One of the things I have increasingly been thinking about is how I am going to get down Kilimanjaro – that is supposing I actually make it up!
We are meant to get to the top at dawn on the seventh day, having commenced the final assault – taking about seven hours – before midnight. The reason for the timing is that the scree on top freezes overnight, making it easier to climb up, so they say. By the time we have spent twenty minutes at the top taking selfies, the scree has started to defrost and slides about as we start to go down.
I actually found myself in Tesco recently looking at a pile of tiny sledges reduced to £1 each, wondering if I should pick one up to pop in my back pack, so I could try sitting on it to slide back down. Have I lost it entirely?
Then when guest blogger Clare Ungerson mentioned Yaktrax in a recent blog I started to wonder if that might be an answer for coming down. The thing is, you have to come down quickly: having spent the best part of a week getting up, you are expected to get down in a day and a half. I read about one guy who started to make his way down and was considered to be progressing too slowly. One of the guides and another climber each took one of his arms and ran him down, making sure he didn’t fall over. You can see where I am coming from, with the little sledge and the Yaktrax now!
One factor in having enough energy to do anything at all by this stage seems to be the amount of calories consumed. Apparently being at high altitude takes away your appetite and you have to force yourself to eat – you can burn up to 4000 calories a day walking on the mountain. Given that none of that can be alcohol, that is a lot of food! I can’t say that eating food has ever been a problem for me: I have always quite envied people who can’t eat because of flu or a tummy bug. However unwell I might have been in my life, I have always been ready to eat my dinner. Now for the first time, that might be a real benefit. By that time I will definitely not be thinking about losing weight. I will be able to and should eat absolutely everything that is going and then, with a bit of luck, I will be running down the mountain when I come!
