One Journey at a Time: Day SEVEN: The Summit

We were awakened at 11pm to prepare for our midnight summit hike. We had a small meal and hot tea (our fourth hot meal of the day). It was hard to choke down more food, but we knew we would need it on this long day of hiking. We went back to our tents to pack, and as per usual… we were a half hour late in getting started. The result was that many teams left before us, and the trail up to the summit lit up with head lamps in the night, almost like luminarios lighting the way to the top. It was beautiful, informative, and daunting to see our path lit up before us. Especially as I looked up at 4:30am, four hours into the climb, and saw lights slowly moving up the trail so far away and realizing I was not almost there.

During the night, you could not see where you were going except for the small spot of light illuminated by our headlights, directly in front of us. Therefore, it was uncertain whether if we were to slip and fall, we would fall into some sand, a small drop off, or perhaps a steep gravelly hill taking us down a dangerous path and serious injury. So, instead of thinking about that too much, we trudged forward, focusing on the next step, the next scramble, and the next glimpse of the marching headlights above, showing us where we were to go.

Perhaps 2 hours in we came to an exposed area of the route. I am assuming this because as I said, we could not see a change in our geography but we could tell that something changed. It got windy… really windy. And the wind did not stop. For the remainder of our hike, a relentless, strong wind barreled through our bodies, faces, and minds. Many times as we trudged I had to wait for the person in front of me to proceed, and almost got toppled over by the strong gusts of wind. During breaks I had to huddle behind rocks to avoid facing the gusts head on.

At 5:37am (yep, it was a long five hours and I remember the exact time!) the sun began to peak over the African horizon. With the light, a spectacular sunrise appeared and colored the sky and clouds below us in brilliant colors. This is when I found out that my camera had ceased to work in the cold so I don’t have any evidence of this beautiful morning. However, because of that I put my camera in an inner pocket and it was warm enough to work at the top by the time we got there (yay!).

Also with the entrance of the light, we began to see where we were going. The floating lights crisscrossing the horizon became rooted in the ground, and the other climbers’ destination became clear, as did their end point. About 1 hour later, we even saw a glimpse of a bright green sign. We knew our first destination was Stella Point. At 5,756 AMSL, it was about 45 minutes from the very summit we were aiming for, Uhuru Peak. Around 6:30am, we reached Stella Point and a large green and yellow sign congratulating us on our accomplishment. I took few pictures, concerned my camera would not make it another 45 minutes but was able to capture some views from our first encounter of the crater rim.