Introductions

Greetings. My name is Doug and on August 6, 2009 I leave Vancouver, Canada on a 3-week trip to Tanzania. I will be spending a week on safari and a week in Zanzibar but this blog is primarily focused on my attempt to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I've been thinking about making this trip for over 5 years but it was 2008 before I started my research and planning. During my research I was pleasantly surprised to find a ton of blogs published by others who had gone before me. Many of these have been very helpful. With this in mind I've decided to make my own contribution in hopes that my experience might be of some use to others who are considering making the trip. I welcome your questions, comments or pre-trip suggestions. In addition to being potentially useful they will let me know that someone has read and possibly appreciated the effort. At the very least I'll have provided updates to those friends and relatives who are interested in what I'm up to.

A little background...

Many of you have already suffered through my thoughts on why I'm doing this, ruining what would have otherwise been a very enjoyable beer. So suffice it to say that I've always wanted to visit Africa and Kili seemed like a cool way to experience it. I will spend my share of time staying in lodges and being shuttled around to view wildlife but the Kili experience will be particularly real. This was always important to me but in 2006 my marriage of 21 years ended. Now the Kili trip is somehow even more important to me.

How important is it to summit?

As I mentioned, I started out just looking for a more interesting way to see Africa. But over the course of my planning I have come to realize that Kili is a much bigger challenge than it was portrayed to be in the books and films hat first inspired me to do it. My research uncovered stories of triumph, surprise, disappointment and even death. Yeah, death. Turns out that the ascent of Kili gains far more altitude per day than the normal benchmark that climbers would use for say, Everest. This is because Kili is considered a non-technical climb. That is to say, no special skills are required, you pretty much just trek straight up, so any dumb-ass can attempt to climb it. (That's where I come in.) For this reason, the true challenge of Kili seems to be how you adjust to the altitude gain. For some it's an apparent walk-in-the-park and for others it can mean hitting a wall and turning back. For a foolish or unlucky few it has meant injury and occasionally death by pulmonary or cerebral edema. For anyone interested you can find a primer on this at ww.indigoguide.com/kilimanjaro/edema.htm

While I'm not too worried about dying, Kili has somehow evolved into some kind of symbolic challenge to be overcome. What started as a different angle on Africa has now become something much more. The books all say, remarkably, that physical fitness has relatively little to do with whether you summit. It's more about willpower and your ability to adjust to altitude.

So, is it important for me to summit? Of course it is. But it's not about impressing anyone or even proving something to myself. It's about exploring my limits, challenging my assumptions about myself and setting a new benchmark for phase II of my life.