Travel Confession: I Climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and Summiting Was Not the Most Important Part

I repeated the quotes over and over in my head as I inched forward as if in molasses. At 19,000 ft., with no viable oxygen source, you simply have to will yourself to take another step. I was part of a slowly inching train, bodies stepping forward in quiet, deliberate synchronization and bundled in pillowy balloons of polar fleece and Gore-Tex. Our head guides, Kane and William, steadily pushed ahead in simple layered sweaters. They'd look back every few moments with concern in their eyes. No "Ayos!" echoed through the deep mountain crevasses today. Our single shared determination left no room for words. We'd made it to the morning of the summit, and no one -- burning faces, churning insides and sure delirium aside -- was turning back now.

Every hour or so, as we made our way slowly -- fighting our personal demons with the help of near-frozen iPods or the ABCs -- one of us would stop to mutter some encouragement. "Keep going guys; we can make it."

I kept a fixed eye on my father. All I could imagine was returning home without him, that if pulmonary edema were to strike, he'd never say so, and I'd be responsible. "Promise you'll tell me," I'd manage to push the whisper out. "Promise," he'd heave.

The moment we finally hit the elevation sign is a beautiful blur. I can still hear Kane's happy voice proclaiming to our awestruck team: "Welcome to my head office." I remember looking over the heavens and mustering enough strength to take a jump with my sister Sam. We hadn't just hit 19,331 ft.; we'd made it to 19,332. We were tired and aching, and alive. We'd done it. After a year of planning and worrying and hoping, we'd made it to Uhuru Peak. "Freedom Peak" was ours.

I felt tremendously accomplished but, in essence, less transformed than I had imagined. My body was near broken, my temperature too low. I had to lie down.

The night after summit, we slept at 18,000-plus ft., next to icy blue glaciers. My sister and I couldn't leave the confines of our tent. I could hear the ice cracking on its surface as we lay inside, clinging to each other for warmth. Our porters brought us hot soup, though we could barely lift our heads to drink it.

The next morning, we set out on the grueling nine-hour trek down the front of the mountain. There's an old adage about getting down: You forget that whole half of the equation on the way up. After 30 minutes of "skiing" down the craggy surface (the mountain's face is dusty and cratered and takes unkindly to anything but sliding movement), the notorious elevation headache hit me like an anvil to the head. I'd never imagined a sheer lack of oxygen could be so excruciating. I'd made it eight days without a single tear, without the expected bathroom problems and terrible reactions to medication. On the ninth day, I wept.

The rock-and-a-hard-place analogy that accompanied the agony was not beyond me. It would get better only if I kept going. I needed more oxygen, but to get more oxygen, I needed to get down. I looked to my father and sister and tried to describe the pain. I was frustrated by my sheer failure to express that something was really wrong and that I was in much worse shape than I appeared to be. Words take work at that height, and I'd lost all sense of relatability to my family and fellow hikers. They became blurry figures drifting down the mountain, high from the summit, each in his own state of elevated consciousness. I felt completely isolated in my agony.

Our climbing team felt a team no longer, but a group of individuals who'd hit their goal already. I hid my teary eyes under oversize glasses. My lip quivered, and my ears throbbed against the cold air. "You'll be fine when we get down farther," a fellow climber would muffle through cupped, gloved palms. Sadder news has never been delivered at 18,000 ft. Despite my family members' attempts to relate, I somehow needed something more.

As tears streamed down my ice-scarred cheeks, our guide William -- an impoverished Tanzanian who'd led us up the mountain -- came over. He took two decanters of water from his own pack and encouraged me to drink from them. I guzzled the water as he stood with me. "You will feel much better, baby," he whispered in his deep, melodic voice. He flashed a knowing smile as he peeled my 30-lb. pack from my caved shoulders.

Then he simply walked with me. He was by my side, step by step, looking over and whispering small tokens of encouragement. He knew the mountain and -- without ever saying so -- assured me that I'd be just fine to tell its story. Thousands of feet in the air, in what felt like Mordor, there was simply no choice but to keep going and to get down. William got me to grounded footing.

After descending for an hour or two --- which felt like an eternity -- the pain subsided. William reluctantly returned my pack upon my insistence. "Pole, pole, slowly, slowly," he whispered. For the first time on the trek, I was flooded with emotion. I was humbled to have received the refuge I so deeply needed in the arms of someone who'd never live to see the privileges and luxuries I'd known.
At base camp, I was greeted with a giant grin by our videographer, Good Luck. He'd grown up in a poor farming family and had been selected to attend a charity school that taught basic video skills and enabled students to earn a wage by documenting Safari-sponsored trips. He would wake us in the morning with the sweetest requests to shoot an interview on what appeared to be an '80s toy camera.

The Tanzanian people live incredibly impoverished lives; our guides, who made about $10 a day, were by far the highest earners in the region. Yet, in spite of their great economic hardships (a disparity of which they are well aware), they were the most joyous people I'd ever encountered.

They'd traveled the mountains more times than they could count on their weathered hands. Each time, carrying 60 lbs. jugs of water and food or tents on their crooked backs. Our porters wore tattered, brightly colored t-shirts, of which they only owned one or two, and if lucky, a fleece. They skipped ahead of their well-fed, well-dressed campers singing "Jambo!" and "Asante Sana." At night, while we lay in our tents wishing for working toilets and Evian bottles, they'd stay awake by candle light sharing ancient stories. They needed nothing but the mountain itself, and the ability to share its majesty with those brave enough to come see it. In fact, in giving joy and encouragement to others, they'd seemed to forget about the need to receive the creature comforts we were appalled to discover they'd never have.

After that day, I lost all reluctance to hand out extra Diomox and gladly hung in the back of in the line for warm water. I sat with quite confidence instead of boasting of my moment at the top. I learned the source of Uhuru through befriending the people who truly knew its meaning.

I've stored my pack and still don't have the heart to remove its contents. Maybe I'll frame the quotes I carried and add one that trumps the rest. "I'll give up greed for freedom." As a beautiful writer once explained, it's the most important deal you can make with the universe.

Upholding that deal is an uphill battle every day. And, as I'm learning, well worth every step.

Destination: Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, Africa
Month: August, a great month for climbing
Time Spent: 9 day trek up the mountain
How I Got Around: By foot. I had the lost toenails to prove it!
Best Food: Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches made us feel at home
Biggest Regret: Not packing more Nalgene Bottles. The tubes on Camelbacks freeze at high altitude.
Memorable Moment: Accidentally spilling the Tupperware containing my urine on my sister's sleeping bag in our tent at night.
Best Drink: An icy, cold Kilimanjaro beer the night we descended to base camp
Must-Pack Item: People magazine. I saved it until the fifth night when I thought I was going to go crazy.
Required Watching: An authentic Kilimanjaro sunrise coming over the plains.