Merril has wanted to hike Kilimanjaro for a few years. He said he met someone when getting his WFR (Wilderness First Responder) certification who had guided big mountain adventures and that led to him researching about it. The original plan was to go August 2020 but COVID bumped it to February 2021. He was able to get Wade Beatty, Wade's brother-in-law Adam Larsen, and Darryl Zitting to go on the adventure with him. They left February 2nd.
Their flights were delayed and he ended up buying a new flight through Ethiopia to Tanzania because they missed their connection in New York.
The food reminded him of Indian cuisine, lots of rice and curries.
Motorcycle safari was first up.
They got 2 flat tires and Wade's rental bike blew up. All part of the experience!
They stayed at a Maasai lodge run by the natives. Merril said the people were very interesting. He liked learning about how people lived out in the middle of Africa.
They killed a goat and cooked it over an open fire for them to eat.
They start hiking with 16 porters and a cook and 3 guides. The Kilimanjaro National Park requires a lot of support staff to make sure people are hiking safely.
The beginning of the hike starts in a rain forest.
This is the food tent, which turned into a sleeping tent for some of the porters at night.
The next day, the foliage changed with the elevation. Less rainforest, more scrubby plants.
And lots of waterfalls because it was raining. Merril said he blessed the rains down in Africa, just like that song by Toto.
They slowly ascended to become used to the elevation.
It was cold! All the camps had these signs with the elevation and name of the camp.
Merril said the porters were carrying 40 pounds of extra gear besides their own gear!
It rained on them a lot!
Summit day started at midnight. The reason being that the summit is nicest weather in the early morning and hiking at night helps people focus on the hike.
The made the summit at sunrise! 5,895 meters or 19,341 feet!
Merril said it was one of the prettiest sunrises he's ever seen. But it was also freezing up at the top. Merril wanted to head back down but one of the guys was taking a time lapse of the sunrise.
When they hiked back down to base camp (around 3 p.m.), everything was wet. Instead of staying and sleeping in wet gear, they decided to continue hiking all the way down. They reached the trucks around 6 or 7 p.m. Darryl didn't drink that much water and forgot his altitude medicine on summit day. He was hurting when they got done. Merril said it was a VERY long day of hiking.
He hiked a total of 5 days, it was supposed to be 6 because they were supposed to stay one more night. They got down to Moshi and found showers, hot food, and dry beds. This was their driver.
Their flight out of Tanzania was cancelled and so the motorcycle safari guide met them and got them to Kenya. There's a national park filled with animals and they took another tour to see rhinos and zebra.
His Africa adventure took about 2 weeks. He left February 2nd and was home on the evening of Valentine's Day. That's a long time but I did surprisingly well. Merril was able to video call often and I kept a steady stream of upbeat music in my ears.
Merril's glad he did it and said it was really interesting to go to Africa to see how people live. Wade and Darryl's wives, Sheri and Shauna, want to go back and hike it. Not me man. I'm good to be the home support on this one! I had zero FOMO about this hike. I'd love to see Africa though!
