By james art 
“Pole, pole,” said the guides as the climbers trudged through the dark night on their way to the “Roof of Africa.”
“Pole, pole,” they said as, after seven hours of non-stop walking, many began to struggle not only with the lack of oxygen, but also with how mentally taxing the journey to the summit can be.
“Pole, pole,” they said minutes from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the world’s tallest free-standing mountain, to encourage climbers in the final push to the summit.
Mantra of the mountain, in Swahili, “pole, pole” means slow, slow, the idea being that the slower they go, the better the climbers acclimatise as they climb. Kathy Blanchard and Deb White of Cody took the words to heart as they made their way to the top.
“It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” White said. “It was really hard and you’re in your own head because you’re in the dark, but giving up wasn’t an option.”
And while reaching the iconic mark at 19,341 feet was monumental, the journey was about more than the summit; that was for every step along the 53-mile, nine-day journey for the two of them.
“It was satisfying to get a goal and it was exciting,” Blanchard said. “But you also learn a lot about yourself. There was a lot of introspection and quiet time.”
Ready to go
White doesn’t consider herself a climber, but she climbed the Grand Teton six years ago. She said she loves Africa, having visited seven times, so Kilimanjaro was something on her bucket list. She was supposed to leave in March 2020, but the trip was postponed due to the pandemic.
When she and Blanchard became good friends, she asked Blanchard to go on the trip and the two began training. They worked with personal trainer Jessica Cross for a year and also climbed Heart and Cedar mountains in the Cody area several times to prepare. They planned to go to Africa last February, but minor injuries and health problems delayed the trip until October.
“It’s been on my bucket list for so long and I kept pushing it off and pushing it away and I’m really glad I finally got to go,” White said.
The two left Cody on October 5, with the ascent beginning on October 9. Arriving the day before the expedition began, Blanchard and White met the remaining 10 members of their group at the hotel. The group is made up of 10 Americans, one Canadian and one New Zealander. One was 55 years old and the rest were over 60. They called themselves Team G or Team Geriatric.
“Our guides were actually very nervous about the all-adult group,” she said. “They’ve never experienced this. Most groups are just random and tend to be more mixed.”
The journey begins
Approaching Mount Kilimanjaro, its sheer magnitude was overwhelming. Rising from the plains of Tanzania, the mountain seems to touch the sky.
The summit can be achieved in five to nine days, with a 95% success rate for the longer journey. The mountain has five different climate and vegetation zones, starting with the mild rainforest and ending with the snow-capped peak.
The group traveled the northern route, which is Kilimanjaro’s longest. They took Diamox to prevent altitude sickness and followed the mantra slow, slow.
“They don’t let you go fast,” White said. “They set a super slow pace because it’s all about acclimatization.”
The first two days are spent trekking through the rainforest, followed by the grasslands of the Shira Plateau on the third day. Blanchard said the second day was one of the toughest of the trip, aside from the climb to the summit, as the group traveled over rough, steep terrain.
“It was a lot of bouldering and climbing,” White added.
Days four and five were spent in the alpine desert, with the terrain becoming sparser until day six at 13,200 feet. The two felt that coming from Wyoming and starting at 5,000 feet above sea level definitely gave them a slight advantage over the others in their group who were from sea level places and struggled more.
“Every day it got harder,” Blanchard said. “I mean, there were times at 15,000 feet and up where I had to take a deep breath, but that’s not unusual on an incline for me. So I just thought we handled the altitude really well.”
Eat, ride, sleep
The ladies chose the company Ultimate Kilimanjaro to guide them. Six guides led the group along with 40 porters carrying most of the equipment to the next campsite, often on their heads.
“All we had to carry was our water, snacks and a change of clothes for the day,” White said. “You can carry 33 kilograms of other gear, which isn’t really that much when you include a sleeping bag and pad and everything from tropical to winter gear.”
The drivers had health checks twice a day, testing blood oxygen and heart rate. They were alert for altitude sickness or other struggles the group members might have gone through.
“You could just tell they were always watching and if someone was out of step or someone tripped, they were right on it the whole time,” White said. They wanted us to make it safely.”
Most days the group got up between 6 and 6:30 a.m. and had 30 minutes to get ready and eat breakfast.
“The meals were amazing, they fed you like you were pregnant and you could eat as much as you wanted,” White said. “It was wonderful. Three hot meals, Snickers bars for snacks and I don’t feel bad about it.”
The group then hiked anywhere from four to seven miles a day, ranging from three to seven hours. Afternoons often consisted of napping and enjoying the company of their fellow climbers before dinner and bed. It got colder every day as they crossed into the sub arctic terrain.
“Most of the time it was cold, so the only time you were warm was when you were actually in your sleeping bag,” White said.
Pushed to the limit
On the seventh day it was time for the summit. They set up a temporary camp at 15,600 feet, ate lunch and dinner, and took several naps in between, before starting the nine-hour climb at 11 p.m. with headlamps to navigate the darkness.
“You could just see other groups coming up behind you and if you looked up you could see what looked like a string of Christmas lights with the other groups of headlights above you, which was actually really depressing because we were still so far from the top,” White said.
They continued to climb into the night, counting their steps and thinking of family and friends to support them.
“I think everybody has something in their head,” Blanchard said. “Afterwards we talked about it and did a lot of counting. I just never really felt discouraged and was excited to get to the top.”
They reached Mt Mawenzi at 6am in time for a magnificent sunrise, then another two hours to reach the highest point of Mt Uhuru at 19,341 feet. All reached the summit in the group except for one woman who peeled off at Stella Point about 500 feet from the summit.
“I don’t think giving up was ever an option,” White said. “In fact, one couple in our group had serious gastrointestinal issues and still made it. We just got on with it and made it.”
At the top, they unfurled their Wyoming flag for a photo and enjoyed the views. To the east on clear days you can see the vast plains of Tanzania stretching to the horizon. The rolling hills of Kenya can be seen to the west.
“It was beautiful,” Blanchard said. “It was exciting. It was the best time we could have had.”
The clear and quiet weather at the summit is unusual for Mt Uhuru.
“We had asked the lead guide a few days earlier, ‘When we get to the top, how long can we stay?’ And he said, ‘Well, you can stay as long as you want, but you won’t because it’s usually windy and blizzard,'” said White. “It was just wonderful. I mean, it wasn’t warm, but it’s like Wyoming, as soon as the sun comes out, it warms up right away. We all wanted to hang out longer, but they won’t let you.
Down is harder
After almost an hour on top, the group still had seven miles to go down before finally stopping for lunch. They all collapsed and rested for a few hours before traveling another two hours down the mountain to their final camp. The descent was the worst part of the trip because the ground kept sliding beneath them.
“I started off with energy because I knew we hit our goal and now we were going to fall and I wanted to fall,” Blanchard said. “But not far down the trail, I was pretty tired because we’d been sleep-deprived and marched for 12 hours. it wasn’t easy.”
The last day was another six hours down the steep terrain to reach the bottom.
“It’s steep enough that they don’t take climbers on this route,” White said. “They only use it for carriers to supply groups and get people off. This is not a trail they use to climb.
At the end of the trip, the climbers tipped their guides and porters and also left their hiking boots and other warm gear to wear.
“They’re super hard workers and they’re so kind and supportive,” White said. “They just don’t have access to good equipment. The guy who looks after your tents when it’s 15 degrees is wearing a sweatshirt. They would literally run around us on the trail and then adjust. It’s just very hard work for $10 a day.”
Finding a new adventure
After the climb, White and Blanchard had a few more days to explore the area and went on a two-day safari that included the Big Five – lion, leopard, elephant, African buffalo and rhinoceros.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Africa, not necessarily to climb Kilimanjaro, but for the people, the land and the animals,” Blanchard said.
The two returned to Cody on October 22nd and are enjoying what they’ve been able to achieve before finally deciding what new goal to work towards. They also try to convince their new “flat-earther” friends from their Team G climbing group to take a trip to Wyoming.
“I’m just trying to figure out what I want to do next. I’m not really a mountain climber, so I just have to figure something else out,” White said. “I have a lot of other places I want to go, but I don’t want to climb any more mountains.”