Kilimanjaro Climb with my boys, August 24, 2019 SUMMIT DAY!!!

SUMMIT DAY - my 30 year dream about to be realized.
Because I was much slower than my kids the plan was for me to start my summit hike at 11:00 pm and the kids to start theirs at midnight. At 10:30 pm I was woken up and after washing myself up I had some tea and snacks and at 11:00 pm sharp, our head guide and one of the porters (called summit porters (the rest of the porters do not make the hike to the summit with us but instead pack up and head down to the camp and setup for us) set out on the final climb from Barafu Camp (4673 m/15331 ft.) to Uhuru peak (5895 m/19341 ft.) the summit of Kilimanjaro. When I came out of the tent to head to the dining tent for my snacks it was sleeting and snowing, had become very windy and the temperature had plummeted to well below zero. That was very unfortunate because up until that day it had been rain and snow free with perfect views from the summit. I was hoping the weather would clear up by the time I reached the summit. Because of fact that it was pitch dark and crazy cold I took no pictures on my way up to the summit.

It was pitch dark with only a few hikers, other slowpokes like me, :-) on the trail. After an hour of hiking we saw that more and more hikers had joined us and the procession of headlamps winding its way up the mountain was beautiful. Even with the hour head start I had I was quickly passed by my kids. It was very slow going for me because the thin air was getting to me. I was getting out of breath and had to take breaks every 10 minutes, however, I couldn't stop for too long as it was bitterly cold and stopping for too long would not be good.

Anyway, after what seemed like ages (8 hours and 15 mins to be precise), I finally made it to the first stop before the summit which is called Stella Point at an elevation of 5756 m (18885 ft). A little before reaching Stella Point I came across my younger son Sreyas on his way down not feeling well at all. He had reached Stella Point along with Vasanth and Erik but had started feeling dizzy. The assistant guide who was with the kids decided to bring him back down. Our head guide evaluated Sreyas and decided that he could summit after all. His blood sugar had become low and hence the dizziness. He gave him (I got one too) a whole pack of pure glucose, asked him to drink some water and rest for just a minute.

After that short rest and dose of glucose Sreyas started feeling better and felt strong enough to start hiking up again. In the meantime Vasanth and Erik had continued on and when we got to Stella Point we met up with them. They had already reached the summit and come back down to Stella Point. We hugged and congratulated them, and posed for a family picture. We still had over an hour hike to get to the summit so we said goodbye to Vasanth and Erik and made our way up to the summit. After another hour and 15 minutes later (total of 9.5 hours for me) we reached the summit exhausted but exhilarated at the same time. We had to wait a little bit to get our picture by the sign but as soon as we got done with the pictures, we drank some water and started our way back down since we still had another 8 miles to hike. We would hike down to Barafu camp, have lunch, rest a little bit and hike another 5.3 miles to Mweka Camp at the edge of the rain forest to spend the night.