Diary excerpt

We got woken up at 11:30pm last night. Everyone was quite anxious. I couldn’t believe I would be going to the top of Africa that night…We got out of the tents to find the weather, once again was not our side; it was snowing. But that didn’t dampen us. I had 6 layers on my top half and 4 on my bottom half, Dad the same; it was so freezing. I’ve never been so cold in my life.

We started trekking up the mountain which was possibly the most painful thing I’ve ever done. Walking at a snail pace is the only way to go as the hills are so steep, you can’t go any faster. It is one step at a time. After many short rests (you can’t rest long as you get too cold and need to keep moving) we stopped for a bit longer at around 3am. Dad was hating it. After trying to convince him to carry on, he wouldn’t budge and said, “I’m cold, I’m tired and I’m sore!” He wanted to go down and no one was going to tell him otherwise. So he started the trek back down to summit camp while Dave and I carried on. It just got colder and harder. I think both, Dave and I will never, ever forget the hill up to Stella point. I can’t explain it; a never ending path that just seemed to get steeper. The only thing keeping me going was seeing people’s head torches getting closer at the top and knowing we were almost there. We stopped and had some hot Milo in a cave close to the top; just what we needed. Now we had a bit more energy and were ready to get to Uhuru peak. Conquering Stella  point felt amazing and knowing we only had to go up a few hundred more metres was even better.

We started walking again after a quick rest at Stella point and the sun was now slowly starting to come up. I’ll never forget the sight I saw next; seeing the Uhuru peak sign for the first time, from a distance. It was completely surreal. After seeing it a million times on the internet, now it was in front of me in person. The colours were unbelievable. On one side of the mountain the sun was rising; so there was purples, pinks, oranges, and blues, while on the other side the moon was still up, so colours of deep purple and dark blue flooded the snow and sky. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Dave and I reached the top of Africa at 6:20am on 3 March 2010.

I made it.