Trekking Day 6: Friday, July 4, 2014
Karanga Camp to Barafu Camp
Hiking distance: 3 miles
Starting elevation: 13,240’
Highest elevation: 15,300’
Ending elevation: 15,300’
Karanga Camp to Barafu Camp
Hiking distance: 3 miles
Starting elevation: 13,240’
Highest elevation: 15,300’
Ending elevation: 15,300’
The most peaceful part of every day on the mountain is the hour before dawn. If wind isn’t battering the tents, camp is quiet then and everyone, even Monica, has quit coughing. (I know this because I’m awake more often than not.) Once people start stirring, though – usually between 5:30 and 6:00 am – the coughing commences and camp starts to sound like a tuberculosis ward.
As soon as she sits up this morning, Mo’ begins hacking so hard she can’t catch her breath. I announce that I think she has a cold, and she gives me a miffed look that says, No kidding. She’s been asserting this for days, and I’ve been insisting that we can’t be sure. Everybody in the group has felt sick since Shira 1, and coughing is the most common symptom we share. Until now, I’ve been skeptical that Mo’s coughing is evidence of anything more than dust and altitude. That has changed.
Mo’ and I don’t need to discuss what we’ll do if one of us can’t reach the summit. We agreed months ago that as long as we’re each reasonably certain of the other’s safety, whichever one of us can go on will go on. The other will be escorted by guides, as Maddi had been, to a safer elevation. This agreement was in effect when I was getting choked out by AMS at Lava Tower, and it’s in effect now as Mo’ grapples with her head cold. Our covenant is ironclad. It’s the Massey Pre-Nup of mountaineering.
Today’s destination is so close and so exposed that we can see it almost as soon as we leave Karanga Camp. Perched on a ridgeline high above us are little yellow dots that I know are tents. Even at our ponderous pace, it takes only four hours to get there. Many trekkers call it Summit Camp or High Camp because it’s the last stop on the way to the top, but its official name is Barafu Camp. Like Karagna, it’s pitched on an inhospitably steep slope and is as crowded as a refugee camp. At 15,300’ elevation, it comes as no surprise that Barafu is the Swahili word for ice.
As soon as she sits up this morning, Mo’ begins hacking so hard she can’t catch her breath. I announce that I think she has a cold, and she gives me a miffed look that says, No kidding. She’s been asserting this for days, and I’ve been insisting that we can’t be sure. Everybody in the group has felt sick since Shira 1, and coughing is the most common symptom we share. Until now, I’ve been skeptical that Mo’s coughing is evidence of anything more than dust and altitude. That has changed.
Mo’ and I don’t need to discuss what we’ll do if one of us can’t reach the summit. We agreed months ago that as long as we’re each reasonably certain of the other’s safety, whichever one of us can go on will go on. The other will be escorted by guides, as Maddi had been, to a safer elevation. This agreement was in effect when I was getting choked out by AMS at Lava Tower, and it’s in effect now as Mo’ grapples with her head cold. Our covenant is ironclad. It’s the Massey Pre-Nup of mountaineering.
Today’s destination is so close and so exposed that we can see it almost as soon as we leave Karanga Camp. Perched on a ridgeline high above us are little yellow dots that I know are tents. Even at our ponderous pace, it takes only four hours to get there. Many trekkers call it Summit Camp or High Camp because it’s the last stop on the way to the top, but its official name is Barafu Camp. Like Karagna, it’s pitched on an inhospitably steep slope and is as crowded as a refugee camp. At 15,300’ elevation, it comes as no surprise that Barafu is the Swahili word for ice.
Other than yellow dots on the horizon, I have no memory of the hike between camps. I spent the entire four hours mentally steeling myself for an imminent showdown with an old enemy, one I haven’t faced in decades. I battled it in my youth and ultimately prevailed, but it stalks me still. Even here. Strange as this sounds, I know exactly when and where I will confront it again, even though I’ve never been on this mountain before.
It is waiting for me at Barafu. It has been waiting there for months.
The Bantu people of East Africa speak of a mythical monster called Palatyi, an amorphous clawed beast that scratches menacingly at the door, usually at night, usually when you’re alone. Being ill-defined, the palatyi is a good metaphor for any impending threat one cannot see. It’s an equally good metaphor for any nagging, persistent menace one cannot escape. Scratching can refer to an ominous sound, but it also hints at an implacable itch. My palatyi fits both descriptions, and it’s up there now, sharpening its claws in anticipation.
Confession time: I haven’t always been Taskman. For much of my youth I was a champion slacker, able to postpone procrastination itself. Starting around 6th grade, for example, I'd tote a bag of chips and a bottle of soda to the den nearly every day after school, scrunch into a bean bag chair about five feet from the TV, and remain there, motionless and hypnotized, until dinnertime. It was like being sedated for three hours every afternoon, and it continued through high school.
It’s not like I didn’t have better things to do. Homework and household chores aside, I also dreamed of becoming a rock star and/or the Heavyweight Champion of the World. But TV is soothing, and inertia, though a feeble force, is a persistent one. In addition, I was weak-willed, insecure, and probably a little depressed. My parents nagged me about my lethargy but didn’t take any corrective action – most likely because they were weak-willed, insecure, and a probably a little depressed. As a result, I wasted an enormous amount of my life that I will never get back.
At 15 I took up the guitar and quickly learned the basics. Instead of mastering the instrument, though, or even learning to play it properly, I memorized a handful of easy pop songs and played them repeatedly for decades. At 17 I did the same with the piano. My stated goal was to become a professional musician, but I didn’t grasp the significant difference between practicing (which is deliberate, progressive, and demanding) and rehearsing (which is repetitive and mindless). That knowledge probably wouldn’t have mattered, though; learning new material is hard work, and I was a lazy teen. It was a lot more fun to belt out simple songs I knew well, eyes closed, imagining myself in front of a stadium crowd than it was to fumble around with something slightly above my skill level. Hence, although I spent many hours playing the instrument, few of those hours were spent practicing in a way that would make me a better musician. And none of the hours I spent watching TV did.
Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the notion that it takes at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice at something to become an expert.* If that’s the case, I’m not even an expert in television. I put in the hours – that’s for sure – but they were hardly deliberate. I spent most of that time in a vacuous trance. The real question is, What kind of a musician would I be today if I had practiced intentionally during just half the amount of time I spent zombied-out to reruns of Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, and Lost in Space?
Similarly, in my late teens I tried my hand at boxing. Turns out I had a talent for it, and so I started dreaming about the Olympics. Unfortunately, I didn’t like training. Didn’t like jogging. Didn’t like sit-ups. In short, I didn’t like pushing myself to higher levels of achievement. I wanted to coast on talent alone, and when I couldn’t, I’d give up and try something else. One evening my father reluctantly drove me all the way to Weirton, WV to compete in a Silver Gloves tournament that we both knew I had no business attending. I hadn’t trained adequately but was too ashamed to admit it. I suspect Dad took me anyway because he wanted me to learn something. When scheduling delays pushed my fight back to midnight, I used that as a face-saving excuse to give up and go home. To his credit, Dad never said a word, but it was a bitter experience for me. And it taught me the difference between dreams and ambitions. By the time I went to college I was a different person.
If my palatyi has a name in English, it is Laziness or perhaps Inertia. It scratches at my door in weak moments and gnaws on my willpower when the going gets tough. Like an alcoholic in recovery, I fall off the wagon every now and then. And when I do, my palatyi is always waiting nearby to catch me in its furry, forgiving embrace. It entreats me to watch TV, surf the Net, or pick up my guitar and play one of those songs I learned back in high school. The word “quit” is in my vocabulary. Not only that, it's bookmarked, highlighted, and italicized. And I must employ daily – sometimes hourly – acts of steely self-discipline to resist the urge to use it in sentences. I am a quitter in recovery.
It is waiting for me at Barafu. It has been waiting there for months.
The Bantu people of East Africa speak of a mythical monster called Palatyi, an amorphous clawed beast that scratches menacingly at the door, usually at night, usually when you’re alone. Being ill-defined, the palatyi is a good metaphor for any impending threat one cannot see. It’s an equally good metaphor for any nagging, persistent menace one cannot escape. Scratching can refer to an ominous sound, but it also hints at an implacable itch. My palatyi fits both descriptions, and it’s up there now, sharpening its claws in anticipation.
Confession time: I haven’t always been Taskman. For much of my youth I was a champion slacker, able to postpone procrastination itself. Starting around 6th grade, for example, I'd tote a bag of chips and a bottle of soda to the den nearly every day after school, scrunch into a bean bag chair about five feet from the TV, and remain there, motionless and hypnotized, until dinnertime. It was like being sedated for three hours every afternoon, and it continued through high school.
It’s not like I didn’t have better things to do. Homework and household chores aside, I also dreamed of becoming a rock star and/or the Heavyweight Champion of the World. But TV is soothing, and inertia, though a feeble force, is a persistent one. In addition, I was weak-willed, insecure, and probably a little depressed. My parents nagged me about my lethargy but didn’t take any corrective action – most likely because they were weak-willed, insecure, and a probably a little depressed. As a result, I wasted an enormous amount of my life that I will never get back.
At 15 I took up the guitar and quickly learned the basics. Instead of mastering the instrument, though, or even learning to play it properly, I memorized a handful of easy pop songs and played them repeatedly for decades. At 17 I did the same with the piano. My stated goal was to become a professional musician, but I didn’t grasp the significant difference between practicing (which is deliberate, progressive, and demanding) and rehearsing (which is repetitive and mindless). That knowledge probably wouldn’t have mattered, though; learning new material is hard work, and I was a lazy teen. It was a lot more fun to belt out simple songs I knew well, eyes closed, imagining myself in front of a stadium crowd than it was to fumble around with something slightly above my skill level. Hence, although I spent many hours playing the instrument, few of those hours were spent practicing in a way that would make me a better musician. And none of the hours I spent watching TV did.
Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the notion that it takes at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice at something to become an expert.* If that’s the case, I’m not even an expert in television. I put in the hours – that’s for sure – but they were hardly deliberate. I spent most of that time in a vacuous trance. The real question is, What kind of a musician would I be today if I had practiced intentionally during just half the amount of time I spent zombied-out to reruns of Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, and Lost in Space?
Similarly, in my late teens I tried my hand at boxing. Turns out I had a talent for it, and so I started dreaming about the Olympics. Unfortunately, I didn’t like training. Didn’t like jogging. Didn’t like sit-ups. In short, I didn’t like pushing myself to higher levels of achievement. I wanted to coast on talent alone, and when I couldn’t, I’d give up and try something else. One evening my father reluctantly drove me all the way to Weirton, WV to compete in a Silver Gloves tournament that we both knew I had no business attending. I hadn’t trained adequately but was too ashamed to admit it. I suspect Dad took me anyway because he wanted me to learn something. When scheduling delays pushed my fight back to midnight, I used that as a face-saving excuse to give up and go home. To his credit, Dad never said a word, but it was a bitter experience for me. And it taught me the difference between dreams and ambitions. By the time I went to college I was a different person.
If my palatyi has a name in English, it is Laziness or perhaps Inertia. It scratches at my door in weak moments and gnaws on my willpower when the going gets tough. Like an alcoholic in recovery, I fall off the wagon every now and then. And when I do, my palatyi is always waiting nearby to catch me in its furry, forgiving embrace. It entreats me to watch TV, surf the Net, or pick up my guitar and play one of those songs I learned back in high school. The word “quit” is in my vocabulary. Not only that, it's bookmarked, highlighted, and italicized. And I must employ daily – sometimes hourly – acts of steely self-discipline to resist the urge to use it in sentences. I am a quitter in recovery.
Barafu Camp is a terraced tent city built on loose talus. Not even a ninja could sneak up on you here because the fragile shale underfoot sounds like someone grinding up wind chimes and ceramic tiles in a mortar and pestle. Camp is so crowded that there’s barely room to walk between tents, and doing so is nearly impossible because the guy lines from each tent crisscross with those of its neighbors. You have to play a game of high-stakes Hopscotch just to go for a pee.
All roads lead to Barafu. Every trekker ascending the southern face of Kilimanjaro eventually converges on this camp just before making his or her summit bid. Everyone here at this moment, then, is either going to the top tonight or has just come back down this morning. Assuming 3-4 porters per trekker, there are nearly a thousand people clinging to this steep and crunchy slope. If I had to sum up the general mood of the camp in one word, I’d say purposeful. If I were allowed two words they would be ant farm.
Kilimanjaro’s second volcanic cone, the jagged Mawenzi, is plainly visible to the east, and Kibo looms over us to the north like a frozen tidal wave. It is daunting. Even though I’ve trained for it, I can think of lots of reasons not to go up there. There’s AMS, for example, which can be lethal, and which I recently discovered I’m highly susceptible to. The temptation to use Mo’s illness as a face-saving excuse to stay behind is also great. To be precise, though, I’m not looking for an excuse to fail; I’m looking for an excuse not to try. Say, does anyone else hear that scratching sound?
We’re sent to our tents after lunch to organize gear and to rest. Both assignments are more difficult than they sound. The gear is difficult to organize because we must satisfy conflicting demands. Many items that need to be easily accessible also need to be buried under layers of clothing to prevent them from freezing. Extra headlamp and camera batteries, for instance, need to be held against our bodies to keep them from draining in the sub-freezing air temperatures. Snacks must be unwrapped in advance and stored in unzipped pockets so that we can retrieve them with lobster claws. We will, after all, be wearing mittens over gloves over glove liners. At the same time, we’ve been warned that protein bars will become inedible bricks near the summit and that Slim Jims could double as ice picks. Likewise, our Camelbak mouthpieces must be close enough to our faces that we can sip water easily and frequently but also under enough layers of clothing to keep them from icing shut. Insane as it sounds, I spend most of the four hours between lunch and dinner thinking about which items to keep in which pockets.
Even the instruction to rest is difficult to obey, not only because of anxiety, but because of the heat. That’s right, the heat. Despite the icy wind whipping through camp, our tent is oven-warm inside because it’s in direct, unremitting sunlight. Mo’ and I strip down to our underwear and lay on top of our sleeping bags to catch a nap. But sleep is impossible, and there’s nothing to think about except gear and checklists and destiny.
Propped up on my forearms, I lean over Mo’s face and ask how she’s doing, partly hoping that she’ll ask me to stay with her at Barafu while the others summit. Instead of answering, though, she strokes my whiskers and tells me how handsome I am. I laugh, of course, because I look and smell like a caveman. Even so, I know she means it. She loves what she calls my “adventure look” – which is apparently comprised of sunburn, grime, and 5 days’ worth of beard stubble and hat hair. It’s as close as I ever get to the rugged cowboy archetype.
All roads lead to Barafu. Every trekker ascending the southern face of Kilimanjaro eventually converges on this camp just before making his or her summit bid. Everyone here at this moment, then, is either going to the top tonight or has just come back down this morning. Assuming 3-4 porters per trekker, there are nearly a thousand people clinging to this steep and crunchy slope. If I had to sum up the general mood of the camp in one word, I’d say purposeful. If I were allowed two words they would be ant farm.
Kilimanjaro’s second volcanic cone, the jagged Mawenzi, is plainly visible to the east, and Kibo looms over us to the north like a frozen tidal wave. It is daunting. Even though I’ve trained for it, I can think of lots of reasons not to go up there. There’s AMS, for example, which can be lethal, and which I recently discovered I’m highly susceptible to. The temptation to use Mo’s illness as a face-saving excuse to stay behind is also great. To be precise, though, I’m not looking for an excuse to fail; I’m looking for an excuse not to try. Say, does anyone else hear that scratching sound?
We’re sent to our tents after lunch to organize gear and to rest. Both assignments are more difficult than they sound. The gear is difficult to organize because we must satisfy conflicting demands. Many items that need to be easily accessible also need to be buried under layers of clothing to prevent them from freezing. Extra headlamp and camera batteries, for instance, need to be held against our bodies to keep them from draining in the sub-freezing air temperatures. Snacks must be unwrapped in advance and stored in unzipped pockets so that we can retrieve them with lobster claws. We will, after all, be wearing mittens over gloves over glove liners. At the same time, we’ve been warned that protein bars will become inedible bricks near the summit and that Slim Jims could double as ice picks. Likewise, our Camelbak mouthpieces must be close enough to our faces that we can sip water easily and frequently but also under enough layers of clothing to keep them from icing shut. Insane as it sounds, I spend most of the four hours between lunch and dinner thinking about which items to keep in which pockets.
Even the instruction to rest is difficult to obey, not only because of anxiety, but because of the heat. That’s right, the heat. Despite the icy wind whipping through camp, our tent is oven-warm inside because it’s in direct, unremitting sunlight. Mo’ and I strip down to our underwear and lay on top of our sleeping bags to catch a nap. But sleep is impossible, and there’s nothing to think about except gear and checklists and destiny.
Propped up on my forearms, I lean over Mo’s face and ask how she’s doing, partly hoping that she’ll ask me to stay with her at Barafu while the others summit. Instead of answering, though, she strokes my whiskers and tells me how handsome I am. I laugh, of course, because I look and smell like a caveman. Even so, I know she means it. She loves what she calls my “adventure look” – which is apparently comprised of sunburn, grime, and 5 days’ worth of beard stubble and hat hair. It’s as close as I ever get to the rugged cowboy archetype.
Dinnertime finally arrives and Johnny makes another rare appearance to address us as a group. Standing in the flap of the dinner tent, he informs us that when we meet again at 10:00 pm, a single porter will be assigned to accompany each pair of trekkers to the summit. That porter will carry our packs. We will encounter the steepest section of the trail immediately after leaving camp but we’ll be on it for less than an hour. The trail remains very steep after that, but not treacherously so. It will be like climbing stairs for about seven hours. Johnny fields a few nervous questions from the group and then sends us off to bed for another few hours of “rest.”
When the sun sets our tent finally cools down enough that I can snuggle into my sleeping bag, but I don’t sleep any better after dinner than I did after lunch. Monica still hasn’t decided if she’s going to make the summit attempt, and I still haven’t decided what to do if she stays behind. My mind races in circles as the minutes tick by. My pulse is bounding in response to the thin air and thick anxiety, and I’m practically panting for breath. I lay awake for hours, listening to Mo’s breathing, her frequent coughing, and to my own heartbeat, which is thumping in my temples like a bass guitar.
Who could sleep anyway with all that scratching at the door?
When the sun sets our tent finally cools down enough that I can snuggle into my sleeping bag, but I don’t sleep any better after dinner than I did after lunch. Monica still hasn’t decided if she’s going to make the summit attempt, and I still haven’t decided what to do if she stays behind. My mind races in circles as the minutes tick by. My pulse is bounding in response to the thin air and thick anxiety, and I’m practically panting for breath. I lay awake for hours, listening to Mo’s breathing, her frequent coughing, and to my own heartbeat, which is thumping in my temples like a bass guitar.
Who could sleep anyway with all that scratching at the door?
* Gladwell based his claim on a 1993 study called The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Both the study and Gladwell’s interpretation of it have been challenged convincingly by newer research, but only in the details. Certainly, no amount of deliberate practice can guarantee success in a given field, especially if the practitioner lacks talent. However, even a highly talented individual who fails to devote an enormous amount of time to deliberate practice cannot expect to reach elite levels of performance. The magic number may turn out to be far less than 10,000 hours, and it may also vary significantly from one field to another, but there’s no doubt that deliberate practice – and plenty of it – is the key to success in almost any field.
All our photos from July 4 are available online. Happy Independence Day.