Needless to say, I had a great "year off," punctuated by
some unforgettable trips. I created a slideshow for each adventure. Maybe it
makes the most sense to do a little blurb about each trip first and then offer up the
pictures ---
(Quick Links - OAXACA | MALAWI & KILIMANJARO |
NICARAGUA | MOUNT RAINIER )
Arriving just in time for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), my
dad and I spent a month at the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca (ICO ... known to
the locals as "Casa Chata" -- the house with the cutoff corner). I
started off the month with little more than "uno, dos, tres" and finished up
week four with a pretty decent handle on tourist Spanish. After
classes ended my dad returned home and I teamed up with Jenn, a classmate at the Casa
Chata. Together we traveled to Chiapas, spending time in the
mountain town of San Cristobal de las Casas and heading deeper into the jungles
of Palenque to spend 3 memorable days in the tourist community of Pan Chan.
We returned in time to have a full week in Oaxaca with our local friends,
eating obscene amounts of the ridiculously good food, scoring front row seats to
the Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling), and putting in plenty of quality time
shopping the markets and artisan stores.
THE SLIDESHOW
Just before leaving for Mexico I signed on to participate in this year's Kili
Climb for Children, a delegation of individuals committed to raising $10,000
apiece to support Save the Children programs in Malawi (and, subsequently,
climbing the highest peak on the African continent). My friend
Shaun, "Stumpy" to his
friends, designed some fabulous t-shirts that
ultimately became THE Kili shirt this year.
Malawi. After a couple of months of training, I hopped the cross-Atlantic flight with my companions, at that point (though not much longer)
virtual strangers. We spent four days in Malawi, visiting villages and
schools that work in partnership with Save the Children, all of whom are
benefiting from the money we raised. The people never failed to welcome us
with a warm song of greeting, surging around our van as we crept down the dirt
road to their village. I am still realizing the impact of those four
short days. It makes me wonder what the world would be like if everyone
(at least, every American) could take a similar trip.
THE SLIDESHOW
Mt Kilimanjaro. After saying goodbye to our friends in
Malawi, we flew to Tanzania by way of Nairobi. We spent two nights and a
full day at the lovely Moivaro Lodge, a hotel/coffee plantation, returning to
the same place after the climb.
In the morning we drove out to the
end of a long muddy road, the trailhead for the Shira route up Kilimanjaro.
There we met our porters (all 35 of them... for 16 of us) -- kind of a
ridiculous ratio best evidenced by the fact that we had a _real_ wooden
toilet seat to sit on at 18,000'. Still, more stuff to carry=more
jobs and they told us that being a porter is considered good, albeit hard, work. My porter, Nazariti, carried both my bag and Shelley Brown's
all the way to the top. I always felt a bit ridiculous moving my
geared-up, daypack wearing self to the side of the trail to let the long stream of porters pass us by.
The first day and a half had us hiking through dense jungle. We had to
wear gaiters to protect our legs and knees from the dense nettles along the
trail.
By the end of the second day we had cleared the tree line,
emerging into fields of heather and wonderful vistas back to the flat savannah.
Looking ahead we could see the distant, snow-covered mountain.
At the end
of the third day we reached the 12,300' Scott Fischer Camp, named after
the Mountain Madness pioneer. That was pretty much the last day that
I felt in full health.
As we neared the fourth day's camp, I was
hit with a wave of nausea, the beginning stages of the altitude sickness that
would plague me for the next 3 days. By the time we reached the Lava Tower
Camp at 14,200' I was throwing up and had completely lost my appetite.
On
day 5, we climbed a mere/merciful 900' to the Arrow Glacier Camp, where
Jeff Ament (of Pearl Jam) celebrated his 41st birthday. Linnea, my nurse
and tent-mate, spent the better part of the afternoon trying to get me to keep
down food and liquid. There was talk of rectal anti-nausea
suppositories and threats from friends that they would do it for me if I was too
stubborn to do it myself. Donovan, our trip leader, and Victor, our head
guide, kept dropping by my tent for little powwows. The bottom line, they
told me, was that if I was unable to keep down breakfast the following morning,
I would have to descend to a lower elevation with an assistant guide and we
would walk around the mountain to meet the rest of the group on the other side.
The next morning's breakfast was nothing short of a miracle as I ate a slice of
bread with peanut butter and kept it down for the better part of 3 hours.
The sixth day was the longest and technically the most difficult as we
picked our way up the Western Breach, 1800' vertical feet of steep, craggy rocks.
Greeted by a faintly sulfured breeze, we reached the Summit Crater Camp at
18,500', just 800' shy of the top.
On the seventh day, summit day,
we woke up extra early and began our ascent before sunrise. By the
time we reached the top, I completely forgot how crappy I felt and that I
hadn't eaten in two days. We spent about 45 minutes snapping photos and
calling loved ones on the satellite phone. After wrapping up the
celebration we lost no time in heading down. Unlike the way up, where all
of the guides and porters constantly insisted "pole, pole" (meaning, basically,
"go slow" in Swahili), we tore down the mountain at breakneck speed, descending
from the summit of 19,361' to nearly 15,000' by lunchtime. By that point,
my appetite had returned completely and I was delighted with the week-old bread
and canned pineapple spread in the mess tent. By camp that night, we
had dropped to 10,500' and everyone pretty much collapsed in their tents.
I don't think anyone was prepared for how hard on the legs the descent would be.
On the eighth and final day, we descended another 5000' or so feet to the
trailhead, where we had a little BBQ chicken and Coca Cola feast. We then
presented the Kili shirts that Shaun designed
to the porters and guides and said our goodbyes. After a short day of
recovery in Arusha, we headed for the airport and caught our flights home.
"We the people of Tanganyika would like to light a candle and put it on the top
of Mount Kilimanjaro which would shine beyond our borders, giving hope where
there was despair, love where there was hate, and dignity where before there was
only humiliation." - quote at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro
When I heard that my mom's international funding group, World Venture
Partners (WVP), was traveling to Nicaragua I offered up web design services in return
for tagging along. We spent most of our time visiting project sites,
including a women's sewing cooperative, a coffee collective and two WVP-funded
water projects. Apart from our site visits, we learned a ton about
the history of the country thanks to our guide, Virginia, who seems to know just
about everyone in Managua (pop 2.5 million). She wants me to return next
summer to study law and Spanish with her. A tempting offer to be sure.
Here's the DETAILED
ITINERARY from the WVP website
My close friend Stacey and her dog Charley were my
training buddies for Kilimanjaro all through January and February. On one
of our regular hikes, Stacey pitched the idea of climbing Mount Rainier before I left for law school.
2 months later we convinced my then boyfriend Ramey to join us and
secured spots in a late July climb with Rainier Mountaineering Inc (RMI).
The weather on the mountain is totally unpredictable (often forcing groups to
turn back before summiting) but it's usually pretty decent by the end of July.
Throughout May, June and July we spent a countless hours on the trail, tackling
nearly all of the hikes within 50 miles of Seattle. Given my
experience on Kilimanjaro with that horrible altitude sickness I was really
worried about going back above 10,000'... But, after doing 9 straights days
of hot yoga before the climb and hydrating like it was going out of style for
the better part of a week, I felt pretty ready.
We stayed overnight in the small town of Ashford, WA and met our group at 8AM on
summit day. Our head guide Jeff announced that this would be his 100th
summit... yeah, no small feat.. and introduced us to the other guides, Mike
and...Mike.
By 10:30 we were on the trail, pushing past the day hikers on our way up to the
snowfields. We took it pretty easy on the way up to Camp Muir
-- it's the midway point between the bottom and the top. RMI has a bunkhouse
there with three tiers of sleeping space for 30 climbers. After a
brief lecture on what to expect summit day we were in bed by 5PM. I
somehow managed to fall asleep around 8 and was out cold when a guide came in at
midnight to wake us up for Day Two.
We put on crampons and roped in (Ramey, Stacey and I were in the
lead team with Jeff) and started hiking in the darkness around 1AM.
As we made our way across "the flats" I tried to keep my headlamp fixed
straight ahead - swinging it to either side revealed the mouths of deep
crevasses .. something I wasn't ready to think about in the middle of the night.
Along the horizon faint streaks were glowing against the sky -- my first time
seeing the Northern Lights.
After a short rest we pushed on to Disappointment Cleaver, the make it or
break it point for many a climber. By July, most of the snow on the
cleaver has melted and it's a vertical, rocky scramble. The constant threat of rock
falls forced alertness in our foggy midmorning heads. By the time we
reached the rest break at the top of the cleaver, Stacey and Ramey were feeling
pretty bad. Neither had gotten any sleep at Muir and Stacey's
Cheyne Stokes
breathing patterns were starting to wear her out.
The sun finally appeared as a fiery red ball,
casting a rosy hue on the snow that was just breathtaking. The
weather was unbelievably mild and I made it to the top wearing just my fleece
pants, a base layer and a light fleece top, and fleece gloves... no hat,
no parka, no Gore-Tex pants. After pushing through the last few
hours of ascent, we reached the crater around 8 in the morning.
Although RMI considers reaching the crater "summiting," the highest point is
really the Columbia Crest ridge at the far side of the crater. So, after
taking off our packs and unclipping from the rope, we made our way across and up
to the real summit.
The way down was slushy and involved a lot of sliding, but was much easier than
the way up. Below Muir, Jeff let us slide down the snowfields on our
butts... getting in touch with our inner child. We arrived at Paradise
around 4:30 PM--30 hours, 18 miles and 9000 vertical feet later. I
am really surprised by how much I enjoyed the climb. I thought it was just
going to be intense fatigue and grueling pain, but I had an amazing time.
I'm already comparing my law school break schedule with the climbing dates for
other mountains. Any suggestions?
THE SLIDESHOW
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