TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/060589/06058900.067

Text File | 1990-09-18 | 6.7 KB | 123 lines

TRAVEL, Page 80

Puffing to Hemingway's Peak

Tropical heat and icy fingers dog Kilimanjaro's new conquerors

By David Brand


    The masochistic middle-aged climber stands panting into the
gaping dark, wondering what in God's name he is doing here. He is
17,000 ft. up, with 1,650 ft. still to go to the top. The
temperature is unreasonably far below zero, hands and feet are
numb, and the air is so thin that a few tentative steps leave the
body screaming for relief. Perhaps this is how Hans Meyer felt
when, 100 years ago, the German geologist became the first to
ascend to the rarefied heights of Mount Kilimanjaro, an immense
dormant volcano 49 miles long and 24 miles wide that straddles the
border between Tanzania and Kenya. Or the myriad of tourists who
have since gasped their way to the roof of Africa.

    What can the attraction be? It is, after all, a three-day
uphill trek to the foot of the final peak, and then a predawn slog
of two practically vertical miles to the to-p. On the way, walkers
are alternately roasted by the tropical sun and chilled by low
alpine temperatures; they sleep in unheated, unlighted huts, wash
in ice-cold water and, after five days, emerge from the mountain
dirty, haggard and exhausted. "Maybe the only satisfaction comes
from looking back on it afterward," suggests climber Matt Claman,
29, a lawyer from Juneau.

    The largest number of the 10,764 tourists who climbed the
mountain last year came from the U.S. That can be blamed on
Hemingway, says Iain Allan, a mountain climber whose Nairobi
company arranges treks up Kilimanjaro, mostly for Americans.
"Americans were brought up on his short story The Snows of
Kilimanjaro, and they simply have to come and see for themselves."
What they find is not one but two forbidding peaks: gaunt, craggy
Mawenzi and snowcapped Kibo, the summit that looms over Harry,
Hemingway's gangrenous protagonist, "wide as all the world, great,
high, and unbelievably white in the sun."

    The most popular route up Kibo, known somewhat disparagingly
as the tourist route, is, as British climber Ian Standbridge wryly
observes, "no cheap vacation." Kilimanjaro National Park charges
an entrance fee of about $150 a person for the climb, which begins
at park headquarters in Marangu, Tanzania. For the guides, porters
and food for the five-day trek, Marangu's two hotels charge an
additional $250 a person. And don't forget generous gratuities.
Money is constantly on the minds of the porters, who see each climb
as a test of how large a tip they can extract from their clients
("Bwana, give me your boots when we finish our safari"). These
young members of the Wachagga tribe, who spend much of the year
working on coffee plantations, saunter upward, balancing 30-lb.
sacks of climbers' gear on their heads. Some haul large green
wooden boxes of provisions, water jugs -- and even live chickens.

    The climbers, a motley assembly of shorts and sneakers,
knickers and mountain boots, start out with cheerful hearts over
a gentle, 5 1/2-mile path through rain forest to Mandara, a
"village" of overnight huts. The second day is a more strenuous,
7 1/2-mile upward trudge through moorland to the Horombo complex
of huts. Both sites were developed by the Norwegians as an aid
project in the early 1970s. Today they could do with a little
redevelopment.

    The A-frame huts cry out for a broom, and the wood stoves in
the dining halls have fallen into disuse, probably because so much
vegetation has been stripped from the mountain that there is now
a shortage of fuel. The garbage pits brim with rusting cans, and
primitive toilets discharge raw sewage over the mountain. Hikers
huddle around trestle tables like prisoners of war, bending to
their watery soup and leathery wads of beef, prepared by the
porters in tiny huts that seem perpetually enveloped in a fug of
smoke.

    At Horombo's 12,336 ft., some hikers feel the effects of
mountain sickness, an inability to adjust to the altitude (even
though the guides have been urging "Pole, pole" -- Swahili for
"Slowly, slowly"). The illness inevitably results in violent
nausea. "I began to get sick at Horombo," says Frank Szymanski, 38,
a New Yorker. "From there on, it just got worse and worse."

    The test of the body stiffens on the third day, when the route
crosses the saddle between Kibo and Mawenzi, a rock-strewn lunar
landscape that gradually climbs through intense heat, then chilling
cold, to 15,550 ft. There is little for climbers to do but cower
in sleeping bags in the hut at the foot of Kibo peak. Recalls Geoff
McDonald, 27, a schoolteacher from New Zealand: "Everyone was
complaining about headaches and stomachaches, and some were
vomiting."

    Shortly after midnight the restless party is pulling on its
assorted long johns, multiple sweaters and Gore-Tex outer suits in
readiness for the final ascent of Kibo. In the frigid predawn
blackness, the climbers assemble like an alpine chain gang, led by
a guide with a paraffin lamp. Why such a ghastly hour for the
ascent? "The scree is frozen at this time," explains guide
Godliving Sadiki, referring to the volcanic gravel that covers the
slopes of Kibo and can make climbing as difficult as wading through
Grapenuts. A more likely explanation is that the average climber,
confronted in daylight with the daunting gradient ahead, would
quickly lose heart.

    Upward they slog, some stopping every few stumbling steps to
gulp thin air into agonized lungs. The slowest suffer most in the
howling, icy air. "The guides had to try to rub life into my
fingers, they were so numb, and I was crying," recalls Frederika
Vaupen, 50, of New York City. For Vaupen and her husband Burton,
59, it was a "grueling" six-hour clamber to Gillman's Point, 18,650
ft., the lowest spot on the almost perfectly circular,
1.2-mile-diameter crater.

    And what does the victorious climber discover on reaching
Gillman's? "All we found was a soggy visitors' book and an old post
with a rusty tin upended on it," says Philip Smith, 28, from Sutton
Coldfield, England. This is as far as most venture. Only the
hardiest will spend another hour or two crunching through ice and
snow around the crater's edge to Uhuru Peak, at 19,340 ft., Kibo's
highest point.

    The 1 1/2-day descent from the mountain is a loping parade of
the tired but exultant, followed by guides and porters whose only
suffering is from gratuity anxiety. "Don't forget me," they
constantly remind. Across the saddle, a small party of descenders
comes across a young American woman, undaunted by the rigors still
ahead, singing a buoyant playground anthem to the mountain: "Up in
the air, Junior Birdman./ Up in the air upside down." Smiling, they
trudge on. These birdmen have earned their wings.