Celine Dion, The summit of Mt Meru 4566m & 95 Kilimanjaro summits!

Posted on August 28, 2010

Firstly – Meru – what an amazing mountain! It has to be one of the best mountains I have ever climbed! For 2 days you climb up though Arusha National Park, so in theory at any minute Mr Giraffe or Mr Elephant can pop out of the jungle and say hello. Because of this every team is accompanied by an armed ranger! Sadly as everyone knows almost all animals are more scared of you and therefore run a mile when they hear you, and when you have ears as big as an elephant it’s no wonder we didn’t see any!

So for 2 days you trek up through beautiful forest and jungles, as you gain altitude from 2500 – 3500 the forest becomes much wetter and turns more jungley. Huge trees tower over you and lichens droops down from the branches. We came across lots of groups on monkeys swinging through the trees and a few small antelope type animals zipping across the path  – it was like a walking safari for 2 days!

So Celine Dione – it seems that she is alive and kicking over here! When we arrived in to camp after the first day I noticed about 6 or so rangers sitting around drinking tea and laughing with Celine Dion blasting out! Most of them new the words to the chorus and when i realised that i could remember most of the words to the song i new that i was sad! Again – when we rocked into camp 2 (high camp) during the afternoon the rangers and some porters/cooks from other groups were sitting around relaxing, enjoying the beautiful scenery and of course…listening to some Celine Dion!

Our team was just Nelson, Aristide and myself and it was great to spend some time with them. Nelson and I talked about the kili trips in detail ironing out any options. Nelson is a really great guy, he is now the oldest (at 34) and he most experience guide working for Ahsante with around 95 summits to his name and an incredible success rate. Like most guides he has worked his way up the ladder from a porter and holds the upmost respect from his porter team.

I had never met Aristide before this trip but he has fast become a good friend. He is such a nice guy and we spent a lot of time chatting about all sorts of thing – but mainly women! I insisted that we ate together and after saying that he cannot i said i would eat in the kitchen then! So we enjoyed our dinners together and much to the amazement of the other cooks and porters i happily helped Aristide wash up and tidy a bit. Sadly there seems to be the mentality of us and them, and that we are not the same and even for me to eat with him made him very happy.

SO the summit of Meru – we set off at 02:30 and made really good progress up to Rhino point at 3800m, from here you join the ridge and tick off false summit after false summit as you go round the creator rim. There are some small sections of scrambling and some ridges to pass and off to the left the whole way around the mountain disappears for early 2000m! There was a good wind wipping arcoss the ridge and over the main summit the first beginnings of a lenticular cloud were forming indicating strong winds. (NB: Yesterday the winds had picked up considerable and whilst relaxing at high amp in the afternoon the whole upper part of Meru was engulfed in a large lenticular). We stopped occasionally for a drink but generally moved at a good speed as the winds were quite cold.

We arrived on the summit at 6:30 stayed for 10 minutes and began out decent. We made it back to high camp in just over an hour, camp one 1 ½ hours after that and to the park gate in a further 1 ½ hours. Nelson was happy to move so fast as most of the time he guides large groups that move very slowly, and we did move very fast!

On the way up at around 5:30 the sunrise that I remembered so well from the summit of Kilimanjaro last year came up again. The beautiful glow of reds and oranges and light blues rise gently across the horizon – the only blip on the skyline was the mighty Kilimanjaro standing tall nearly 2000m above us, but a long way away. Looking down on the clouds below these moments are the ones to remember and reason i keep coming back for more.

The expedition for team 1 starts this evening when they land at 20:25. Tomorrow we have a day of briefings and packing and on Monday we set foot on to Kilimanjaro….

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