Pole, Pole! We Summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in Our 60s

It was the anniversary of our first date—my wife Jutta and I—and we were on a flight from Frankfurt to Kilimanjaro International Airport.

Our destination: Mt. Kilimanjaro. We’re in our 60s, and in two weeks, we were planning to summit the nearly 20,000-foot volcano.

Our journey started nine months earlier, while we were planning our summer itinerary. We’d recently retired, and Jutta mentioned that climbing “Kili” was a lifelong dream of hers. We’d never be younger than we were this year, she said. So why not?

I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea. But 10 years earlier, I’d been to Tanzania on a magical photo safari, so I offered a compromise. If Jutta would add a safari to the itinerary, I’d climb Kili with her.

By January, we’d booked our climb for September with tour operator African Scenic Safaris.

Their pricing runs from $2,500 to $3,500 per person and includes everything but flights, equipment rentals, and gratuity.

With their guidance, we opted for an eight-day private tour on the Lemosho route, which spans 45 miles and allows plenty of time to acclimatize to the altitude.

Our tour operator provided a recommended packing list: shirts and pants for warm, cold, and rainy conditions, day packs, water bladders, hats and gloves, and a head torch, as well as items we could rent on-site like sleeping bags and an extra warm parka for summit day.

Environeers, an outfitter a mile from our winter home in Florida, turned out to be an unexpected resource.

Sheila, one of the owners, had summited Mt. Kilimanjaro on the same route we were taking. She got us confidently outfitted, and made the excellent recommendation of Diamox to prevent high-altitude sickness.

By the end of the month, we had booked our flights and had equipment on hand.

We began on stage two: our conditioning program and medical checks to make sure we were physically ready. We planned to work out every day with a focus on cardio and resistance training. Then we’d fly to our summer home in Germany, where we’d join a health club and continue training.

Add to that a week hiking the Alps near Berchtesgaden to test our conditioning and equipment, and we’d be ready for our trek in early September.

But even the best-laid plans go awry.

Bumps in the Road to Mt. Kili

During our medical checks, I learned that my hemoglobin levels were slowly dropping. Doctors thought the result might signal internal bleeding. We were set to leave for Germany in mid-May, and follow-up testing wouldn’t be available until a few weeks before our flight. In the meantime, I improved my diet, and finally got the all-clear a week before takeoff.

Then, in June, my normally sure-footed wife had a nasty fall on a trip to Greece.

Our trips to the gym were replaced with visits to medical specialists… and “emotional rehab” visits to the Biergarten. We hiked Berchtesgaden as planned in July, but the four-hour hike became a 10-hour ordeal. Jutta received osteopathic treatment for her muscle trauma and a flare-up of plantar fasciitis; even getting out of bed and walking was painful.

It wasn’t until the week we were scheduled to leave for Africa that Jutta said what we’d been waiting to hear: “I’m pain-free.”

“We’re Here to Make Your Dream Come True”

On September 8, we boarded our non-stop flight from Frankfurt to Tanzania. Our tour operator had organized everything; drivers waited for us at each stop along the way. Our driver took us from the airport to the Chanya Lodge in Moshi, about an hour away.

It seemed that every guest at the lodge was either coming back from the trek, or about to start their journey. The excitement was palpable.

We met our guide, Mary, the same afternoon we arrived.

She was the first female lead guide on Mt. Kilimanjaro. In her time leading tours, she’d guided a blind woman, a man paralyzed on one side of his body, and an 83-year-old to the summit.

Her refrain: “This is your dream. We’re here to make your dream come true.”

She and the owner of the tour operation helped us rent all the items needed for the tour that we didn’t already have: down parkas for summit night (the coldest part of the journey), gaiters, and sleeping bags.

Our one splurge: a private toilet. We learned that the campsite bathroom facilities were often far away and, well, rugged (to put it generously). The private toilet turned out to be an excellent—if unexpected—use of $200.

The next day we were driven several hours to the Lemosho Gate. It’s one of the seven gates to Kilimanjaro National Park and stands at an elevation of almost 8,000 feet. Here, our guides registered our party, shuffled pack contents to balance the loads, and had our bags, which the porter would carry, weighed.

Our operator prioritizes our porter’s safety—it’s one of the reasons we chose this company—and limits the weight they carry to 44lbs per trekker.

From Lemosho Gate, we strolled through a lush rainforest. Monkeys chattered as we made the three-hour trek to our first campsite, Big Tree Camp.

The weather was in the mid-70s F—no wind, no rain. The incline was gentle. If only the rest of the trek could have been so easy.

We’d physically prepared to hike… but we hadn’t mentally prepped to camp. We had to adjust to sleeping on thin mattress pads in a two-person tent. Well, actually, we never really adjusted to it—just accepted that it was part of the adventure.

Our “living quarters” for the journey consisted of our tent, a private toilet, and a dining tent with two chairs and a table. The two guides had a tent like ours, but the 12 porters were jammed in two tents only slightly larger than ours. Each morning and evening, we were given a bowl of warm water to cleanse ourselves with, in a routine called “wash-wash.”

But after seeing how far the porters had to carry water from stream to campsite, we shared a bowl and dropped our water usage in half.

Our chef, Shabani, cooked up delicious hot meals on a propane burner, since a typical camping stove won’t boil water at such high altitudes. We were served with coffee, tea, or hot water to help keep our core body temperature up. Breakfasts consisted of oatmeal, pancakes, and eggs, and dinners were soup, pasta, and meat and veggies. After a long hike, we even had popcorn to celebrate.

It wasn’t until we reached the second campsite that Mary introduced us to the guides and porters, or, as she called them, “the dream team.” They sang to us in Swahili… though all I understood was “Kilimanjaro” and “Hakuna matata,” or “no worries.”

And no, they hadn’t seen The Lion King.

Pole, pole (pronounced like “holy”) became the refrain that echoed through our minds as we clambered, crawled, and balanced our way upward. It’s Swahili for “slowly, slowly,” and Mary repeated it, as did the trekkers we encountered on our way up. As she said, a slow climb is the best way to avoid burnout on the way.

The other phrase we often heard: the cheerful greeting of Jambo, jambo!

Once we passed the troposphere at 8,000 feet, we were rewarded with the glorious sight of blue skies above us and clouds below, Mt. Arusha poking through. We could see Kili’s summit… and the cool nights, free of ambient light, were a stargazer’s dream.

Moonwalking to the Summit

Our most challenging day started under partly cloudy skies; as we learned, clouds can rise with heat and even engulf the summit. We were to leave Shira II Camp at 12,500 feet, climb to almost 15,000 feet to the Lava Tower, and then descend to Barranco Camp at 12,650 feet.

We’d never climbed to 15,000 ft before, and this was going to be a seven- to eight-hour trek.

The longer we walked, the more clouds rose up around us, finally swallowing us in a foggy mist. We pressed ahead to stay on pace, but soon the thin mist turned into a gentle rain. By the time we put our rain clothes on, we were soaked to the bone and still an hour away from Lava Tower.

One hour turned to three as we pushed through rain and fog and dust turned to mud. I wiped my glasses constantly, and Jutta and I shivered uncontrollably. Several times, I nearly fell. Though we’d watched plenty of videos to get ready for the hike, nothing had prepared us for this.

By the time we reached the Barranco campsite, we were wet, cold, and exhausted. Summit day was only three days away, and if we didn’t get our clothes dry, we would literally be freezing on our final ascent.

This was the emotional low point of our journey. But fortunately, our team knew what to do.

Our concierge porter, Samson, filled our Nalgene bottles with hot water and advised us to put them at the bottom of our sleeping bags to keep our feet warm. (Nothing brightens the mood like warm feet on a cold night.)

Samson’s unexpected graciousness brought a tear to Jutta’s eye, and we were warmed by an overwhelming sense of gratitude to our dream team.

Mary radioed ahead to the next day’s campsite, Karranga, and learned it would be sunny and warm.

She sent out porter ahead to reserve a tent space there, and he brought along our wet clothes, laying them out so the sun could dry them by the time we arrived later that day.

After six days of climbing, we felt like we were walking on the moon. The trails of dust were flat and gray, a sea of dust interrupted only by ridges of volcanic rock. We’d reached Barafu Base Camp (15,100 feet), and while we didn’t show debilitating signs of altitude sickness, we were losing our appetite and sleeping poorly on our thin mattresses.

But whatever exhaustion we felt was overshadowed by our excitement. This was our last stop before the summit.

We were awakened near midnight by Samson’s now-familiar voice for a light meal of steaming oatmeal and a final check of our cold-weather gear.

Jutta was uneasy as she laced up her boots. Samson noticed. “What’s the matter, Queenie?” he asked. She’d earned the nickname after a week on the trail together, and she admitted she was scared she wouldn’t be able to make the summit.

“Don’t be scared, Queenie,” Samson said. “Hakuna matata.” His deep, calming voice gave her the reassurance she needed.

By midnight, we were on the trail, our head torches and eyes focused on the trudging feet of the person in front of us. I was strongly tempted to look up and see where the long line of head torches stopped—in hopes of an early summit—but knew it was best to keep our gaze down and focus on moving ahead.

By early morning, the sun made its presence known. The sky lightened, tinged with shades of red and orange. As one of the slower groups, this meant we were nearing the summit. The early hikers had already reached it, and were watching the sunrise from the rim of Kilimanjaro’s crater.

Slowly, slowly, step by step. We pushed on… until we, too, saw the summit’s rim.

The first wave of summiteers was already starting down the mountain, elated… and exhausted. Among them, I saw my new friend Marco, who I’d first met at the Karranga campsite two days before. He’d traveled from Chile to climb Mt. Kili with his sons. At only 55, he considers me a hero for attempting this at 69 years old.

But I consider my wife to be the real hero, who for most of the summer couldn’t walk without severe leg and foot pain. And yet she was by my side as we climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro together. And here we were, on the doorstep of achieving it.

After eight hours of walking, we reached Stella Point at a whopping 18,885 feet. Our fingers and water bottles were frozen, and our legs exhausted. “Is this good enough?” we asked Mary. But she, ever the wise guide, pointed ahead to the true summit.

“You’ve worked very hard, but this isn’t your dream,” she said. “That is.”

She was right. This had started as Jutta’s dream, but it had become my dream, too. Pole, pole, we pushed ahead to the summit: Uhuru Peak.

We could see how far we’d come—and what an accomplishment we’d made. We could see the earth’s curvature from this high altitude and, it seemed, the entirety of Tanzania.

I’m an avid traveler and photographer, but the photo we snapped at the summit—of a very happy and very exhausted couple achieving a dream together—is the one I’m most proud of.

I’m writing this a month after our summit day, and even now, we have a hard time believing we summited Mt. Kilimanjaro—despite the commemorative plaques hung our wall, a parting gift from Mary. We’ve gained an unshakeable confidence in this new phase of our lives… and it’s something we’ll both continue to relish as we tackle new dreams.

As our son Kevin told us: “You conquered fear, doubt, and fatigue. Now that strength is with you forever.

“You’re badasses.”