Embarking Kilimanjaro - Day 1: Rongai Route

It is the largest freestanding mountain in Africa, the highest "trekkable" mountain in the world and has the only snowfields on the equator. It is technically the easiest to climb of the Seven Summits (the highest mountains on each of the seven continents), meaning that you don’t need ropes, pulleys, rock picks or special mountaineering gear, or even any previous mountain climbing experience to summit. Some supercharged facts there, right? I only know these things because it was pretty much the extent of my "research"...if you can actually call googling "Mt. Kilimanjaro" research....prior to climbing my first real mountain. 

 Ok, so no mountain climbing experience required?

Check.

 

To be honest though, nothing I ever could have read online would have actually prepared me for what was out there. I knew this was something that I was just going to have to do. I think that's part of the excitement, diving into the adventure head first... and knowing that I had some of my fav peeps facing the same crazy, big mountain was all that I really needed to know; we were in it as a team.

All for one and one for all.

 

After 20 hours of travel from yyc, we arrived to the Kilimanjaro Mountain Resort, a haven to rest up at. We settled in for some beverages in the common area and attempted to relax, except that there wasn't much of that happening once the crew that returned from the hike that day told us what they had just been through and what was in store for us. I mean a couple of them didn't make it to the summit, so it was gettin' real.

 

 

We started out along a small winding path, through a pine forest. The trail was not all that steep, a slow 7 km hike through the beautiful country side. Its been said that climbing Kilimanjaro is like walking from the equator to the North Pole in a week; an ocean of green forest surrounded by dry savannah up to a snow covered mountain.

 

Early to bed, Day 2 comes quick!