Recently I had the opportunity to take some time off from BRIDGE Lacrosse to go with my dad and some of our friends to climb the one of the worlds tallest mountains, Kilimanjaro. David let me take two weeks off to travel to Tanzania to climb. The climb was probably the hardest, yet most fun thing I have ever done for many reasons.
First off before climbing I got the great opportunity to go on safari at Ngorongoro Crater which is the crater left over by a volcano which erupted thousands of years ago and left a 300 square km area that has almost every type of biome. This allows almost every African animal to live inside this crater and be seen, accept giraffes due to the steep crater walls that their legs cant handle. If you spun around you could see a swamp with hippos on one side, a savannah with lions and wildebeests, and a small forest with elephants. I had never seen a place like this and this was an amazing start to my trip.
After the safari at the crater we then headed to Moshi, Tanzania to meet with our climbing group, which consists of family friends from South Africa, and then head to the mountain. Our climb took 6 days and followed the Marangu Route and concluded with a 31 hour climb to the summit at over 19,000 feet. The summit climb was probably the hardest thing I have ever done because the temperature was -7 degrees Fahrenheit and the altitude was over 18,000 feet higher than Dallas is at which has massive effects on the human body. Altitude sickness did not effect me as badly as some others in our group but it did take its toll. We all made it to the edge of the Kilimanjaro crater which is called Gilmans Point but one of the guys in group had to turn back due to altitude sickness and was the only one not to make it to the tallest point in Africa, Uhuru Peak.
Climbing Kilimanjaro was by far the most amazing opportunity I have ever had and I thank David for giving me the time off from work to take climb. I learned so much about myself on the journey and got to see how I far I could actually push myself. I plan on returning sometime in the future with some friends and family.
BRIDGE Intern, Drew Carey, headed to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro with his BRIDGE t-shirt in hand.