Kiss the Never-ending Wall (Kilimanjaro - Day 4)

Day 4 begins. My head feels great for once but the rest of my body feels stiff, achy, lethargic. I have to give myself another pep talk to get out of the warm, soft cocoon and get my tired feet back into the boots.

See, I didn't just wake up one fine morning two weeks ago and decide "I think I'll hike Kilimanjaro. What, like it's hard?"

No, I did some preparation. A month ago I put extra cans of tuna in my backpack on my consecutive day hikes in Utah. You know, to add some weight. That counts as training, right?

In hindsight, maaaybe I could have done more. There is a perk to arrogance - it takes away some of the fear of doing something crazy. You look and think “Well if they can do it, I can do it too”

We start the day by climbing the Baranco wall. When I say climb I mean it, as its a scramble up a nearly vertical never ending wall. They say kiss it for good luck, or just for extra grip.

Just when you think it's over, it's only a brief respite until you look up and see the wall going ever higher. At some point in the day my legs are not my own - I have no idea how they are still moving. And as I think about "oh poor sad tired me", a porter passes me by. He’s carrying 25 pounds on his back and balancing another 25 pounds on his head...without hands. My inner voice shuts up a bit.

Some of us pay thousands of dollars to go through the privilege of this unbelieveably beautiful misery, and for others it's their only livelihood. The ovarian lottery strikes again.

We get to camp around 5pm. I try my hardest not to think about midnight tonight. Tonight, we summit - starting out at midnight, reaching the peak by sunrise. I’m not even arguing as to why we have to start at night, a marked departure from my normal bargaining for more snooze minutes. I'm fairly unhappy I only get 7 hours of rest. My body hurts, my head is throbbing. I put on my sleeping mask and attempt to sleep.