Day 10 & 11. Arusha to Cork. 16th & 17th Oct

To say we woke up depressed wouldn't be entirely accurate, in fact we weren't even hungover. The reason was simple really. We were still drunk. So the morning was a great laugh, the late morning however was tougher. We dealt with the looming depression and hangover with an expertise only gleamed from years of experience. We skipped food and had beer instead!!! That is a slight exaggeration really, as it was lunch time before we touched a drop. In the meantime we splashed around in the pool and watched Joseph, our guide who had called around for a reference, polish off half a bottle of whiskey in an hour. Bit of a breakdown in communication, as we had offered him the bottle to take home but I think he thought he had to drink it in our company. Oopsie!!! To be fair he only had a small stagger leaving us... We went for a walk after he left us, mainly to ensure he hadn't caused any major accidents close enough to our hotel to implicate us, bought a few souvenirs and experimented with how beer differs in taste depending on how many stars the hotel you bought it from has. The results of this ground breaking research, while undoubtedly accurate, have been shelved due to possible bias involving free peanuts and sun loungers.
We returned to our hotel, and proceeded to get packed up and out of our room before the taxi arrived. Funnily enough this was single handedly the quickest bit of packing we managed the whole trip, and we were back eating chicken and chips by the pool in 10 min. Not much happened from here on really, I suppose not much happened before this either but its too late to skip all that now. So to wrap up quickly here is a mercifully short run through of us getting home.

• We said our goodbyes to our fellow climbers, promising to keep in touch and to drop by if ever we were in Canada. By god are they in for a shock some day!


• We lounged about the pool, sipping beers with a comfort that flirted with expertise.


• As we had checked out of our rooms, our showers before we left for the airport consisted of a quick jump in the pool. This led to a near resumption of hostilities between Ireland & England. Although, and my history is sketchy, never caused by a Kiwi before. Ash's jump in the pool managed to soak 2 newly arrived elderly english couples. The whole situation was bordering on hostile before I stepped in, in my usual role as peacekeeper, with "I think its important that we don't lose sight of the fact that there is a chance that this was a complete accident". This of course eased all tension, however they did move their seats back when they saw myself and Conor Limbering up for our 'showers'.


• The taxi arrived and dropped us to the airport, which was lucky because that is exactly where we needed to go.


• We only spent an hour going through the x-ray line as they decided Ash had a knife in his bag. So they kept rooting around in his bag and re scanning looking for the knife until they decided that the knife might actually be his wind up torch and let him off. Ash later attempted to hijack the plane with the torch, just to illustrate a point, but he hadn't wound it enough...


• Met an Irish American guy on plane who told us that all the Africans love Barak Obama, but it's obvious why!!!!!


• Arrived back to Cork after a quick hot chocolate in Amsterdam, to be greeted by television cameras, welcome home banners, hundreds of screaming people and the Taoiseach!!! Some of that is true, and by some of that I mean just one part of it. Possibly the Hot Chocolate.

And that was that. Done & Dusted. Over. Whats next???......

Day 9. Horombo Huts to Marangu Gate. 15th Oct

1. If I remember one thing from this trip for the rest of my years it'll be a little pearl of wisdom Ash shared with us at some stage on the mountain. 'You never know what worse luck your bad luck saved you from'. Very profound. Deep guy our Ash. I've no idea why I felt I should say that now, nothing involving any sort of luck happened today. It just sort of popped into my head so I decided to give it a mention. I suppose despite my overly optimistic assertion at the start, I'm worried I'll forget it and spend my days wondering what that great thing Ash or someone said somewhere, possibly on a mountain. Of course if I forget that I typed it here... I could of course get it tattooed on me somewhere, but I don't really like tattoo's written in English which throws up the problem of, in later years, not being able to translate whatever it is I've permanently added to my skin. On another note, I've noticed that the later it is when I type this blog the more stupid stuff gets mentioned.
   
   None of which of course has anything to do with the fact that we decided to get up astonishingly early this morn so as we could get ourselves to some alcohol as soon as humanly possible. After a great nights sleep (amazing what a properly closed sleeping bag can do for a man) we were screaming for road at 5.30am. That of course is complete nonsense. We did get up at 5.30am but the only screaming, was the screaming of joints. We ate our usual 3 course breakfast, but as we no longer needed to worry about carbs and energy levels we actually left some food after us. It was the first time some of the porters smiled!! I hope that last bit about carbs doesn't dispel the subtle image I've tried to build up of 3 chubby men just guessing their way up a mountain and inaccurately replace it with one of 3 Adonis like fitness gurus chortling at the sheer effortlessness of the whole trek. Anyway, with what was to be our last obscene delay because of our, at this stage, superhuman inability to pack we were on the road and walking by 6.30am. 6 of us headed off together. The same six that completed the climb. I did mention we got to the tippidy top of Kilimanjaro didn't I???? Freddie was all dressed up in his finest camo gear and had a look in his eye we instantly recognised as the look a man carries when he can feel the likelihood of beer being in his near and present future. The pace we set was staggering. Not staggering as in walking with a limp, but staggering as in fast. It got to the stage where the guides were the ones calling out for breaks! We spent the whole walk talking about beer, planning the first one out with military precision. Again that's not true, I spent a good chunk of that walk whining about my toe. It was sore, even to this day its sore and the nail is falling off and and and well that's about all really. But the amount of complaining I did about it that day could only have been justified if, when I removed my boot, we discovered that not only was it broken in several places but that also one of the many breaks had broken though the skin and embedded itself in my other foot. Needless to say this was not the case. Although the nail was quite black. Oh I just remembered Ash McGyver offered to fashion something to help with the pain. Probably a rock to the back of my head.
   To say the walk that day was uneventful, would be both accurate and yet untrue. I don’t really feel I need to justify that statement. Accept it and move on. I remember two points of interest. The first one is actually worth a mention, the second, while I'm sure not possibly a topic for dinner conversation, holds a lot of deeper and thought provoking subtleties that can be explored in your own time. Provided of course that your own time doesn't coincide with having people round for dinner. Although I'm sort of making assumptions about both you and your guests here so do what you want. Now that I think about it I'm even making assumptions that there is a you in the first place. This stream of thought appears to be going around in a circle, so onwards with previously advertised points of interest... After about an hour of walking we came across a little picnic area complete with picnic tables and toilets. The reason I mention the toilet will become apparent later. Oh the suspense! Anyway we didn't actually stop for a break here but Freddie did find the skull of a small goat called a 'Dik Dik' on one of the tables. He offered it to Ash and Conor, who declined and on we went. I then ran back and grabbed it and threw it in my bag. The rest of the journey I spent worrying about what killed it, what parasites were now roaming around my bag and how they’d like Ireland, how did the thing end up so clean, where was the rest of its skeleton and how was customs going to react to what was going to look like the skull of a small child in my rucksack as it went through the x ray machine at the airport. The 'Dik Dik' skull got dumped back at our hotel room. This whole tale only goes to prove one thing.. Ash and Conor think much quicker on their feet than me! The second thing worth mentioning, and I feel I might be alone on this, happened at our first break after about 2hrs. The break was dictated by my digestive system rather than any preplanned stop point. And this is the interesting bit.... We stopped at a totally random point, I picked a totally random bush (now you get why I mentioned walking past the toilet earlier!) to hide behind and when I was done I counted 7 other pieces of toilet roll in my immediate vicinity. Why I counted them when I was done is neither relevant or important, and is not the type thought I was hoping to provoke with the story. The type of thoughts I was hoping to provoke are along the lines of:
   1. What a coincidence that so many people picked the exact same spot. Or..
   2. How many people actually are on this route to make it a likelihood rather than a coincidence??
   3. What sort of person even considers this stuff interesting in the first place??!!!!
   Moving along, which we did, after 4.5hrs we had walked 19km and had reached Marangu Gate. We passed a few groups who were setting off and gave them the smug look required at times like that. We also passed a few monkeys who actually gave us lessons in how exactly to pull off that look. We hung around at the gate while we waited for Freddie to get our certs and argued over whether we could afford a bottle of coke. It turned out we could and so we bought 3 of the nicest tasting bottles of fizzy pop ever manufactured. Another amazing coincidence. We then piled back into our bus and drove for about an hour to lunch in Moshi. We thought we were all going for grub but it turned out it was just us 3. If we had known we would have skipped it as it was eating into serious pool and beer time! But regardless we arrived back at the hotel for 3.30pm. A quick bit of tipping for Freddie, lots of hand shakes and Asanties and our 3 carcasses were planted in the bar with bottles of Kilimanjaro Lager in hand. What followed was the most horrible game of ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS ever played. The loser had to go shower and therefore had delay the second bottle of beer. Conor lost, I fell shortly after, while Ash kept drinking uninterrupted. Dirty and smelly but with a glow of intoxication.
   The rest of the night has to remain a secret, mainly due to assassinated memory cells. But we did remain firmly planted to our seats while others left for fancy meals. We drank the bar out of Kilimanjaro beer, and tried our best to drink ourselves out of whiskey. The rest is a blur, but I’m sure everyone found us a perfect mix of manners and humour……

Day 7. Horombo Huts (3741) to Marangu Gate (1970) 19.5km 4.5 hrs!

Day 7&8. Horombo Huts to Ulhuru Peak to Horombo Huts. 13th &14 Oct. SUMMIT DAY

I've a confession to make. The excruciating level of accuracy given for the previous days trekking are the direct result of me actually taking notes. I even brought a lovely little multi coloured note book and pen. I'm well aware how sad this is, but it was done for all the right reasons. What those reasons are I am unwilling to disclose at this point in time. This allows me more wriggle room when the piss take commences, but rest assured they will involve, in some capacity, blaming Ash or Conor. Or possibly both. The reason I mention this at all is because for some reason I stopped taking notes from here on. So I'm afraid that the details might be a little sketchy at best, at worst I'll just leave stuff out. Of course I wont leave any good stuff about me out, can't be certain the lads will escape though! He He He

So today was the day. D-day in a totally non historical way. Freddie had glided into our mess tent last light with a flurry of 'Hakuna Matata' (no worries). We got a brief run down of what today had in store for us, most of which I missed because my mind got stuck on the 'up early cos of 6hr walk before lunch' part. He did however end the brief with another 'Hakuna Matata'. Which made it all ok. So we did as we were told and got up nice and early and headed off on our little journey. There wasn't much slowly slowly today as we were trying to get there as soon as we could to allow more rest time before we made the last burst to the top. Of course burst is probably the least accurate description of what would happen. In many ways calling it a burst is like describing soccer as interesting or the HSE as efficient. The HSE is undoubtedly a poor example as any adjective used would need a expletive placed before it, after it and where possible over it.... Anyway, the walk itself proved to be quite enjoyable. This probably had a lot to do with that sort of giddy nervousness that invades a space when everyone is trying to give off an impression of being cool as a breeze. Needless to say the guides had no need to give off any impressions. In any case they were too busy trying to block out our attempts to sing the first two lines from every song every written. We were one song off achieving our goal when Conor jumped in with the middle two lines of 'My Way' and blew it. The highlight of the morning walk (besides our melodic tones) was walking down into the glacial valley just before our camp. Walking up the other side was possibly the low light. The valley was massive, and deep. We all had a stab at pretending we knew EXACTLY how it was formed, and to be fair anyone who was listening to us (and of course possessed not a semblance of an education) would have thought we were renowned experts. Regardless we were suitably impressed by ourselves, (a common theme throughout the trip, and possible after the trip too!!!) an admiration possibly not shared by our poor guides who at this stage had put on ear defenders and rang ahead for migraine tablets. We climbed back up the other side of the valley which took about an hour and was by far the toughest part we'd encountered so far. When we got to the camp they were still putting it up, which was a real victory for us. Not that it meant we helped out. God no, we just basked in our reflected glory against some rocks and happily watched with not even with a casual interest on our little world being created just below us. We also heard Freddie boasting about our time of 4hrs 55min to the other guides. Alas I think we had given him a very false impression of our fitness! It was darker, colder and higher when he discovered the horrible horrible truth...

The camp was set up and ready for use at around 12pm. I say around because I have no idea. I could as easily been 11am or 1pm. In fact there is even a chance that it wasn't exactly on the hour. I haven't a clue. Whenever it was, shortly afterwards they served up lunch. It was eaten, but not with the same enthusiasm that previous meals had enjoyed. After which we had a bit of a rest before we were brought on a little walk for about an hour. After a slight misunderstanding about whether we wanted to go higher (we naturally did not) we returned for our dinner. It's fair to say everyone was still in good spirits at this stage. A bit quieter, which was no harm, but still laughing. I think Freddie sensed this because he came in at the end of dinner to give us a final chat and frightened the living bejesus out of us. The chat involved all the usual stuff, be packed (we of course chose not to pay much attention to this request until 10 min before we needed to go) what time we were getting up, setting out etc etc. And then he went and ruined it all with just with one little sentence. ' IF I SAY YOU MUST GO DOWN, YOU MUST GO DOWN'. 'Hakuna Matata' my arse. All of a sudden I think the possibility of not making it rushed into our heads. It was now 6pm and time for bed. The plan of course was to get some sleep before we headed off. Something we all failed hopelessly to do. I spent my 5 hours trying to drown out the outside noise (for once not Conor snoring) using various techniques. Ipod, ear plugs, breathing exercises, chanting to name but a few. Actually that's naming all of them, including some I just made up. All of which meant that come 11pm when we got up to have a cuppa before we set off, we had already been up 17hrs. And not a pint was had!!!

SUMMIT TIME!!!

I was going to do this section in point form, but then decided against it. I frequently have little disagreements with myself like this one. Just thought I'd share.

We were up at 11pm for tea and biscuits. I could go through the reasons behind the lack of milk in the tea, or the fact that all the biscuits were plain. I could also explain why we all took Imodium, but I think it's best just to leave it like this. Information supplied, deal with it. After the tea we proceeded to once again drag out the packing process even though all we had to carry this time was our water and summit jacket. The whole time we were packing Freddie was outside singing christian hymns. Now I'm not sure exactly what he was trying to achieve with this, and maybe he was just reminding us that we were running a little behind schedule, but it did make me think of funeral marches which was possibly not an ideal thought process at this point in time. We eventually left at just after midnight, under the light of the full moon. And at the risk of sounding like a big raving jessie, it was an amazing sight. Well worth timing the trip to summit with a full moon. And it was definitely a good idea when my head torch gave up the ghost 2hrs in to it! Anyway we headed off in single file, Freddie leading followed by Conor, myself and then Ash. Joseph and our new guide Andrea (wearing only sneakers) were at the tail. I was going to type they took up the rear but I felt this was not the time in our story for sniggering. So at the tail they remain. We were going at a nice little pace, just one foot in front of the other, following the trail of head lamps of the people who had made packing a fine art and had headed off before us. Myself and Ash had a little debate about droplets of liquid we were seeing on the ground. I was going for blood while Ash was aiming for it being my water leaking. An opinion he mentioned quite regularly! As it happens we were both wrong, it turned out it was the Mountain Warrior Freddie demonstrating, quite effectively, how not to get headaches by not sniffing all night. 'Nuff said. I think it's fair to say that we were quite happy with this starting pace, but Freddie had a plan. His plan involved us passing out every group in front of us and to be fair it worked well for the first 2hrs. He even took steeper little short cuts to gain a few metres on people and we were indeed out in front for a good part of the climb. But, alas his plan had one major flaw. Us.

Its actually a bit difficult to describe that climb. We were feeling very good for the first 2 hours or so and had taken a break for 10 min after about an hour and a half. I can only speak for myself but I think after about 3 or 4 hrs it became a tough struggle. At the time I thought the two lads were fine, but later I discovered Conor had felt everything I was going through and Ash had also dealt with a blood nose. You start the climb thinking that when fatigue sets you can just tell yourself to push on. This is a mistake. What really happens is you tell yourself to push on, but then your brain says hold on a second old stock this is madness, I'm all for going back down. You try to shut it up, but it being the brain, it sort of has an advantage in this line of debating. To be honest I face this dilemma on a daily basis, but its tougher when it's cold!! So you just try to shut it down and plod on, and to teach you a little lesson it makes you stagger. And once you say 'ah shit i staggered' its back up and running and giving out again. I would have paid for a lobotomy at around 4am. It was also at around this time that Freddie had spotted my stumbling and INSISTED that i give my bag to a guide. I say insisted, some might have interrupted it as mildly inquiring as to whether I might like to give the guide my bag. Regardless I did. At the time it felt like a great idea, now not so much. But heh I'm soft. It should have been expected. The funny thing is at this stage there was nothing in my bag only about a litre of water. I blame the altitude!!! 4am 14th of October 2008, Puma becomes a little kitten...Of course a little later Ash slipped a bit, and he made him the same offer. I can say without fear of contradiction, this was the closest Freddie ever came to a good eye rucking!!! We stopped a bit more frequently now, which was a bit of of a ying and yang. Nice to get a break but the cold got to us quick so starting back up was a bit tough. Conor at this stage was our motivator, with little 30 min to go shouts. And coincidentally after he said it, 30min later, just in time for sunrise, we were at Stella Point on the ridge line. 6am. What a sight. Absolutely fuckin amazing. Did nothing to give us energy, neither did the red bull but it was some sight. So high above the cloud line watching the sun come up. Brilliant.

We rested here for about 15min, sipping our red bull. Wings me arse!!! Stella Point is 5752m high and Ulhuru (the tip top) is 5854m high. They are 1.2km walk along the ridge away from each other. And that morning before we set off again, it looked like just a little merry stroll. I was mistaken. I picked up my bag again and we headed off. After 100m I sat back down again shattered. I hadn't a drain of energy left in me, but to be fair I knew I'd make it, it might just involve a break every 10 steps. Similar to my Carrauntwohil climbing technique way back. I told Freddie my ingenious plan, he responded by giving my bag away again (note how I made that sound like I had nothing to do with it. I can give lessons in saving face. They're pricey though..) and letting me set the pace. I felt like I was slowly boring the lads to death, but it transpired that they were as wrecked as I was and were quite happy with the pace. Although Ash was prone to outbursts of pure energy, zipping here and there for photo ops. Myself and Conor showed our thoughts on this by breathing harder and frowning. At 7.14am we made it to the top!!! Yaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!! We poured out cups of tea, had a toast to Sullie and hung around waiting for the sign to free up so we could take a few photos. Popular spot Kilimanjaro.

15min later we were on our way back down. We went back by a different route, along the ridge to Gillmans point and then down to Kibo Huts. Don't for a minute think it was easy. We were still shattered, although I don't think we really cared at this stage. We had made the top and so were safe from an assault of piss takes when we got back. 30 years of Hamish reminding us that girls have made it to the top and we didn't was a powerful motivator!! From Gillmans down to Kibo huts the scree is so loose you can actually ski down it. Miraculously we manged this (in bursts-did I mention I was tired??) without causing us or anyone else any major physical harm. The scary thing is people actually use this route to go up as well. Cant see it myself. We passed one couple attempting it as we skied past. By the look on her face the whole couple adventure was about to end swiftly and painfully for him. We had beds waiting for us in Kibo huts where we slept for about an hour. Yes even through the snores. After a bit of lunch we were back on the road again for a nice pleasant stroll back to Horombo. We were back in Horombo for 4pm, where we washed, ate, sipped a tiny bit of whiskey, played cards and at around 7.30pm slept. We had been on the go for 34hrs by the time we arrived back in Horombo Huts, with only about 2hrs sleep and had traveled a distance of 28.5km. Not bad for 3 fat guys. Coincidentally tonight was the night I worked out how to zip up the bag properly and remained toasty all night!!!

Day 5 & 6. Horombo Huts (3741) to Barafu Camp (4681) 9km 5 hrs!

Barafu Camp (4681) to Stella Point (5752) 3.3km 6 hrs!

Stella Point (5752) to Ulhuru Point SUMMIT (5854) 1.2km 1.25 hrs!

Ulhuru Point SUMMIT (5854) to Kibo Huts (4700) 5.4km 3.5 hrs!

Kibo Huts (4700) to Horombo Huts (3741) 9.6km 3.5 hrs!

Day 6. Mawenzi Tarn to Horombo Huts. 12th Oct

We woke up this morning to snow. Which is hardly surprising considering it was snowing when we went to sleep. It would have been very surprising if we woke to find there was no snow and lets say, as an example, also no mountain. But this didn't happen so I'll just park that one there. We were allowed a lie in this morning as we only had a 4hr hike today and there were no plans for one of those silly little acclimatisation walks once we got to the next camp. It sounded like heaven. Now I'm no expert on heaven, and I feel letting me go off on a tangent to guess what heaven actually looks like might cause offence on a scale not seen since that fella Salman Rushdie decided that he needed to sell a few books. So I'm just going to carry on by saying, at that present moment in time I would have settled for heaven looking like a place with our tents set up next to the mess tent, and no one looking for us at 4pm to go for a walk. That's if there is a heaven of course, right right right I'll leave it go...... Oh and just while I think of it, people say (who these idiots are I've no idea!) that you should never discuss religion and politics at a dinner party where you don't really know your fellow guests (heh that sounds a bit posh). Which surely only leaves as subject matters how dumb everyone at your table is and what a crap party it is anyway. I don't see how openly discussing either of these will avoid the conflict you were hoping to skirt around it the first place. But then again maybe its just me....


Where was I, ah yes, we woke up. Albeit slightly later than normal. It was actually quite cool (no pun intended, although now that I have, what a pun it turned out to be) to get up and stand outside our tents sipping hot tea under a large mountain covered in snow. The mountain that is, not us. We dawdled around packing which turned out to be a mistake as we got caught to return the playing cards we had borrowed from the Australian trio last night. And then IT happened. Ash discovered his canteen had lost the cover seal and was leaking. I quickly suggested insulating tape in a vain attempt to avoid the obvious conclusion to this story that was hurtling at us like a freight train. Let me explain.... Ash, as well as knowing almost everything about alcohol, and I mean everything, is also an expert fashioner. Coincidentally, New Zealand and Fashion are the only two words that become new words when er is added to the end of them. Fact. I hadn't mentioned it up to now but we were already witnesses to the prolific fashioning of a clothes line from trekking poles (inside a tent I might add, well actually at this stage I have added) as well as sunglasses holder uppers from spare boot laces. It wouldn't have been quite so impressive if the laces weren't spare!! So when myself and Conor (I refuse to type Conor and I) saw the sun reflect off the piece of rubber Ash was pulling from his back pack (a good fashioner can make black rubber reflect no worries!) we knew we were about to be part of something special. Drawn out but special. Various thickness and lengths of rubber were fashioned. Even different rocks and knives were used. The first couple of attempts didn't quite cut it, but I'm led to believe that this is the way of the fashioner. But at last possibly the thinnest, but most accurately cut piece was put in place, the cap tightened and the canteen tipped to test. Perfect. High fives were flying all over the place. And then just to revel in the perfection of it all we tipped it again, at which point it leaked.... So we just hung it off the back of Ash's bag and headed on off towards heaven!!!
After the first hours walk, which brought us up a further 200m, it was a nice steady descent to Horombo huts. The only unfortunate thing about the descent was that it also meant we had to pick up the pace to just slightly past crawling. No, to be honest we were quite capable of picking up the pace the second it became apparent we were heading downhill. Anyway we walked on, passing a signpost showing the different distance to various routes and landmarks, which struck us as odd enough to take a photo of but which I suppose is actually quite normal in a weird middle of nowhere sort of way. We took a rest at a place called Zebra rock, which, you guessed it, was a black and white rock face. To be honest it was quite interesting, just sort of imposing its own strangeness on you. Speaking of strange, it was here we met a group of Finnish or Swedish or somewhere cold anyway (I might be turning into a xenophobe???), who were doing some sort of research into the oxygen saturation of your blood at altitude with a yoke that slipped onto your finger. I use the term research in the loosest possible sense. Here's the thing. (i might have some of the terms wrong but it really doesn't matter as I'll show at the end)

• At our normal altitude if our oxygen saturation fell below 97% we'd be rushed to hospital.
• At high altitude it goes to around 85%, but all is well.

And that's it. That's all they had. They took measurements on anything remotely moving, which gave them readings (only if held at the correct angle, and if your hands weren't too cold, or hot or possibly attached) that said most people were around 85% and not in any shape or form needing to go to hospital. Brilliant. No reasons as to why, not even a mild guess. They might as well have said "At home I drive a blue car, up here its red, isn't that a scientific miracle!!??" As an aside Ash scored strangely high at this test. Further proof that the man is indeed a physical freak of nature. I think to be honest the reason the whole thing got up my nose so much was at this point my brain was trying to pound its way out of my skull.

30 min later we were at Horombo huts, which is like a central hub for all the routes. We popped a few of Ashs panadol (Conor was joining me in the great attempted brain eviction) and went for a sleep. Got up had a bite to eat, bought a set of cards from another guide and hung around the mess building all the trekkers who were staying in huts rather that tents used (snobs). We were actually so filthy at this stage that people thought we had already climbed it and were on our way back down! We restarted our card playing after dinner, and once it got dark Ash fashioned a light for us using a head lamp. Which I suppose is already a light but it was the way he hung it that was impressive!!! About a hour before we headed to bed I think it dawned on us that tomorrow was d-day, and not too coincidentally that was the time the mild sense of panic filled the tent. I'm assuming it was panic, but at this stage we were after an awful lot of eggs.....

Day 4. Mawenzi Tarn (4303) to Horombo Huts (3741) 10.1km 4 hrs!

Day 5. Kikelewa Camp to Mawenzi Tarn. 11th Oct

Altitude sickness was always the big worry for us on this trip. Global terrorism paled into insignificance in comparison. This had nothing to do with the fact that we had twigged the Americans had made the whole concept up (terrorism not altitude sickness, although I'm confident they had something sinister to do with that as well!) but that's a discussion for another day. We had read and heard numerous stories about headaches, vomiting and hallucinations. I was actually looking forward to the last one. And so to mentally steel ourselves against these worries we got our hands on a bucket load of DIAMOX, an anti altitude sickness drug. There is, as far as I know, no drug for global terrorism. Although you never can be sure when those bloody Americans are involved.

The reason I mention the altitude issue is that today was the hike that would take us up to the highest altitude we would get to, bar the summit day obviously. So any slight headache found itself compounded with stress, a dash of nausea and a smidgen of panic. Reading stories about how others are effected by altitude is never a good idea. No one ever has a good thing to say about it. You will never read anywhere- "At high altitude today, felt invigorated and was actually able to understand quantum physics for the first time". Although of course now you just have. We were quite willing to dine totally on DIAMOX if it meant that we'd make it to the top, by totally I obviously mean as well as popcorn, soup and beef, oh and fruit and hot chocolate. So after taking this drug it did prove a bit of a worry if we started getting headaches still. Naturally all knowledge of altitude ill effects were a closely guarded secret. If asked had anyone headaches, all eyes would jump around each other waiting for the first to crack. I think the worst admitted to in the first few days was 'the beginning of a headache that never arrives'. I mean what the fuck is that?? Whatever it is, it kept us all nicely in a bubble of everything is grand, or to return to our American friends for a bit; "Nothing to see here folks, move along!"

So today began a little later, 6.30am, as we only had a short but steep hike ahead of us. I would like to point out that a 3.5hr walk is not short, ever. I think it gets called short so that the 12hr one that would appear later can just about get called 'long' when it should be labeled 'insane'. We went trough the usual routine and were on our merry way by 8.00am. You could feel the altitude today, in so far as any over exertion really had you gasping for air. There was one section where we had to climb up over rock outcrops that left us all out of breath, by all I mean the 3 of us. The guides were preforming back flips around the place, while the porters had ran past us hours ago and were probably sitting around at the camp at this stage waiting for us. I should point out that the technical name for this type of climbing is called Bouldering. We learnt this from a carpet carrying asshole of a French Canadian, but I'll leave it there as Ash has made me promise no more character assassinations. Although I think even altar boy Ash by the end of his company was ready to do some real life assassination...

We arrived at camp at 11.30. It was a cool place, set in a hollow right at the base of Mawenzi Peak (see photo). There was a small lake, which I WAS NOT ALLOWED swim in, which provided drinking water. Actually to call it drinking water sort of implies that it did not need to be boiled 17 times or that copious amount of chlorine tabs didn't need to be added to it. This was not the case. The 3ft of green fungus on the banks of the lake gave that game away to be honest. The plan for the rest of the day was to get a quick kip, have lunch, do a acclimatisation walk, more food and then sleep. Conor went for a kip, while myself and Ash worked out the distance we needed to be from Conors tent, NOT to hear his snoring. 200ft. This is the first and only time I'm not exaggerating in this blog!!. After vigorously shaking Conor awake, we went for another little jaunt up to 4550m supposedly to acclimatise. I'm now of the opinion this was just to watch us search frantically for oxygen. There was brilliant views from the top of our walk all across the plains we would walk along tomorrow and back down to our camp. There was a brave attempt made to up the pace on the way down, but we successfully fought this level of madness and returned to our crawling pace back down, pausing only to stare in complete bewilderment at some caves Ash had decided looked like a skull??

We returned with enough time before dinner to blag a set of playing cards from the Australian trio we had met the first day. One of their group was suffering quite badly with headaches and had spent the day in her tent. Just not to worry everyone, she recovered by the following day but we have no idea how they got on as they had their summit day one day before us. We had dinner (beef pasta followed by banana and custard) and then proceeded to play some watered down version of Gin Ash had invented. I think we sorted the rules about 10 sec before we stopped playing. It was around this point that Conor pulled the famous water on sleeping bag trick and assured himself of warm nights sleep for the rest of the trip. And what timing... cos just as we were getting ready for the sleep zone it started to thunder & lightning followed by SNOW..... We were in bed by 8.00pm but only cos it transpired that our mess tent was also the sleeping quarters for the porters. They were tired, god bless em.!!

Oh Jesus, I nearly forgot. Ash, our delegated fossil and wildlife expert came across a new type of rodent. The Mountain Mouse. Its name being derived from the fact it was a mouse that he saw on a mountain. He's also laying claim to being the first to encounter, The Mountain Bird, Mountain Goat and Mountain Man!!!

Day 3. Kikelewa Camp (3679) to Mawenzi Tarn (4303) 3.7km 3.5 hrs!

Day 4. Simba Camp to Kikelewa Camp. 10th Oct

Prancing around during the day in shorts and t-shirts (albeit t-shirts made from revolutionary fabrics available only from LIDL!) can lead you to a false sense of security about exactly what is going to happen the temperature once the sun buggers off. At this point being all mysterious about what does happen would be, I feel, counter productive, so here it is... It gets friggin cold. Very cold in fact, a cold I would have to say I was not prepared for, a cold I don't think Conor had expected either, a cold Ash missed out on because he was nicely tucked up in his Military issue tent he called a sleeping bag. Which brings me on nicely to my next and quite unexpected rant... SLEEPING BAGS!!! Do not hire the bloody things. Go out and spend the ridiculous amount of money they charge for one that'll do you at -20deg. Then go everywhere with it (in it preferably, but this depends on occupation. Civil servants are laughing!!) for at least a week before you leave, so as to learn its wicked ways and secret draughts. This is the only way you can guarantee getting a decent nights kip and not waking at various times to the sound of your body screaming "I'm colder now than I was an hour ago when I woke you to complain about the cold!!!" The alternative is to just hire one, quit moaning, just spill some water on it and borrow the guides spare one. Which of course is just bloody well toasty. This exercise in whinging is to avoid having to mention how cold I was at night, every night. Conor suffered too, but only until someone spilt water on his bag on day 5. The lucky bastard...

Anyway back to day 4. We were up at 5.45 to leave at 6.30. We left at 7.00!! We were woken by our food guy Donut, who brought us a cup of tea. We then dressed and washed (the order you do things changes in the wild!!) before sitting down to porridge followed by eggs and sausages. I think it was the food that delayed us every morning, and I can only hope that the guides weren't waiting on what we didn't finish. Cos it would have been a long wait for nothing. After a small time for packing and digestion we were up and ready to go at 7.00am. At which time the sun came up and we were now to warm. Typical. But did we complain?? Well we didn't, but I sure as hell did.

We walked for 3.5hrs slowly, which it turned out we were naturals at, taking small breaks every hour. We stopped for lunch at a place called 2nd cave, located surprisingly between 1st cave and 3rd cave. We had soup, followed by fried chicken and chips, followed by fruit. It was at this early point that we discovered that there was very little chance we were going to lose weight. We headed off after a quick refill of water (including chlorine tabs, and berrocca to kill taste of chlorine. A bit like the lady who swallowed the fly..) for another 3hr trek to our next camp. Along the way Joseph tried to teach us some Swahili, which was going well until we tried to teach him some Irish and Ash joined in the education session with some French and Maori. Needless to say we all finished the session with a poorer linguistic ability than when we started. We were greeted at camp with our popcorn and tea before we went on an acclimatisation walk for an hour. Which involved us climbing about an extra 100m higher, hanging around up there for a bit and walking back down for dinner... Ah dinner. Beef stir fry tonight, followed by cake!!. Its like a bleedin hotel!!

We skimped on the amount of cups of tea tonight, so we could fill our water containers with boiling water to act as hot water bottles. I might have mentioned it got cold at night..

Bed by 7.30pm. Wrecked.

Day 2. Simba Camp (2626m) to Kikelewa Camp (3679) 11.8km 6.5 hrs!

Day 3. Rongai Gate to Simba Camp. 9th Oct

Our chief guide Freddie had asked us to be fed, watered and ready to leave by 7.30am this morning. It was to be the first of many time related disappointments for poor old Frederick! We got up to finish packing, nice and early but the whole packing issue really was proving very complicated. Its difficult to balance making sure our own day packs are light enough, with the guilt of knowing someone else will have to carry our main, somewhat heavier, rucksacks!! Of course the whole procedure was made even more stressful due to the fact that Conor had decided to play a newly altered game of Hide & Seek, known as Hide, Seek & Lose, with his money, sunglasses, room key etc. etc. To be fair it was always going to be difficult for him to find his money as I had thrown it in the rubbish bin late last night. Oooppsie!!

We boarded the bus at 7.45, only 15min late, and headed off. Conor wasn't feeling the best at this point, which added to everyone elses nerves. Sympathy pains you could call them, although there wasn't a hell of a lot of actual sympathy going around. After 2 hrs we were at the Macheme gate, just to register mind, we had another 3 hrs along dirt tracks to negotiate before we got to the start of the Rongai Trail.. Den Den Dah...

Once we arrived at the Rongai trail we were shepherded off to a little sheltered area for lunch, while the porters divided up all the gear for hauling up the mountain. It was a perfect example of ignorance is bliss, because this way we had no idea who was actually responsible for dragging who's bag up a mountain!! So after a quick 3 course lunch we threw on the day sacks and began our hike!! We were led by the assistant guide Joseph, who it turned out could run a marathon in 2hrs 24min, he insisted the pace was POLÉ POLÉ (slowly slowly). Insisted seems a bit strong, his slowly slowly was just about at our 'we might just survive today' speed. Ive argued long and hard in my own head (quite easy to achieve with multiple personalities) as to whether to give detailed descriptions of the walks or just a brief run down. Brief won the battle for a number of reasons.

• Contrary to popular belief I do not harbour an innate disposition to bore people to death.


• The conversations, although works of comedic genius when they happened, were often short due to a poor oxygen to muscle ratio.


• To be honest most of the details are now a blur, except for meal times.... Oh dear god meal times!!

So briefly, the walk took about 3.5 hrs and went from a dusty trail to a dusty trail through forest. We got passed out by 3 Australians who left after us, as well as all our porters who were carrying more than their own body weights on top of their heads. But we held fast to our slowly slowly mantra, even in the face of such blatant goading.. We arrived at Simba camp at 6pm where our tents and bags were all set up and ready for use. We were given a bowl of hot water to wash, and after there was tea and popcorn awaiting us in the mess tent!! Oh camping can be so cruel! A 3 course dinner was served up to us, soup, spag boll, and fruit desert. Yum Yum. We were in bed by 9pm and not a smell of altitude sickness between us. But before I give off the the impression we were staying in a 5 star resort, I'll just mention 'LONG DROP TOILET' a great leveller if every there was one. Especially at 3am in the freezing cold....

Day 1. Rongai (1996m) to Simba Camp (2626m). 6.7km 3.5 hrs!

Day 2. Arusha. 8th Oct

The plan for today was always going to be one of immense relaxation, so as to sure to be at our peak of physical readiness for the start of the climb tomorrow. This is why I picked a hotel without both power and air conditioning, forcing us into the sun loungers next to the pool for the day. I insisted on a small pool to actively discourage any temporary insanity involving the 'doing of lengths'. Alas the continuing lack of luggage meant we would have to brave the wild streets of Arusha to find some swimming shorts, which seriously cut into our pool time. As soon as we touched foot on the main street we were bombarded by a whole range of people offering to sell us anything or help us find whatever. There was even an Irish Examiner available. If only these lads were at the airport last night....

After a brief attempt to find shorts we headed off to the food market, where we found chickens killed only to order, and free flies with every strip of beef bought. The beef was a great buy as it is left cooking all day in the sun so you only have to spend half the time cooking it when you bring it home. Trying to buy apples turned into a total fiasco, where 9 different people were trying to sell us the same apple. The only one who seemed to have no interest in the sale of fruit was in fact the guy who actually owned the bloody things!! With a little help from our new friends we also managed to purchase 2 pair of very stretchy basketball shorts, not pretty but very effective. Chomping happily on the apples we then went for lunch before meeting the tour company rep back at the hotel. We also met up with a group that had gone the same route we were going as well as with the same guides. Christ they were hard work.... One Aussie guy kept prattling on about the 'Brotherhood of the Mountain' while a Belgian woman just listed problem after problem despite he partner trying to bring an air of optimism to proceedings. Apparently the most important thing to remember on the mountain is to put sun screen on your thumb and forefinger so they don't get burnt when using poles!!! I suppose I'm being harsh, she did after all give us a bag of snack bars. Once we did our thanks very much for all the advice routine we jumped straight into the pool.

We had dinner up the road and returned to wait for our bags. In order to pass the time Ash told us about his favourite cinema. It had 4 seats in a row, with two, two seat rows on either side...and you could push a button and some one would come down and bring you a drink. He couldn't quite remember where it was though. If at this stage the image of the large screen in a passenger plane is floating around your head, then you will totally understand why myself and Conor spent the next half hour rolling around in tears of laughter!!!

After we picked ourselves up, our bags arrived so we then tried to pack em in the dark, although to be honest we did have light for the 10 sec intervals the generator actually worked. After the great pack we went to sleep, in between Conor's snores naturally...

Day 1. Cork - Arusha. 7th Oct

Well we’re back. All in one piece, whatever that means. It’s not like we were likely to lose limbs. It was cold and long but it was never really raining large sharpened razor blades. I toyed with the idea of just doing a quick synopsis of the 12 days, but I felt that would do an injustice to the prolonged suffering we went through. Also there was a free Alfred Hitchcock DVD with one of the papers yesterday, so it would appear suspense is in!!! For people who’ve been told to avoid this exact type of stressful situation, change doctors is the only advice I can give you! Naturally scrolling to day 5/6 will alleviate any worries but will spoil what could be (but isn’t) a fascinating story.
So on we go…. We met up at some ungodly hour (4.40am) at Cork Airport. Why the hours between 3am and 8am are ungodly I’ve got no idea. Lets just park that one with the rest of the intellectual mess that is the general mish mash of god questions. For now anyway….. After a little bit of repacking, and the first of many appearances by Ash ‘Mcgyver’ Mcrae, we checked in and went straight through security. Well obviously they gave Conor a thorough searching, but we had allowed for this when planning what time we needed to meet up. We swanned through duty free, passing the vast array of playing cards on offer, and headed to grab a coffee. It was at this exact moment we noticed that all the food seemed to be located quite safely on the other side of a glass screen!!! We found a muffin/coffee kiosk which stubbornly refused to open until exactly 5.30am, while the bar was happily serving beer to whoever needed it. It was a good thing we only had a ten minute wait for the coffee dock is all I’ll say on that.
We were left running for our connection to Kilimanjaro so once again we passed up the opportunity to purchase playing cards. Only to find that the security queue was 12 miles long, so we would have had plenty of time to not only buy them, but also to fit in a few games of Chinese Patience!! We passed the time in the queue munching on Ash’s pre-packed steak sandwiches. The flight itself was uneventful; bar of course Ash’s near death staring match with a member of the Israeli Secret Service over a little back of chair bumping incident. The only thing that saved him was the agent was obviously on a more important role that involved hovering (and staring of course) outside the toilets!!! We arrived on time, spent a while in the visa queue (its twice the price for an Irish Citizen to get a visa as it is for a New Zealander, no idea why, feel free to offer suggestions) and then spent an even longer while waiting for our luggage. Conor’s arrived, and a guy with a list informed us that the remaining bags were in Amsterdam. We spent ages looking for the ‘Just dumped off the plane baggage claims’ to no avail and eventually had to settle for the inaccurately named ‘Lost Baggage’ counter.
An hour later we were at our ‘hotel’. An hour and 5 minutes later we had a tab set up and had ordered steak and chips. We sat around for a bit, pretending not to be panicking about our bags. Conor looked the most nervous as he could see his lovely kit slowly getting divided 3 ways!!! We eventually went to bed, turned on the power shower just to test it out, discovered that both the words power and shower were blatantly false advertising, and spent a further half hour trying to work out the bloody mosquito nets. After all this hardship, we then, and only then, discovered that Conor snored like a train…..

And They're Off...

Well we leave at 6.10 am tomorrow. Unfortunately Sullie will not be joining us. His father in law is very ill and he'll be staying home. So the 3 of us head off, our thoughts with Sullie and his family.
There will be no further updates until we return, and if we don't make the top expect lots of lies.
G'Luck.

Oh dear god... Only 7 days to go!!!

1 week to go. Hardly a good time to start panicking. So I wont. However I'm making no promises for tomorrow.. To be honest, I think we have most things covered, we have all our gear (by all I mean most or at the very least some), Conor is looking after the dollars and Ash is looking after the snack bars. Myself and Sullie have adopted a moral high ground at this stage and plan to stay there until our bluff is called. The only thing we don't have at this point is a clue! Also I think I should mention that I hate lists, hate them with a passion understood by only by a few. A few that also happen to be heavily sedated and coincidentally, heavily incarcerated! I would go as far as to say I feel violated by lists. Which is why I refuse to make one and is also the reason, not totally unrelated I suppose, why I will undoubtedly find myself going 'ah F*#k' at -20deg!

Not much to report on last Sundays climb, it was another trip back to Carrantuohill. Ash was unable to join us because he had a dose of, wait for it... VERTIGO!!! Only our group could go to the highest point in Africa and get vertigo before we even leave!!! Conor missed out as he was on the piss, a far more noble and believable excuse!!! So it was left to myself and Sullie to further explore the hills of Ireland. The weather was meant to be sunny, it was not. It was then meant to clear by early morning, it did not. All this was revised to clearing up around 3pm, it, you guessed it did not. If Met Eireann had any interest in accuracy it would have said that the weather in Carrantuohill will clear up at the exact time Mark & Sullie get down from the top. But it does not have any interest in accuracy, which is also the same level of interest it reserves for forecasting the weather.
We headed off at 10am under cloud cover and headed for the lake an American WW2 plane had crashed into in 1943. Apparently you can still see the wing on a clear day. Today we could barely see the lake never mind the wing. So we continued our climb to the top of the peak next to the lake with the plan of following the ridge line across to the Devils Ladder where we would descend, or get off the bloody mountain as I like to call it. I insisted on frequent map checks as I was after all with Sullie. His previous escapades on this mountain are well documented. But to be fair to him he got us to the top without too many life threatening detours. At the top we met another group who had come around from the opposite side of the lake. Very experienced looking, one guy was even ex-RAF. They told us that to get to Devils Ladder we should head back more or less the way we came, we nodded and agreed but once they were gone Sull was out with map and compass. So after a quick bit of something involving twisting the compass and the map and a little bit of maths and just a smidgen of guess work he got back on his feet shouted 'RAF my arse' and guided us off in the RIGHT direction. At which point the cloud cleared and we could see where we were going. To be honest up to the cloud parting I was slightly doubtful!!!
That was about it for Sunday. 7 days to go, ah bugger that's only 5 to the flights. Time to go shopping..... Or maybe even training.... Or maybe just to sleep!

Brokeback Lake...

There would appear to be somewhat of a problem. I say somewhat of a problem because I read that phrase somewhere in a real book and I thought it sounded good. No other reason. Simple.

Anyway, back to the problem. I've just re-read the older posts (an exercise in futility it might seem, based on the fact I wrote them and re read them first time round) and the overriding impression I come away with is that the others keep messing up and my s**t doesn't smell. Well the posts do leave the impression of a slight odour, but only of fresh cut grass and Christmas trees. But that's another long story about a drunken visit to a very sensitive dietitian with no sense of humour...

So in an attempt to rectify this slight misconception I toyed with the idea of editing all the old posts and inserting the parts where I was the butt of jokes or messed up etc etc. I chucked that idea quickly as I realised people would hardly re read this stuff (bar me of course), and instead have opted for a quick synopsis so as everyone will know just what the rest of the lads have to overcome as well as the 19000ft climb. Brace yourself....

1. I talk a lot. There isn't a silence out there that I could feel comfortable with!! In fact I don't even think we could do coffee.



2. I complain a lot. This is natural extension of the talking a lot, at this stage the lads have heard all my stories and there tends to be a lot to complain about when you have to drag all this weight around mountains with no proper tracks or dare I say escalators.



3. I should point out both of these stop once the going gets, not so much tough, but more moderately difficult. However, the silence gets rebuked with plenty of profanity monologues instead.



4. This whole exercise in torture was my idea. I know everyone else had no problems getting on board, but I had left out a fair few details until after the deposit was paid. Including, but not exclusively, the -30deg summit, the 15hr walk the NIGHT of the ascent, the poor showers at the hotel, the list is endless.



5. I have a terrible sense of direction and I cant read maps. Even road maps to the start points are beyond me. Which is strange considering I love telling people they're bringing us the wrong way, while never actually offering up the correct route. This works on so many levels its great. I get to complain and be right, as 90% of the time we do end up going the wrong way.



6. I have a huge head.... And I don't mean that in the big ego sort of huge head, although... My head is just out sized as the Americans might say. I say might because there is a chance they might actually go down the road of 'would ya look at the size of that guys massive head' or words to that effect. It might seem strange that I mention this, I mean what difference does it make to mountain climbing??? Well I can cast areas into complete shadow, and if I stagger and lean slightly backwards a deadly combination of gravity and my head could result in the untimely departure from this world of the person behind me!!!!

So why now I hear people ask? Why at all I also hear the odd person say? I also hear other voices, most of which I've learned to ignore until there's no one around to hear me respond!. Some I don't need to ignore and can often prove more interesting than voices with bodies attached... Where was I?, oh ya, why now. Well I had an incident with a pair of shorts last Sunday which, no matter what your view on censorship, couldn't be left out of the blog. And I didn't want the image of perfection I'd built up to be shattered, so in an amazing display of sideways thinking I instead decided to rip away the shadowy layers of polished excellence and come clean by admitting the flawed individual you find bared before you.... Oh and Ash said it was time I 'payed' myself out instead of him!!!!

Anyway, last Sunday and the 'Shorts'. We went back to Carrantuohill, Conor included but Sullie absent. Spent our usual half hour flaffing around getting ready, where I discovered the horrible truth about my new hiking pants. I had tried them on in the shop, they seemed fine, a little tight maybe but the next size up would have required a belt and an extra stone of pure stomach! In truth I left that shop with a happiness no man should get from shopping, I was that delighted about my hiking pants. However I hadn't tried to move about much in the shop. I should've smelled a rat when he guided me towards the 1ft by 1ft changing room. When I put them on Sunday it was a whole new ball game... In more ways than one I might add!!!! I think Conor provided a perfect description when he astutely observed that I looked like two pigs fighting under a blanket!!! I of cousre whinged about them the whole way up the mountain, which was just as well as it drowned out the lads laughter everytime I struggled to climb up a step in my highly restrictive shorts. The US government has been looking for this level of containment for years!

Obviously we enventually got over it and focused all that misspent concentration back on staying on the trail. Ash played a stormer as our psuedo Indian guide. Conor or myself naturally could have taken on this role, but it's a hard job to do 100 yards behind the leader. We found a path to the top which involved exactly the correct number of breaks, and which didn't involve a near death experience. Shame on you Sullie... We returned the same way, and had a brief stop off for a paddle in one of the lakes. Exceptionally refreshing, if a little cold. Feel free to replace little cold with, heart stoppingly freezing. Although not as cold as the freezer works Ash worked in back in New Zealand. By a starnge coincendence, the freezer works are actually the same temp as the top of Kilimanjaro, just slightly lower on the planet.
I dont think now is the time to discuss just what 3 half naked guys paddling around in a lake in the middle of the mountains look like. But if past movies were a guide, we were a shoo in for a oscar!!! We made it back in 5.5 hrs for the best soup in the land. I just looked at how long we have left before we go.... Oh dear god.....

And then there were 4.....

In a scene reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs, ALL 4 of us (yes I said ALL 4 of us) met up in a car park in Fermoy before pouring our hungover remains into Ash's monster truck. Reservoir Dogs might possibly be a stretch, maybe it was more Leaving Las Vegas, in fact now that I put some thought into it, I cant think of any movie it reminded me of. This is, from an artistic point of view, probably a good thing....


Of course the first thing that went through our minds when it became obvious that all 4 of us were there, (it became obvious roughly 5 min AFTER all of us had actually turned up) was where in the hell were we going to find a couch, tea and chocolate biscuits!!!


Galtee Mór was the plan for the day, just a short hike to flush the drink out. Have I mentioned the hangover????? The rain started as soon as we stepped into the jeep, and actually only stopped once we'd finished the walk. The superstitious could construe this as a sign. It is. A sign that hiking in Ireland is a sure fire way of getting the flu!!! Having said all that, the rain also had a hidden blessing, we got to see the full extent of Conors new gear. He looked hungover, very hungover, but he was a dry hungover, and there wasn't a boat embroidered anywhere. Unbelievable.


The hike went fairly well, despite a general unwanted uphill feel to Ash's navigation technique. He had decided that he recognised the way from the last time. While at face value this would seem a perfectly legitimate claim, the fact that we could only see a few feet in front of us meant he could recall a square metre of bog at a time. We were not as convinced as auld Ash and so against our better judgement we called on Sullie to bring forth the compass!! (this is the one bit of kit Ash hasn't purchased on his sneaky trips to Mahers sports) The ingenious manufacturers had made it so u didn't have to take it out of the original packaging to use it, so guess what's being returned next week!!! We took a quick bearing for our return, (we looked up what that meant when we got home) and proceeded to get back down off the new mountain Ash had brought us up!!!


The 4 of us travelling together actually works well, Ash and Sullie can run on ahead and scout out the break locations, while myself and Conor can lag behind, discussing food in between gasps for air. The rest of the climb went smoothly, we got a photo of Conor touching the cross at the top cos we felt that proof might be needed. We broke 3 more walking poles before we got back to the jeep, which wasn't really a problem as we had already broken the other 5 and were returning them anyway. We discovered that beer slows Sullie down, not a lot but enough so we can have 10 min quality time with him at the start of the day. And we finally discovered that we can stomach each other for at least 3hrs 22min, well 3 hrs anyway.

After a communal declaration that we were all off the drink until after the climb, Ash clarified his exact stance on the subject by adding...

1. That he'd have the odd few during the week.


2. That he definitely is having a few during a stop over in Amsterdam. (this varied from one to getting a round in...).


3. That he was bringing a hip flask for 'the cold nights'.
   

Conor just calmly mentioned he has 2 weddings to go to, while steering wisely away from the question as to whether he'd actually be partaking in any alcohol consumption at them. Myself and Sullie added nothing, which by a strange linguistic coincidence also means nothing!

The much advertised hangover was cheerily brought on by our Charity Night in Bru. Great night, the Wii Olympics didn't really capture the general public interest, but it took on a life of its own when we put on the boxing!!! There was a weird little American lad who told us that if we really wanted to make money we should get people to pay to try to beat him at the tennis. This we did, but we left out the 'at the tennis' bit. Made a fortune...The Munster jersey as well as Shayne Ward (notice the pretentious spelling of Shane) tickets were raffled off, with an amazing display of stool balancing by Ash. Conor ended up with the ShaYne Ward tickets and a friend of his won the jersey! I thought he looked a bit smug early in the night....

Other news form our amazingly exciting lives... The Irish Examiner did an article on us doing the climb. With a nice picture of myself and Ash on the bar in bru with rucksacks on. Lovely...I think I got altitude sickness up there. Also did a radio interview with Life FM, a christian radio station in Cork City... I hear people screaming IRONY!!!!! It went well, but at the end the interviewer said to enjoy the trip to which I replied 'You too'.. Bloody marvelous..

FOR PROOF PRESS PLAY!!!

Coming Soon....

Break time yet Boss??...

It was Carrauntuohills turn this week to get the Kilimanjaro 4 treatment. So myself and Ash met up at Sullies place. Conor has been given the task of keeping the dream alive and is therefore unable to make early Sunday walks due extreme alcohol dehydration!!! Before we met up Ash called round to Hamish 'Style Guru' Mcrae for some much needed clothing advice. Hamish dealt out some of his pearly words of wisdom about tight and blue being 'so in'. How the guy knows this is amazing, must be all that late night Fashion TV he watches......
Anyway we arrived at the start point at 10.00am and after a quick round of stealing toilet paper- I don't think there is any need to dwell on that- we headed off. An hour later and we were hot on the heels of two guys who obviously knew where they were going..... Alas where they were going was nowhere near where we needed to be, something we only realised when we were stuck up at the top of Hags Tooth (despite the map telling us clearly it should be on our right... Sullie) with no obvious way of getting down!!! We would have realised this a lot sooner, but I felt that taking a break after every 5 steps was a climbing technique I was willing to explore. Sullie and Ashes technique of just getting on with it and therefore getting an extra twenty minutes rest while waiting for me would appear the way to go!!! We eventually made it back down, where we bumped into a Shepard and his dogs who called us idiots (the Shepard not the dogs, although god knows what the dogs were thinking) for not sticking with the trail. What f**kin trail I felt like saying but didn't cos I was saving my breath for some moaning later on. So we started our 2nd assault to the top, I changed my technique to a break every 3 steps, which gave the lads a nice half an hour of a break at the top. I should point out that when I did eventually make it, my break time was severely cut so we could move on.... After a quick will we go left or right debate we headed off again and 20min later we were at the top!!! Sullie was up there 10min before us and to be fair Ash would have been too but he felt staying close to me might guilt me into moving faster. Silly boy....
Quick cup of tea later (my flask had a slight design fault-it turned warm things cold...) and off we headed back down. We decided to go back via the devils ladder, which while tough on the knees, was a blast watching the grossly ill prepared flocks of eastern Europeans attempt to climb up it. We met one couple who brought a two litre bottle of coke instead of water, and another couple who from the very start the guy was literally pulling the girl up. I'd say that little relationship ended a good hour before the top!!!!
So six hours later we were back at the car. The start point also has showers and a little cafe. We partook in both.... Heaven!!!!!!!!

Baaaa Baaaa Black Sheep!!!

There are a few things everybody should know about Gouganebarra. Firstly, there used to be - well actually that's not true - there still is a tree where people USED to hammer coins into its trunk for good luck. Why they did this is beyond me. Although it is outside a little Catholic Church so possibly expecting any form of reason is at best a touch misguided!!! However someone has now nailed (ironic I know) a sign stating...'I'm a tree. Do not hammer coins into me'. The amount of questions this type of activity raises are mind numbing. I mean what sort of tree, after years of abuse at the hands of the obviously unlucky, says sod this I've had enough, but I think I'll just bash something else into me for old times sake!!! And how do we take this tree seriously; you're just about to lash in a shiny 2cent coin, you read the notice and stop, but then you start to think just how convinced is the tree that it actually does want all the hammering to end??? Anyway people now throw the coins at the edge of the lake. We made €5.24 on Sunday.....

Secondly, its a little known fact that Gouganebarra has won the Tidy Toilet (pubic toilet section) on two separate occasions. The fact that the toilets seemed to be constantly padlocked is an obvious advantage. I can only assume that they get opened just before judging.....

So anyway we returned to Gouganebarra this Sunday to expel the demons of failure from last weekend. By we I mean me and Ash. Conor was somewhere, Sully was at a wedding getting all sorts of inaccurate information about fitness levels for the climb... We decided to attack it from the other side this time round, coincidentally the trail started at the back of the cleanest toilets in the land, a move that turned out to be inspired. Its bloody well signposted from this side!!!!!!! Those maps we used last week should come with a health warning.... We followed the lovely signs until we met the fenceline on the county bounds, then we followed that. Well we tried to, Ash for some reason kept coming up with very intricate excuses to deviate away from it. All of which lead to varying degrees of disaster. Edmund Hilary he ain't!!!! And when the fence ended we were back where we finished up last week so we knew exactly how to go to get back. Well exactly might be a slight exaggeration....

Of course that still leaves you wondering why this is called Baa Baa Black sheep???? Well, just as we reached the start of the fence line, and just as Ash made his initial attempt to swerve wildly away from it, we heard the sorrowful cries of some distressed animal. Ash recognised it immediately as a 3 year old, left legged, short horned sheep.... So we headed for the sound, and once we got back to the fenceline we found a sheep struggling to free itself from the wire fence!!! So Ash EXPERTLY snuck up on it and grabbed it from behind, while I removed its head from the wire and off it ran. At which point we both said... Ah fuck, never took a picture!!!!

Ah Sherpas.... Gotta Love 'em!!!

The similarities our little expedition have with Homer Simpson go way beyond waistlines!!! It would appear our Sherpas were the inspiration for a Simpson's episode!!!

LOST!!!!!......

Some people are obsessed with the start, middle and end technique in story telling. If you are, avert your eyes now. I just don't feel it would be fair to have people scrolling through the blog looking for random words which might possibly explain the harrowing picture that starts this post. So too address this I'll start the story in the middle, or the latter middle if you want to be very accurate about it. If you don't want to be accurate about it, then this whole point wont bother you at all and I've just wasted valuable seconds of your error strewn lives....

Anyway, the picture. To start with I have to admit that none of us were very well prepared for our little outing to Gouganebarra. But more on that later, for now back to poor poor Conor. Oh, the Hobbit like creature in the photo is actually Conor.... It was taken 3.5hrs into our trek, 3hrs of which was spent in the rain. The first 30min of it were spent walking in lovely sunshine, albeit in completely the wrong direction!!! But again more on that later. It is obvious from the photo that Conor is ill prepared for the weather conditions we encountered. His surf shorts and ankle socks, while making him without doubt the coolest cat in West Cork, are just not what the day demanded. While his jacket, despite the fact that it - in what can only be described as subliminal advertising- has a picture of a boat on it, is not even remotely waterproof. I wont even go into the shoes!!!! Oh and the red thing between his feet.... that's his rucksack! (free with the Irish Times in Cardiff for Heineken Cup Final, the designers will be delighted to know, also not waterproof.)

But enough about Conor, he has vowed to take a day off this week to get suitably attired. Don't worry Ash is going to meet him there!!!! So on to the rest of the trek...
To begin with I used to believe that if you have a page of directions and two pretty maps then you can go anywhere. I'm changing beliefs... If you have a page of directions and two pretty maps AND read the directions AND understand what all the lovely colours and lines mean, THEN you can go anywhere. Not much of a difference you might say, I like to call it the Catholicism versus Protestantism of mountain climbing. Needless to say I got us lost within 5 minutes of leaving the cars. Unfortunately we didn't discover this until we'd walked for twenty minutes and trespassed onto a farm straight out of deliverance... The small error I had made was to read from line one straight to line 5 in the directions!! What can i say, OOOPPSIE.. So 40 wasted minutes and a Conor food lesson later we were back on track. Sort of.... Luckily we bumped into a guy, Michael Healy who'd climbed this 'more times than he can remember' (I mention he said this because he was later to get lost with the rest of us, although in his defence he was also the one that got us unlost too). Michael had also attempted Kilimanjaro but had to turn back after day 3 due to altitude sickness. Not something we needed to hear. We met him at the start of the climb, but he ran on ahead with his German Shepard. So whenever the lads asked where we were heading for I'd pull out my beautiful but basically useless maps and proceed to peer over them looking out for Mike and his dog. When the mist and heavy rain came in he waited for us at the top of the first mountain cos he was afraid we'd get lost. Obviously he'd seen the old colourful map trick a few times before. So after a few hours of playing keep up the man 20 years older than us we finally (after the afore mentioned detour) came to the point where we could descend to the forest with him and back to the warmth of the hotel car park or continue on up and around the mountains on our todds.....
And this is where what can only have been altitude dementia, kicked in. All 3 of us stood there while he gave us directions to continue on, and all 3 of us looked around at each other waiting for someone, anyone to point out that none of us actually thought this was a good idea. So needless to say, looking tough as hell, we continued on, minus our guide. We did this for ten minutes, sat down in the most open spot on the planet, laughed a lot at the get up of poor Conor (see above picture and feel free to laugh out loud uncontrollably, we did) and had our lunch. Once fed, reason returned and we fucked off back down the mountain!!! Which still took us another 1.5hrs, although we were entertained by what can only be described as pure physical comedy genius. Yes, we fell a lot. One of us would fall, the others would laugh, and within 10 seconds the others would have keeled over too. It was that kind of day.... Ash did a spectacular face first, no hands fall, no picture of it I'm afraid.
Lots more happened on the way back, but that would take away the sense of mystery we've built up.....

Oh and as an aside, a great Ash story. He swaggered into the mountaineering gear shop last week, pointed at stuff saying 'got that' 'got two of those' 'real climbers don't even use those' etc etc, did the Ash walk up to the sales assistant and said confidently 'can you give us a hand with some boots love' to which she responded with out even acknowledging his climbing godliness, 'be with you in a minute HONEY!!!' The honey was not overly friendly..... Ash has vowed to alter his general approach to sales assistants, the walk however, he insists on keeping!!! Also my doctor reckons we should enjoy the trip, but if we catch Rabies we're dead, if we get Malaria we're dead, and altitude sickness will definitely kill us cos we're too stupid to come back down the mountain!!! Happy little fella, my doc.....

Dosing Cattle!!!!

Training techniques have changed through the years, in fact I remember my dad telling me of having to carry cavity blocks up the slopes of the Glen Hurling clubs' pitches. Imagine their shock when they got to the top and there wasn't a building site to be seen....but that's another story.
Over the years we've swapped the cold pitch and the blocks for a warm gym and a Jacuzzi, so its fair to say training has come on leaps and bounds. Train as you intend to play is the new mantra, no point running 10 miles if all you'll be doing when you play is sprint -or casually saunter- 20 metres. Which leads me at long last to my point -and here's a tip....always have a point, it makes it so much more interesting for the reader!!!- why the hell was Conor 'I need to get fit' Crowley dosing cattle for hours on Sunday while the rest of us were risking life and limb climbing Galtee Mór and Galtee Beag?? The short answer is I don't know. I don't even know what dosing cattle involves. If it involves running up mountains for hours chasing cows, then wont I feel like an idiot!!! However as there is definitely no cows on Kilimanjaro its still a bit of cavity block training technique.....

Anyway, the rest of us met up at 10.30am in fermoy and threw ourselves and our gear into Sullies jeep. (its easier to get mud off leather!!) A quick 20 min drive with no reversing (he had a choice of leather interior or fully working gearbox) and we were at the start of the climb. We all donned our identical shiny climbing boots and waited 3hrs for Conor to show. Which of course he didn't!!! So we wisely spent this time packing our bags, where we discovered Ash 'just pack a shirt and 2 pairs of jocks and you'll be grand' Mcrae was a walking mountaineering gear warehouse. He had waterproof zip bags, a weird balaclava that doubled as a hang-glider, waterproof pants with braces-in case someone whipped out a pipe- and a water pouch with accompanying tube made from koala skin. His 'Chariots of Fire' base layer is a tale all of its own!!! 13 unanswered calls to Conor later we struck off, (I might be harping on about Conor being missing), 3 lads walking in the lovely Summer sun. 112 metres later the sky opened up. Thank god for goretex, or to be more accurate thank Mr. Tex.

This is taking an age to type so here are the important bits....

1. It took 3.5hrs.

2. Visibility was poor, except for the 2 min sunshine window when Sullie wouldn't let any photo's be taken.

3. Sullie is never allowed to lead on the way up. Way too enthusiastic. Slowest man sets the pace Sull, slowest man.....

4. Ash is never allowed to lead on way down. We haven't time for his exploratory technique involving 'shortcuts'.

5. Mark can fall both going uphill and downhill.

6. Mark loses the ability to speak once the slope is over 10 degrees. Rumours of a petition to get him to live the rest of his life on an inclined treadmill are greatly exaggerated.

7. Don't step on the wet green stuff. It tends to sit on top of really soft, really deep brown stuff.

8. €20.00 walking poles are no match for 99kg of falling body weight.

9. We really didn't give this whole idea the thought it deserved!.

10. Oh and did I mention Conor didn't make it?????

Next week its Gougaunbarra.... 5hrs apparently...........

Gear...Glorious Gear!!!!!

The most difficult part of this whole trip has to be working out exactly what kit we'll need to bring up the bloody mountain. Obviously not from a carrying it point of view, because we wont be. Some 7 stone whippet will carry our blissfully ignorantly packed rucksacks up 19000ft on his head while committing to memory stories about the four oxygen deprived crying loons he had to push up the mountain!!!!

Anyway depending on which site or company you look at, you should either spend the USA military budget on gear, or else run up naked and hope the built up body heat will last long enough to get back down again. In fact after a quick bit of maths, and by quick I mean 3 days, an excel spread sheet and a scientific calculator, the gear the site I linked to at the end of this page would only set you back €1233.00. I am however going to leave the link as it has lovely pictures...

In our cases we managed to get our fleeces and base layers at cost price from GILL, a sailing gear manufacturer. We know as much about sailing as we do about trekking so it seemed perfect. We then discovered you can hire all the weird stuff you might need from the tour company. So now we wont have €200 jackets for -20deg lying under walking poles hiding in a corner of our respective attics. So all in all it'll cost us about €33 for gear. A cool saving of €13589.36 by my maths. We can now be hired as gear purchasing consultants....

It should be noted that bar the boots and one base layer, Ash seems to already have all the gear he'll need lying around at home... Very suspect!!!

2 months or 8 weeks...Either way not enough!!!!

Well, well, well. In just two short months our still obese frames will be at the base of Kilimanjaro... As I write this only Ash has a pair of boots, none of us can work out what the hell a shell layer is and we've completed 5 hours walking between the 4 of us. Although between the 4 of us we've also made it to the quarter final of the Cork Senior Football Championship, finished 3 triathlons, qualified for the Olympics (wont go due to political beliefs) and set records in two marathons!!! If you take Sullie out of the 4 then we've completed 5 hours walking.....
Serious training starts this week... Honest....

Just to keep everything above board, I feel I should mention I did manage to climb Galtee Mór at some stage between the previous post and this one. My mind is making a serious attempt to block out the memory!!!! It took 3hrs up and back and I only had to ring for directions twice.... So at least now I'm confident that I'll be able to manage the morning hikes on Kilimanjaro and the porters can just carry me for the afternoon bits. Simple... Sorted... Next!!!

Atheletes One and All

Just a quick update on how our training is progressing along. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that we are well ahead of our training programme at the moment. It wouldn't be a exaggeration, only because it's a downright lie....
It would appear that on a superficial level training is not going exactly to plan. On further examination it would appear that we haven't done any. If you were to make a thorough investigation you would discover that going on the piss on Saturdays, and why limit it to Saturdays, is the root of this problem. Although calling it a problem gives off all the wrong vibes. However it should be noted that Ash has bought some mountain boots. Hurrah.....
We have, as a group, all paid for our flights. So we'll definitely make it to the bottom of Kilimanjaro!!! The plan to start training is back on for next Sunday the 13th of July. However its Ash's wife Jude's birthday on the Saturday night....

ERC FINAL CARDIFF MAY 24TH 2008

Well we went to Cardiff..... Strictly as part of our comprehensive training schedule of course. Conor had read that Wales was the land of valleys, and therefore by a smudge of lateral thinking there would surely be roughly double the amount of mountains. Which leads me on to wonder why its not called the land of mountains for that exact reason. Tourist Boards know nothing compared to Conor it would appear.

Alas we found neither hill nor vale, so we went and got smashed and watched the rugby instead. If nothing else it would help develop stamina, albeit of the totally wrong variety. Ash and Sullie were unable to make the trip, Sullie was wrestling bears in Alaska, while Ash was learning a dialect of Spanish after trying to find a good climb over there. Munster won, the shakes finally left my hands about 20 min before I started this post, and all lost brain cells remained lost...forever.
One story of note however, involves Ashs' brother Hamish 'Crazy' Mcrae. He decided that a bathtub is more comfortable than the floor and duly threw himself into one at 2.34am approx. The hotels he is apparently used to must have higher star ratings as well as bigger tubs but anyway... I was awoken twice to the sound of running water followed not so swiftly by 'Ahh Fuck'......

Ahhh.... Training!!!

To be fair we always knew getting all 4 us back in the same place at the same time would be an eternal struggle. So we agreed on a training schedule which took a lot of inspiration from both holistic and chaos theory ideas.
Ash started out with his first climb last Sunday, somewhere in Millstreet. He sent an email afterwards with directions and how long it took him. Both would on face value appear to be figments of his imagination, and as far as I know if you go to the trouble of following these directions you end up on the same island that features on the TV show LOST!!!!!!!!. In case anyone is interested in finding 'ASH MOUNTAIN' here are his directions - Turn right over bridge bottom of hill in Macroom and follow road until signposted left for Millstreet Park. Park outside by rocks and go at straight up hill, over top and down other side(no track down this side and quite boggy) to fence then along to left until joins with trail, follow this to the right along ridge line down to road then back track using trail around hill to car park. - Myself and Conor missed this climb as we were in a Tag final in Highfield (we won, but only cos when the two of us are on the pitch at the same time there isn't a hell of a lot of room left for people to get past!). Sullie missed it because he started his training in 1984 and felt a weeks rest would do him good. I've no idea how Ash got on, as he buggered off to Barcelona the minute he got back. Its all a bit suss to be honest.
Despite the cloak and dagger stuff, we said we try for another climb last Sunday. After 20 phone calls and 14 texts we discovered Ash was still in Barcelona and Sullie had a Triathlon as well as 2 GAA games that Sunday. So that just left 2 of us. At this point I think a word of advice is called for.... 2 guys walking up a hill, mountain, or even a road looks gay. Maybe we'll encounter the same feeling when there are more of us, if so I can safely say the trip is off. A stray hand or a random bump could end beautiful friendships.
Anyway.... Sunday, only 20 min after our agreed meeting time (this is good for Conor) Mr. Crowley arrived at my door to collect me. So after the necessary cup of tea and chocolate roll we headed of to the start of the trail.
Stretching was banned, so a quick look at the map and we were on our way!!! Neither of us would claim to be religious so the sight of elaborate sculpture pieces of the stations of the cross along the trail took our mind off the walk for the first 20 min. Especially the 'Jesus falls for the second time' one!!!! I wonder will they change them now that the Vatican has decided that what they said was true all along is now slightly different and in just a slightly different order??? I think I'll need a new blog for my Catholic Church rants!!!! We walked to the top, saw the cross, looked at the views, I took a photo of Conor, he took a photo of me - Jesus it sounds like a modern Brokeback Mountain - and then rejoined the trail. And to cut a long story short, we got lost, found a dead end, went back the way we came, spent a least 40 minutes discussing Burger King and the Angry Whopper versus the Double Whopper, and I pulled every muscle down the left hand side of my back trying to see around corners.
We walked in total for 1.5hrs, and spent longer looking at the map at the end than we did at the start. There's a lesson there somewhere!!!!
I went home and had Pad Thai noodles, a Cajun burger and a tub of chocolate chip ice-cream.... There's also a lesson there too, but I'll be damned if I'm going to learn it.
Next week we're focusing on individual muscle groups. Mainly biceps and abs as its Heineken Cup Final weekend... Wonder will anyone in the beer garden buy my ticket????