<\/p>\n

You’ve drained the bank account reserving your guide and porters, and have now flown across the world to climb\u00a0one of the world’s most beautiful mountains.\u00a0From the\u00a0flat African Savannah, sprinkled with elephant and\u00a0lions,\u00a0rises Mt. Kilimanjaro.\u00a0You’ve read\u00a0about the 60% chance you won’t make it up, and about the percentage of people that end up never leaving the mountain. You wonder to yourself,\u00a0“which\u00a0statistic will I\u00a0fall into?”<\/p>\n

At least that is the sentiment expressed in a recent Times <\/em>article about one fateful climb up Africa’s tallest peak<\/a>.\u00a0Reading\u00a0abut a climb bordering on the\u00a0disastrous, makes you think, “Why?”<\/p>\n

I live\u00a0in the mountains and often climb them, so I may be partial.\u00a0It’s fun,\u00a0provides perspective, and it is challenging. It makes me appreciate my self, surroundings, and\u00a0the relationship between\u00a0the two. I do, however,\u00a0rarely put myself\u00a0on mountains that put me in a life or death situation. There is an assumed risk in any adventure pursuit, but that risk rises dramatically when you are talking about climbing big mountains — and\u00a0Kilimanjaro is a Big — with a capital “B” — mountain.<\/p>\n

The precautions and awareness you need on a behemoth like “Kili” is amazing. Some of those precautions the article’s guide decided to throw out the window. The result:<\/p>\n

Only at dawn do we notice that Roy is not carrying his backpack. He is coughing green slime into a handkerchief . . . Six hours later the rescue party appears over the crater rim. Roy is in terrible shape, coughing up frothy pink blood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the end, 3 of the 27 original climbers reach the summit, and\u00a0green-turned-frothy-pink descriptions of bodily fluids is enough to wonder WTF?\u00a0Sir Edmond Hillary’s famous quote, “Because they’re there,” doesn’t well enough explain\u00a0why we\u00a0climb mountains. Perhaps it is spiting an irresponsible guide en route to Kili’s summit that provides better clarity:<\/p>\n

it is a moment of almost divine mystery and beauty. The banks of cloud far below, the melting glaciers. This is why we push boundaries \u2014 to touch the sky, to understand what the edge of our existence looks like.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ve drained the bank account reserving your guide and porters, and have now flown across the world to climb\u00a0one of the world’s most beautiful mountains.\u00a0From the\u00a0flat African Savannah, sprinkled with elephant and\u00a0lions,\u00a0rises Mt. Kilimanjaro.\u00a0You’ve read\u00a0about the 60% chance you won’t make it up, and about the percentage of people that end up never leaving the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2569,1,2576,2562],"tags":[3277,1634,307,1633,1635],"yoast_head":"\n