski instructor, Army Veteran, cancer survivor, and a big fan of adventure travel. I started HLAW in 2014 because I wanted to smash barriers to entry into the outdoors and help women explore. I'd love to have you join me on an adventure. Please reach out if you have any questions 📧 rebecca@hikelikeawoman.com
The Hike Like A Woman Podcast
Tales from the Top of Africa
Today on the pod we're celebrating.
We're celebrating our Mount Kilimanjaro climb. As we tackled the 7-day Machame route we were supported by an incredible team of 73 porters and 13 guides who made this journey possible for our group of 24 women.
This is the audio from our livestream trip recap last night - if you want to watch the full video and see the photos mentioned in this episode click here: https://youtube.com/live/LagVu39GitE?feature=share
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Hey, it's Rebecca. Thanks for hanging out with me on our podcast today. What I wanted to do is last night we had an incredible live stream where I basically shared the story of our Mount Kilimanjaro climb. I talked about how it was my cancer finish line and I went through day by day, sharing pictures and some videos of this experience. And if you want to watch the full slideshow, I'd encourage you to head on over to our website, hikelikewomancom, and you can find the full video there. But I thought some of the audio might be nice just to listen to as well. So I stripped away the audio and that is today's podcast. So this is just the audio portion of the full slideshow. But if you want to see the pictures that go with the slideshow, head on over to our website. But you know I like to listen to podcasts as I'm walking or working out or working around the house. I don't always have time to like sit down and watch a YouTube video. So here's the audio version. Enjoy it. If you want to see the pictures, head to our website.
Speaker 1:Here is a recap of our trip to Mount Kilimanjaro. I'm excited that you're joining me tonight. If you we haven't met yet, if you haven't hung out with me on a live stream or on a trip. My name's Rebecca. I started Hike Like a Woman about a decade ago and we started as a mommy blog. We have gone through several, several changes at Hike Like a Woman and now we're really focused on adventure, travel and events like our virtual summit. So thank you for being here. I see Kara in the comments. Hello, hello, so good, I know I'm live on Facebook. I should be live on YouTube too. We're just going to cross our fingers and hope that tech works tonight. I also want to mention, before we dive right in and start talking about our Kilimanjaro climb, there's a box right there and it says hike like a woman on it and I have three giveaways tonight. So the next three people to book our Kilimanjaro trip for 2025 are going to get a box of really awesome stuff from me. So stick around or book the trip if you want to join us in 2025. She leads and reads, says hey, okay, good, so I know you can hear me on Facebook and on YouTube. The other thing is I'm going to go through our entire Kilimanjaro climb tonight. I have a lot of pictures and stories to share with you. I'm going to try not to waste your time, so we'll keep it moving and I'm excited that you've joined me. What I want you to know is, if you have any questions about the climb, go ahead and drop them in the comments. As I'm going through the presentation, I'm probably not going to stop and answer the comments, but I will answer them at the end and if you're catching the replay of this, I'm going to leave the presentation up on YouTube forever and on Facebook forever. So if you're catching the replay and you have questions, I will be monitoring those comments to answer your questions about this trip. I think we're ready to dive right in, so I'm going to take my face off the screen, hi Amanda, hi Rachel, and I'm going to put some pictures up here.
Speaker 1:Earlier this month, june 1st through the 9th, I headed to Mount Kilimanjaro with 24, well, 23 amazing women. There were 24 of us total. I should also mention that some of the women who were on this climb are in the chat, so I see Kelly in the chat and if you have questions, kelly might be able to answer them for you. So I know she's going to be hanging out with us. So feel free to hit up if you have questions. Maybe some of the women who are on this climb can answer some questions, but this is a picture of our entire group. So we had 24 women supporting us. We had 73 porters and I would be a horrible person if I did not publicly acknowledge and thank our porters. It would have taken me three weeks to climb this mountain if I didn't have someone carrying all of my gear and cooking all my food for me and just taking care of me in general. So I need to thank our porters and we had 13 guides. So we were a group of 100 people heading up the mountain. It was basically like a small city that would just move every single day. We felt very well taken care of with our guiding company.
Speaker 1:We did the Machami route. So the Machami route. We did the seven day Machami route. Some people do it in six days. We did it in seven because we wanted to acclimate. There are several routes up Mount Kilimanjaro. I chose the Machami route because it has a really high success rate, because we follow the notion of climb high and sleep low, and we'll talk about that a little bit later in the presentation. So the Machami route is seven days. It's 39 miles total and I'll tell you, when I was training for Kilimanjaro, I was like 39 miles in seven days, whatever. That's easy, but I will tell you that I think a Kilimanjaro mile is the equivalent of three or four or even five US miles. And that's because we started our climb at 5,380 feet at the Machame Gate. We got to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at 19,341 feet and then we had to get back down. So then we had to end our hike at the Mawaka Gate, which is 5,500 feet. So we went up a total of 13,961 feet in five and a half days and down a total of 13,841 feet in basically a day. So it was like two half days of hiking, give or take the mileage that we were going or the elevation that we were going up and down throughout the day, because this was not a flat route by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1:I also see Melissa in the comments. Hi, melissa. Melissa was my roommate. I'm going to talk about her a little bit later because she was really special.
Speaker 1:So one thing that I want you to take away from tonight's presentation is, if you look at all of those smiles and all of those hands raised in the air, I want you to know that we were not a group of elite mountaineers. Most of us are. We're middle aged women who have other jobs, who are juggling, juggling work and families and being involved in our communities and all of these things. And so I want you to walk away tonight knowing that I think you're amazing because you're part of our hike like a woman community, but I also think that you are capable of going on a really big adventure, and I know that if you set a goal, you can achieve it, and if you're you know, not good for if you're not feeling like a trip up Kilimanjaro is your thing, I think that it's good to have a goal to work towards, and all of us on this trip had a goal that we spent a year some of us over a year, some of us a little bit under a year preparing for, and so I want you to just leave tonight feeling like you can do hard things, and I also want to say that I don't like going to presentations where I just feel like people are talking at me. So tonight I really hope you feel like I'm walking beside you as I share our Kilimanjaro journey, and I want you to know what's possible and I want you to feel empowered and rather, if you feel empowered to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with me, or maybe feel empowered to have your own personal Kilimanjaro, your own personal goal, that you set something that's going to stretch you and bend you, and then I want you to take action by putting a big adventure on the calendar. Okay, that is my inspirational spiel.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to the trip. So, before I start any big adventure, I always like to ask myself why. So I'm going to get a little bit personal here with why I climbed Kilimanjaro and why this trip was so important to me. And this picture was taken of me almost two years ago to the date. You can see my bald head.
Speaker 1:I had just finished chemotherapy, I was in radiation, I was in treatment for stage two B breast cancer and I was really trying to find myself. I was trying to figure out who I was after breast cancer. I knew who I was before breast cancer, but there's something that shifted in me as I was going through treatment and my values shifted and I started thinking like what's really important in my life? My health is really important to me, my family is really important to me, the hike like a woman community is really important to me and making really incredible memories is important to me. The hike like a woman community is really important to me and making really incredible memories is important to me. And so as I was trying to get healthy and strong again, trying to figure out who I was, I knew that I needed a goal, and I'd been invited to climb Mount Kilimanjaro a couple times before and I hadn't been able to go because my kids were young and because we couldn't afford it. And so I thought if I put Kilimanjaro on the calendar, that's a big goal and it will give me a goal to work towards. It'll help me plan for the future, because during cancer treatment it just feels like the future is so uncertain and scary and it will help me get back to leading women's trips in the back country, which is something I really love doing and something I did a lot of before breast cancer. So that was my why to climb Kilimanjaro. I will say that I think every woman on our trip had a why. She had a reason why she was climbing that mountain, and if someone's some of you who were on the trip with me are listening and you want to share your why in the comments and you're comfortable doing so, go for it. But for me this was my cancer finish line. This was me showing cancer. You didn't win. I won because now I'm healthy and strong again, so that's why I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
Speaker 1:The trip began long before we got on that plane and long before we linked up in Kilimanjaro in Moshi. And so here's a little snippet when you join a Hike Like a Woman trip, you're added to our Slack page. So in our Slack group we started to get to know each other before the trip. So we started talking about things like the weather on Kilimanjaro. We started to play some little get to know you activities. We started to share some pictures of our training hikes. Shout out to Alyssa she was really instrumental in getting some discussions going. We had some Google meetups where we were able to see each other and talk in person about the trip. We were sharing all sorts of advice, youtube videos, we were watching all sorts of things, and so that is really where the trip began.
Speaker 1:Next step for me was a trip to my doctor to check on vaccinations, to get a prescription for Dymox to help with altitude sickness and just to get a checkup to make sure that I was good to go to climb Kilimanjaro. I was going to go anyway, regardless of what my doctor said. But most of us had visits to our doctors to get prescription medications, vaccinations, and then we started to research. So some people in our group went early to go on safari and to have some cultural experiences, and then some people stayed later to go to Zanzibar and to go on safari. So since a lot of us were flying all the way to Africa, we thought it was really important to take advantage of that opportunity just to get a little more taste of the local culture and customs besides just the Kilimanjaro climb. And then we started training. So I trained a lot on stairs. It's the winter so I couldn't get to the high elevation, to the high mountains, but I was able to go to our local stadium on our university here and go up and down stairs a ton. I did a ton of walks and I also noticed that I had some deficiencies in my training and we'll talk about that in a little while. A lot of us had followed different training programs for Kilimanjaro and I will say that if you book a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro with us, we are modifying a training plan and now we know what to expect. So training and getting ready for Kilimanjaro is really important. I also see Aaron and Kirsten in the comments who were on the trip. So hi, hi to you guys, so good to see you again.
Speaker 1:And then a lot of us either went on the trip with friends or we were able to connect with people in our region for some training hikes. We were able to connect with people in our region for some training hikes, so we did some training hikes. The next thing was to test our gear, and so for me that was like splurging on some new gear that I'd wanted for a long time, but making sure that it was working. I didn't want to get on the mountain and then realize that I actually hated the day pack that I bought. So there was a lot of gear testing, and there was some clothing testing, trying to figure out how we were going to layer up on really cold days. For me, micro spikes and learning how to put on and off my micro spikes when I had cold hands was something that I was practicing. A lot. Turns out, we didn't use our micro spikes on the mountain, but that was one piece of gear that I took a little practice for me, and then we also talked in our Slack group about food and how we were going to fuel ourselves. Someone recommended salt sticks, so I tried salt sticks and they were amazing. And then Alyssa posted her like her her anti bonk kit there and I was like, oh, those look like some really good protein bars. So I got some of the protein bars that she had in her picture and I love them. So there was just a whole lot of discussion about you know what we were all going to wear, what we were going to eat, what gear we were going to bring, and that was actually a really fun part of the kind of get to know you part of this trip.
Speaker 1:The next thing is eventually we found ourselves getting on airplanes and arriving at the Kilimanjaro International Airport. So I'm going to do a little quick shout out here to my friend Aaron. Aaron and I were actually checking into our flight at the same time at the Denver airport, and so I also see Emily in the comments. So hi, emily. And after 36 hours of traveling together, aaron became like my new best friend and, if you'll notice, throughout this presentation, I don't know what was going on, but Aaron ended up in almost every single photo that I took. So it's kind of like this this presentation is kind of like where's Waldo but it's actually where's Aaron, so you're literally gonna see her in every single picture, but that's Aaron. And it was so fun to connect with her in an airport, and that was the same story for many women as they were traveling along the way. They just kept, kept picking up other people, uh, and we all ended up in Kilimanjaro. Oops, whoa, what's going on here? Okay, so we ended up in Kilimanjaro.
Speaker 1:After we got off the plane, we met our driver and they took us to the hotel and then at the hotel, the group started to arrive and you can see some of the group here on the very first morning. What was really special about this was there were some women here that I knew and some women that I didn't know, and I love that portion of the trip where everybody starts to arrive and everyone's a little nervous about meeting other people. But then we realized how much we have in common and we were putting these spaces together with these people who'd we met on Slack before, and it was just really, really special. So I felt like we didn't feel like we were strangers, but we all kind of already started to feel like we were friends. And then, um, that very first day, I gave myself a day buffer, and so that very first day, um, several of us went to a local market and then we went to visit, visit the Moshi Children's Center, and this was a school that was actually started by Mama Zara she's the company, the woman who started the guiding company that we used and as I was walking through the Moshi Kids Center, I was really moved. So it's a school for underprivileged children in Moshi, and I was amazed at the school and how hard the teachers were working. We didn't get to see any of the children or teachers, but as we walked through the school, I just felt really strongly that this was an organization that I want to support, and so I just decided, then and there, that we are going to donate $100 from every trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with us in 2025 to the Moshi Kids Center. And I found out that the average salary of a teacher at the Moshi Kids Center is $120 a month, and so if we sell out our trip to Kilimanjaro in 2025, we will essentially be able to pay the salary of two teachers for almost an entire year. So if you are feeling like I want to climb Kilimanjaro and you come with us, know that we have a really strong give back, give back mission next year and and we're going to give back to the Moshi Kids Center. So this takes me to kind of wrapping up our day zero here.
Speaker 1:The day before we started our climb and you can see John here and John was our head guide and I spent about an hour with John as the trip leader before we met with the entire group and John actually became a really special friend to me throughout the climb. We're close to the same age and he has summited Mount Kilimanjaro almost a thousand times. He started as a porter, worked his way up as a guide and we had a really good working relationship and it showed me that we had selected a good guiding company because he spoke English really well and I also learned a ton from him, especially later on, and I'll talk about that a little bit later. But John became a really special friend to me and it was just a really cool relationship and I think as we climbed together for seven days, I got to know John well and that relationship didn't just happen with me, I think most of the women on our trip got to know the guides that were hiking with them every day quite well and it was really special. I should also note that we had two women guides, two local women guides, who were with us and it was so cool to see that these women were just kind of shattering those that glass ceiling as guides on Mount Kilimanjaro.
Speaker 1:So after I met with John, then we got the entire group together and John introduced himself in our, introduced some of his guides and we got to know each other a little bit, passed out some really rad swag, and then some of the women went and they got rental gear from the company that we were using. So it was really nice to be able to get rental gear and clothing right there in our hotel. We didn't have to go anywhere, so that was super convenient. So if women needed gear they could rent it right there Super affordable rental rates. And then this is john hiding behind this, this curtain here. But then, um, then the guides went to everybody's room and they checked our equipment and I thought this was really cool. The reason they checked our equipment is because they wanted to make sure that we were all going to be safe and warm and comfortable. So that was kind of a nice added bonus to make sure that we had the appropriate clothing that we needed to go on the mountain. And then, of course, we had dinner, and then we just several of us just sat on the patio and got to know each other a little bit and that really set the tone for the trip. It was so fun to see friendships already blossoming the next morning. Here we go. Where's Waldo? Oh, where's Aaron?
Speaker 1:The next morning we woke up and there were several things we needed to do before we could load the buses and vans to drive to the trailhead. So we locked up our luggage, then we locked up our money and our passports in a really secure area behind two locks. We ate breakfast and then we loaded our gear and we had one big group picture before we headed out. And I think what's neat about this picture is you see a lot of big smiles, you don't see any blisters, you don't see any sunburns. This was like the cleanest we were the entire seven days. And this picture just just it speaks to me of like the anticipation and the excitement and the uncertainty of the climb, and I love this picture. I'm going to frame it and put on my wall.
Speaker 1:So we loaded up the vans and the buses and we drove out about an hour to get to the Machame Gate. And here you can see our porters working really hard. They didn't stop working from the moment they started loading and unloading our bags onto the buses until we got back and you can see the buses. You can see the teamwork going on here. As soon as the porters had our gear situated, they took off because they had to hurry up and get to our camp for the first night, for the first night, and then we had to all sign into the national park and we had to wait for our departure time. So climbing Kilimanjaro was very regulated and we couldn't just like pull up and start walking. We had to wait until it was our time to go.
Speaker 1:And one thing that we do here at Hike Like a Woman that I think is important and is pretty fun is that we kind of have a rule that no one drinks alone and this just makes sure that everybody stays hydrated. And so we did a little toast here, did a circle and a little toast before we started our climb and then we headed out of the Machame Gate. So in this picture we're at 5,380 feet. To get to our first camp we had to climb up to 9,350 feet in about three miles, so it was pretty steep. And here you can see what it looks like as we're climbing up through the rainforest.
Speaker 1:Here you can see what it looks like as we're climbing up through the rainforest For a girl from Wyoming. I love the rainforest. It's so lush and green and beautiful, but it was pretty sticky in there and pretty muggy. And this is where we learned about pole, pole pole, and our guides insisted that we walked pole, pole pole, which means slowly, slowly, slowly. And the reason we hike slowly is to help us acclimate and because there's a whole lot of mountain ahead of us to climb. I don't think they wanted us to burn out on day one. And this is also where we were introduced to the Kilimanjaro song.
Speaker 2:Anyway, Hakuna. Matata, anyway, that song we heard over and over and over again. Sometimes I still hear the song.
Speaker 1:I took my kid hiking this morning and I was trying to sing the Kilimanjaro song to me and he told me to stop singing the Kilimanjaro song. But it actually became kind of like a rally, like a rally cry for us. You could tell when we were getting tired, because then our guides would start singing the Kilimanjaro song. All right, so there we are, hiking up through the rainforest. As we got through the of see the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro peeking through those clouds. And as I looked up and saw Kilimanjaro peeking through the clouds, I was like holy shit, we have a whole lot of walking to do. So I was like inspired and motivated, but at the same time I was overwhelmed thinking about how much distance we still had to cover. We got to camp that night. We had a delicious dinner and you can see our tents were pretty close together. So I think we heard every snore, every fart, every cough, everything. Not a lot of privacy in camp one, but it felt so good to finally be on the trail and to finally be on our way, and I think I was just so excited the first night and also so happy to finally get to go to bed.
Speaker 1:So day two emerged, another beautiful, sunny day. We were so lucky to have such good weather and such dry conditions on the trail. So today we were headed from Machame Camp to the Shira Cave Camp and this is a neat day because we went from the rainforest through the heather and into the moorland zone. So today we had this day. We had a three mile hike and we went from 9,350 feet up to 12,500 feet. So we had a big elevation day, and when I say three miles, this is like a long, hard three miles. And so we started our hike. Spirits were good and you can see there that the forest is kind of opening up and you can see Kilimanjaro there in the background. The terrain started to change as we went from the forest and now we're starting to get into this high alpine zone, and the terrain became rocky, the vegetation started to look a little bit scruffy. And then we got to camp and we had a late lunch. You can see everybody has this shade of blue. It's like the big blue, the big blue tent had a, had lunch there and then, yep, there's Kilimanjaro getting closer and closer. Here's a good look at camp. Our campsites got progressively worse as we got up the mountain and you can see Kilimanjaro Once again. There's Waldo, I mean, there's Aaron in there in every picture.
Speaker 1:And then after that evening, before dinner, we went on a little hike to acclimate and our guides wanted to get us up to 13,000 feet. Wanted to get us up to 13,000 feet, and so I talked a little bit below about how on the Machame route, the goal is to climb high and sleep low. So when you climb high during the day then you come down to sleep. You get to sleep and have some denser, richer oxygen. It helps your body recover, helps you sleep better, and then during the day when you're climbing high, that actually stimulates red blood cell production and so as altitude increases, the body compensates with reduced oxygen and then when you produce those extra red blood cells, it helps transport your oxygen a little more efficiently. And so part of this acclimation hike after dinner was helping to so that we could produce some of those red blood cells that we needed later on and then come back down and sleep really well that second night. So that is, that was the acclimation hike. I don't think anyone felt like like getting to camp and then going up to hike a little bit more, but it was really really important that we did that acclimation hike. So that's a group picture. We didn't have our packs, we felt so light and free and then we watched this beautiful sunset as we started to come down the mountain. And then we all ate dinner, went to bed I didn't get a lot of pictures of this camp, I think I was just tired or something. So gorgeous sunset dinner and then the next day was a big day. So now we're on day three.
Speaker 1:Day three is where we go from the Shira Camp up to Lava Tower and then back down to Barranco Camp. So this is a huge day for acclimation and it's also a pretty big distance day. We hiked six miles this day through the high Alpine Desert and we went from 12,500 feet at camp up to 15,190 feet at the Lava Tower and then back down to 13,044 feet at Bronco Camp. And I'll show you this Now. Before the trip started, when I had my meeting with John, he told me about day three and he warned me about day three and he said on day three said on day three, a lot of people get sick because it's the first taste of real high altitude, and so he was doing a good job, and his guides, of paying attention to how people were feeling that day. The highest I'd ever been before this was 14,293 feet, and so it was a big altitude day.
Speaker 1:As we were hiking, there were two main intersections and we had lunch along the first intersection. The second intersection was Lava Tower and, yeah, the goal with today was to hike pole, pole pole, to have a long lunch at 15,000 feet so we could generate those red blood cells, and then to hike back down into camp. It seems a little silly to like to like go high and then come back down, but that's all part of the process. So you can see what the trail looks like here. There were some really cool rock formations as we left this camp that I thought were really neat, and then you can see this picture. I love this picture so much, you guys, but this is our group at lunch. Not, we weren't at the lava tower, we were just below the lava tower here, but our guy set up some chairs so we could get off our feet. Then they set up the tent.
Speaker 1:I will say the wind was crazy insane at this lunch spot and I think it's just because we were so high up, but they really wanted us to enjoy a long leisurely lunch at this area and we were just like give us a sandwich and let us keep walking, because we just wanted to get out of the wind. But that wasn't the plan. The plan was to stay there and acclimate. We were happy on this day. Our guides were happy. They told me at the end of this night. They were happy because most people felt pretty decent at altitude. We had a couple that felt pretty sick, but there wasn't a whole lot of nausea, there wasn't any vomiting, and so most people handled the altitude really really well.
Speaker 1:After lunch we started to hike back down and then we stopped for a picture at Lava Tower. So Lava Tower here we are at 15,190 feet. I think for most of us this was the highest we'd ever been. Lava Tower is actually a volcanic plug. So I live here in Wyoming. If you've ever been to Devil's Tower up in the northern part of our state, that's also a volcanic plug, which basically just means that magma hardened with an event when Kilimanjaro was an active volcano. So there's a really cool structure there. I didn't take any pictures of it, but well, maybe, maybe, kind of, but anyway you can see the scenery pretty rocky, pretty rugged. We were happy to be going down after such a windy lunch, just around Lava Tower, and I will say, as we got on the other side of the mountain it wasn't really windy and the scenery was really pretty as we headed back into camp and we as we hiked across the the Shira Desert.
Speaker 1:Here you're going to see these, these trees. They kind of look like Dr Seuss trees. Some people have described them as Dr Seuss trees. I'm not very good at how, at saying this, but they're dendrocinco sensio, dendro sensio, kilimanjaro trees, and they can grow up to 20 feet high. They're really neat because the old leaves at the bottom of the tree they actually fold in to insulate the tree because of the extreme cold temperatures, temperatures, and then their pith stems store water and they have special fluids to protect them against freezing and their leaves close when they're cold. These trees are only found in this part of the world, and so they're really, really special, really spectacular trees, and I think they're so beautiful.
Speaker 1:So then we got to camp. I don't have any pictures of camp there. I must have been tired too, but we got ready the next morning. So this is us the next morning and the next day was pretty awesome because we were gonna hit the barranco wall. You may have heard of the barranco wall before. It's a really famous landmark.
Speaker 1:But on this day we we started at camp and we started at 13,444 feet at Barranco Camp and we had to get up to 13,106 feet at Karanga Camp. But this was another climb high sleep, low day. So we did get some elevation in just over or just around three miles. And what amazed me this day is you can see this rocky ledge that we're climbing on. Those are porters and when you look at what they're carrying, it is amazing. It is so impressive the amount that they're carrying as they're just scrambling up and down these rocks. I was just, I was just inspiredambling up and down these rocks. I was just, I was just inspired by their strength and their stamina. Here's what the wall looked like. So this was, I think, next to summit day.
Speaker 1:This was the most fun day of the climb. We basically just joined this big line of climbers, so Barranco campus, where several of the trails actually merge, and so we joined a bunch of other climbers and we just started going up this mountain and there were portions of it where we were walking and there were other portions where we were kind of scrambling with our hands and our feet. It took us about two hours to get to the top of the Barranco wall and it a 843 foot climb. And there's this one section of the wall that's called the kissing rock where you have to really kind of squeeze and get really personal with this rock. As I was going through this section, one of the porters told me I had to kiss the kissing rock. So I gave the kissing rock a big old smooch and then I kept singing. I kissed a rock and I liked it for the rest of the day.
Speaker 1:This is also where I realized that my training had been insufficient because I'd been so focused on walking uphill that I hadn't neglected my strength training. And you actually need a little bit, a little bit of strength there in your upper body and your lower body to climb these big, big rocks. So I'm going to be adding a bunch of strength training to my workout schedule to get ready for next year. But climbing the Bronco Wall was so much fun. And then we got to the top of the Bronco Wall and there was like this amazing plateau and we could look and we could see for miles and actually I realized we were above the clouds, and so that meant to me that we were getting closer and closer to the summit. And the train was just otherworldly. It was so beautiful, but you can see that summit we're getting closer and closer.
Speaker 1:At points that day we kind of felt like we were walking across the moon or something with this, this dry kind of desert in this high Alpine desert zone. And then we got to oh, there's Emily drinking some water with John. It was super important to stay hydrated. What was funny, I thought, was if we had a headache, our guides would say drink water. If we had a stomach ache, our guides would say drink water. If we had a blister, our guides would say drink water. If our feet hurt, our guides would say drink water. It kind of reminded me of being in the army again, where like the solution for every problem was just to drink water. So it was an extremely long day and we did drink a ton of water.
Speaker 1:Finally we got to camp, and this was my favorite camp. What you don't see here is that we're actually on a really steep pitch and some of the tents well, one of the tents had to be moved because it was like. It was like get a roll down the mountain. But this was a good day because we got to camp a little bit earlier that day and then we were just able to hang out and have some fun. I have a ton of videos that are going to be posted on instagram and on our youtube channel here that are just of these silly women, um, and all the shenanigans that they caused at karanga camp, um. So that's us just chillaxing at this camp here. Kelly says this day was the best. I agree, this day was the best.
Speaker 1:Before we went on this trip, we had a lot of questions about bathrooms and what we would be using as bathrooms, and we so. In most of the camps and some places along the trail there's there's these pit toilets that are like squatty potties, but they're just outhouses, they're not the cleanest, and so our guides actually set up these toilet tents whenever we stopped. So we I think we had four toilet tents for poop tents. You can see there's like a little white in there. That's the toilet, so kind of a low toilet to sit on. But they were kept well. Well, they were clean, they were well stocked and it was nice to be able to have private toilets just for our group so that if you had questions about toilets, we're taking care of man. This is what camp looked like. So you can see that green tent in the distance. That's the cook tent. So that's where our cooks worked, cooked all of our meals from scratch. That blue tent there, that's the big blue mess tent where we ate all of our meals. You can see the hand washing station set up with that white bucket. And then we were in these little orange and blue tents. This is what the inside of our cook tent looked like, or the inside of our chow tent.
Speaker 1:Every night we would take, take our heart rate, check our pulse, make sure that we were still healthy. I think our guides were supposed to do a pretty comprehensive test on us, but they really just let us pass around the pulse oximeter. Did I say that right? Yeah, and so we just kind of passed it around and I don't think they I don't think they cared too much about the numbers on that, because our guides were doing a really good job of just observing us and watching us closely throughout the day, and so I think they were trusting their own intuition on how we were feeling over what that little number said. But I think it's just protocol. So we'd usually check our numbers after dinner and then hit the sack.
Speaker 1:This brings us to day two of the next day. So this was the next day. This was a fun day, you can see. We wake up, we'd have breakfast. Cheryl would put on her sunscreen there. That was important at the high altitude.
Speaker 1:So at this point we are at Karanga Camp and this is where we said goodbye to one trip participant who the altitude was just not feeling good and her fun tickets were gone. So she departed and that was sad to lose a member of our group, but also at the same time I think that it was I was really proud of her for making the decision and listening to her body about knowing when it was time for her to go. So so we said goodbye and then we headed out as a big group and this this was probably one of my favorite hikes of the the trip, because before we kind of separated into smaller groups, which was great because we got to really talk and get to know people who we were hiking with. But for the first time it was like the whole group hiking together and on this day we had two miles to cover and we were climbing from 13,106 feet up to 15,331 feet and this was going to take us to our base camp, to Barranco or sorry, to Barafu and we were going to get this hike done in the morning. Then we were going to rest all afternoon. Then we're going to eat dinner, rest some more and prepare to start our summit hike later on that night. So you can see here we are getting closer and closer and closer to that summit. You can see the terrain, how rocky and how desolate it is. Here's our group.
Speaker 1:We took a ton of pictures this day. I would say that morale was pretty high as we started this hike and as we started getting closer and closer to base camp. We stopped for a big group picture there. You can see some of our guides in this picture. I love this picture so much. You can see the big group there getting ready to or on the way to Barafu. You can see this big long line. As we were climbing up, up, up, up up, our guides were singing to us, we were dancing. It was just such a fun. It was such a fun morning.
Speaker 1:Finally, we made it to Barafu base camp. Here. We were so happy to be at this camp and as we were all signing into this camp, we were seeing people coming off the summit and walking through the camp and they were being cheered by their guides. Some of them looked like they were in some pain, but it was just really neat to be standing here and thinking that's going to be us in 24 hours. Here's what Bafu looked like. You can see we are just like perched on the edge of this mountain here, super rocky. It was pretty windy up there, lots of clouds, and so we excuse me just a second. So we followed our guides instruction and we ate and we drank water, we drank electrolytes, we partied, we rested. We were all just getting ready mentally and physically and getting our gear ready for the big summit push later that night. So later that night, here our guides put on.
Speaker 3:Thank, you Wakoribishwa Kilimanjaro, akuna matata Anga tulilala, akuna matata Sasa, ni barafu, akuna matata Uwi, ni uhuru, akuna matata Jambo, buwana, aparigani, nuzuri sana Wakeni wakoribishwa.
Speaker 1:Kilimanjaro, akuna matata. Thank you, I'm a man, okay, sorry, sorry, can you hear me now, guys? Okay, perfect, I'm back. Okay, thumbs up there, all right.
Speaker 1:So, um, after the guide sang to us, we went back to bed and then around 11 o'clock we woke up. We had another dinner and then we were supposed to meet our guides outside of our tent at 1130. That's Melissa, my tent mate, and I don't know what happened, but I think our guides forgot to pick us up, waiting for our guides to come, and we started to see this head, this string of headlights, headlamps, head up the mountain. So I rushed over to John and I was like John, you forgot us. And so, anyway, it was a little bit rocky start on summit night. There's just like a lot of confusion. It was dark, we were kind of tired, it was cold, we didn't really know what was going on, but finally we got all situated and we started heading up the mountain. So on summit night, to get to the summit, we had 4000 feet to climb in three miles, and by now we're in the Arctic zone, so it is chilly. We went from the elevation of 15,331 feet up to 19,341 feet.
Speaker 1:We had groups of one or two, people had their own personal guide and some of the porters became guides that night and we just followed this line of headlamps up the mountain and at some point it got really confusing for me personally, because I couldn't tell where the headlights, headlamps ended and the stars began, because it just felt like we were just walking through the stars. Almost we would stop, but not for very long, because our guides didn't want us to get cold, so when we stopped we would either have time to put on another layer, go to the bathroom Our guides had hot water and hot ginger tea for us to drink, but we didn't have a lot of time when we stopped. I remember just wanting to keep moving and I was so thankful I created a really kick ass playlist, so I just put my headphones on, I listened to music the entire time and it really helped pass the hours. But the hardest time of the night for me personally was around 4 am, so by now we'd been hiking for around four hours. We still had about three hours to climb. I was tired of walking uphill Like, let's just be honest, we'd been walking uphill for five days. I was just tired of walking uphill. I was hungry and I was thirsty, and so I was just right before the sun started to come up, I was kind of my morale was at its lowest, and as the sun started to peak over the horizon, I think it was a huge morale boost to all of us. And then we started to smile just a little bit because we could see the summit ahead of us and because we could look also look down, and see how far we had come is at 18,885 feet here.
Speaker 1:All 23 of us made it to Stella Point, which is hugely significant considering we came from all different altitudes and from all different fitness levels. Everybody made it to Stella Point, which was amazing. So Stella Point, from Stella Point, we have about another hour to hike to get to the peak, and so we kind of took a quick break, took a picture and then we started walking, and this is us walking across the glacier to get up to Aruhu Peak, and you can see once again we're just in this long line walking across the snow here. This was also kind of like are we there? Yet I just wanted to be at that summit Once we got to the summit. This is where it ended Like we did it. We had 22 of us make it all the way to the summit. So this is us at the peak, 19,341 feet.
Speaker 1:I will say that I had big visions of the summit, like I got this really cool banner made that said it's all downhill from here. I had visions of all of us together standing at the summit with this sign. But let's be honest, we all hiked at very different paces to get to the summit and so I was just happy to get some picture taken with the banner. We actually had everybody sign that banner the last night we were together and that's going to go up with us next year that exact same banner. It's going to be like a sisterhood of the traveling pants thing, and so everybody's going to go up with us next year that exact same banner. It's going to be like a sisterhood of the traveling pants thing, and so everybody's going to go up next year. Who comes on this climb with us is going to sign that banner and it's going to connect us with the group that went up this year. So kind of a special thing there. But there you see us at the summit.
Speaker 1:I don't know what happened to me at the summit, but I just like knelt down and burst into tears and I, I don't know. I don't know if it was just like my cancer finish line just coming to fruit, like like coming alive. I don't. I don't know what happened, but I just I just like laid on the ground and cried for a couple minutes and poor Cheryl like patted my back and then I just had so many big emotions as I reached the summit and it was just a really special moment. Of course, the person who was right by my side at the summit was John, and before we started the climb, john said that climbing Kilimanjaro would change my life, that climbing Kilimanjaro would change my life. And he was right. Climbing Kilimanjaro did change my life and I think if you're in the comments and you were on this trip with me, I think you'll also be able to recognize that it was once a life-changing experience, not just for me but for all of us.
Speaker 1:So we're at the summit, but I didn't think about getting off of the summit. I just wanted to get to the summit, but it was a pretty tricky climb back down the summit. So we're like sliding down this volcanic ash, down this mountain face. It had the potential to be pretty gnarly. I was so thankful for really good boots. I was so thankful for trekking poles.
Speaker 1:But then this is where things kind of started to get hard for our group and I'm going to be really sensitive with how I talk about this. But we had one woman on our team who started to have some effects of mountain sickness when she was at the summit and she was just not feeling very good and there was some communication between her and her guide and as she got back to back to camp she was assessed by our head guide and she was so showing some symptoms of haste. So that's high altitude cerebral edema. So so it's basically like some, some cognitive, you know, like your brain is not having fun at altitude. So I checked her kind of to like using my wilderness first responder skills not that I've ever dealt with haste before but our guides recommended that she get off the mountain immediately, and so immediately John grabbed her and started trying to get her to low elevation as quickly as possible. And this was a really difficult situation for our entire group because we had a team member that we were worried about, who she had just made it to the summit, like she had done it, and so it was really hard to watch her leave the mountain and not feel good. But I was really impressed with how our guides handled the situation, how quickly they responded and how rapidly they took her off the mountain where she could get healthy again. And she did. We saw her two days later and or a day later, and she, she was great once she got to a lower elevation. So that was hard to see a team member go, but we love her.
Speaker 1:And then the hard part came. We ate lunch and then we had to start our own hike down the mountain, and the original plan was for us to get down to Mweka Camp, which was about four miles down the mountain. But because of this medical situation we were delayed a little bit and we didn't. We didn't really have it in us to go four miles. So we so we started hiking and we stopped at Millennium Camp, which was just about two miles down the mountain. And it was really important that we got off the mountain, because our guides did not want us at 15,000 feet anymore. They knew that we needed to get down as quickly as possible too, so that our bodies could recover from what we had just accomplished. So this is Millennium Camp. Here you can see that we're starting to get back in the rainforest. And here's me getting really vulnerable again. But this was where I had my own personal breaking camp, my own personal breaking point.
Speaker 1:Once we got back to the camp, I think I just hit like rock bottom. We had just seen our friend get evacuated. There was a missing camera and a missing phone, and so that was stressful. I had to go and report that situation to the park rangers and try to solve the mystery and figure out where that missing equipment was. John wasn't with us. He had taken the girl who needed to be evacuated and so he was with her at a lower camp and so he wasn't there. And our assistant guy didn't speak the best English, and so I felt like we were supposed to be celebrating. But I just wanted to sit in my tent and cry because I just like the stress of the whole day, I just couldn't take it anymore. I was smoked, I was just out of gas, emotionally, I was just drained.
Speaker 1:But then something really beautiful happened and this happened a lot on our trip when someone was having a low point and I might get a little choked up here, but that's when these two women crawled into my tent and we just sat and we just talked and they asked what they could do to help me, and I think that that's one thing that makes our trips really special is especially this one. I just felt like everybody was really looking out for each other and really trying to help each other out, and this was just a really special moment for me when I just felt like I could just release a little bit and I felt like it was gonna all be okay and so I love all the women on the trip Just really special. So many times special moments like this happened on this trip. So, anyway, we ate dinner, all was good, the missing camera was found and it was great. It turned out to be a really lovely evening. I think everybody just crashed hard. We were just so happy to be off our feet.
Speaker 1:But we woke up the next morning and that's kind of our last, one of our last views of Kilimanjaro there, and it was amazing to wake up in the morning and think, wow, just 24 hours ago we were standing on that summit. That was for me, that was a really powerful experience to think how far we had come down since we had been on that summit, but we had a lot of distance to cover this day. We had about eight miles to go, so we slowly started our our, our descent here. We had a lot of fun. We separated into a couple groups and the group that I was with I think we had a blast. I think that I think Pippi, right there, said that this was like one of her favorite moments was the last couple hours before we got to our hotel. So morale was high.
Speaker 1:As we were headed down to the mountain or down the mountain, you can see us with our guides having a lot of fun. We're walking through the rainforest again, enjoying the shade, looking at the plants. We were trying to find monkeys on the way to Mwaka Gate. I guess there's. Sometimes you can see monkeys. We were way too loud to see any monkeys, but we were having so much fun, lots of smiles there. It was just a fun day. We finally arrived at the gate and we were so happy to be done. We enjoyed some Kilimanjaro beers. We spent a lot of time relaxing at the gate. I think the first group was really excited to like get out of there and go take showers and I feel like our group kind of just wanted to soak up and celebrate and just like soak up the moment and just remember what we had done. We kind of lingered. I felt like I didn't really want this moment to end. So there's our sign there at the gate Our hike is over. Now it's time to party. I thought the Bon Voyage sign was really special At Hike.
Speaker 1:Like a Woman, I always say you know, we start our trips as strangers and we finish as friends. But I, there was something more than friendship, and I believe that we started this hike as strangers, we became friends, but after enduring something so difficult, I think that I think we almost became like sisters because we we chose to do something really, really hard. And Emily's like yes, I think you did make it in the picture anyway, oh yeah, she was sitting in the van enjoying a Coke. So I want to, I want to play this video. So we went back to our hotel, we took showers, we went swimming and then we had a huge party with our guides and some of our porters and um I I wanted to just play another video of them singing to us because, um I, just I loved this moment, um, when they started singing and getting a little rowdy, and it was just like a huge celebration of what we had just done together. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that was just a really, a really cool moment. But then we kind of ended where we started, sitting on the patio and just just talking about what we had just gone through together. What a special trip. It ended the next day, of course, at the airport, as we said our goodbyes and once again it was like at each stop along the way our group would get smaller and smaller and smaller. But just, I can't, I can't even say how much this trip meant to me and it was so special. So, of course, I'm going to talk a little bit about our next trip to Kilimanjaro. So we're headed back to Kilimanjaro August of 2025. If you have watched this video this far and you felt like inspired by this trip, I just want you to know that I think everybody can make it up this mountain if they prepare mentally and physically. So we will help you get ready to climb this mountain because it is indeed life changing. So, making a few changes for next year so I mentioned before, I was the only trip leader, but we're going to have two, maybe even three trip leaders next year just to kind of help with the logistics and things like that. I'm also taking a Swahili class because I recognize that once John left our group with his assistant guide and I needed to be able to communicate a little bit. So I'm excited to learn some Swahili and I'm going to be going in personally. I've talked to a travel agent who's putting together a safari package. So if you want to hop on a safari and come in earlier to try to acclimate, I'm going to be doing a safari before the trip. And then I mentioned before that I really feel strongly about partnering with the Moshi Kids Center. So we're going to be donating $100 from each trip sold to the Moshi Kids Center. So we're going to be donating $100 from each trip sold to the Moshi Kids Center.
Speaker 1:Now, if Kilimanjaro is not your thing, I totally get it. I don't. I mean, it's hard, it is a hard, hard hike. We also do adventures all over the world. Most of our trips are sold out, but we're headed to southern Utah next June, so a year from now. That trip has a ton of openings.
Speaker 1:Um, and we're headed to Peru in October. So this is going to be like a Kili light Um. So the, the, the, the uh. Elevation's not as high, the distances are similar, different, different kind of trekking. Um also Porter assisted, uh, with guides, cooks and porters. So if Peru in October sounds like your thing, then you can join me on any of those trips. Of course, you can learn more over at our website, hike like a woman dot com. I'm going to. I can hang out for a few more minutes.
Speaker 1:If you have any questions about the trip, feel free to drop them in the comments. Anything you want to say, drop it in the comments. Feel free to drop them in the comments. Anything you want to say, drop it in the comments. I think that some questions about gear and stuff were already answered by women who were on the trip. Amanda is actually signed up, so she's headed in 2025. So I think that's why she's asking all those really good questions.
Speaker 1:So that is our trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It was a lot. It was a lot to remember. We have already started planning. So there's probably, I think, like seven girls who live in this region where I live. We're already doing a mini reunion on Monday night and I think that some other groups of women in different areas are going to get together and we hope to do a big Kilimanjaro reunion soon, because it was just such a life changing, life giving experience.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, if you were on the trip with me, thanks so much for hopping in the comments and sharing your experience reliving it with me Such a beautiful trip and if you have questions about our 2025 trip, feel free to reach out. You can find me hi at hikelikeahomancom or DM me on any of the socials. I'm around and happy to answer your questions. So I don't see anything popping up in the chat there. So if you're watching the replay of this, go ahead and drop a comment and I will get back to you. Other than that, I thank you all for joining me. Have a great. Oh, Rachel's decided to do it. Rachel, have a great night and I will see you all on another live stream. Thanks so much. Or on an adventure, All right, Bye, bye.