Kilimanjaro, Gasp by Gasp

But rope free doesn't mean risk free, and far more people start up Kilimanjaro than make it to the top. There is just about half the oxygen in the air at 20,000 feet as there is at sea level, meaning that simply standing still demands a double exertion of heart and lungs. And no amount of training can protect you from altitude's scariest physiological thunderbolts, which range from headaches and vomiting to edemas that fell youdeadon the side of the mountain as fluid fills your brain or lungs. It really happens.

Outside, Africa rolled by. Lanky Masai herdsmen walked the highway, heavily ornamented and cloaked in red cloth, swinging their ubiquitous staffs. The broad plain, unbroken but for isolated baobab trees, gave no hint we were nearing a mountain almost a mile higher than any peak in the continental United States. We compared gear and training notes. Sometimes we silently gauged one another. "Will he make it?" we wondered. "Will I?"

I contribute my own worst-case anecdote after our first hazy glimpse of Kili's summit glacier, hanging like a puff of cloud impossibly high above the horizon. Last year, a Washington friend of mine named Margaret McDaniel was part of a team laboring toward Kilimanjaro's summit. Already spooked by news of two altitude-related deaths a few days earlier, they found themselves suddenly pinned down by a rock slide. They dodged the boulders, but then came upon a German couple she had befriended at earlier camps. The man was standing dazed on the trail. His wife was lying prone, covered by a jacket, killed by a bouncing rock.

"We went up with a sort of intangible understanding that this could be dangerous," McDaniel says now. "But suddenly it was real. Someone was dead."

We all had stories to swap. But still we came, cheerfully. Just like McDaniel, we had acquainted ourselves with the risks without firmly shaking hands with the central reality that this vacation could kill us.

Most of the people who make a try at Kilimanjaro each year ant-line it up a single rutted, littered track called the Marangu route. They bunch together each night at a few camps crowded with trinket and soft-drink vendors. Instead, we opted for a more remote trail head far out on Kilimanjaro's long western rump. Our route across Kili's largely untrammeled Shira Plateau added two days to our climb and, reportedly, a few crucial degrees of difficulty to our summit attempt. But it gave us extra time to adjust to the altitude and some priceless hours simply to enjoy the unpeopled parts of the mountain.

That's not to say we would be alone. After lurching though the cedar forests that fringe the mountain's shoulders, we pulled up to a trail head crowded with men and boys: our porters. They divided our gear, along with our common tents, food and fuel, into separate 50-pound duffels. Eyeing the load, our head guide Gasper Lekule signed up enough folks to carry it: 22 people to support the six of us over the seven-day climb17 porters, four guides and a cook. The rest set out for their homes to wait for another chance to earn $10 a day on the mountain.

We paying climbers carried nothing but our personal loads of water, trail snacks, rain gear, cameras. Everything else disappeared up the trail each morning balanced on the heads of Tanzanian men we wouldn't see again until we reached camp that evening. Even with full loads, and with climbing togs that often consisted of blown-out tennis shoes and threadbare street clothes, the porters outpaced us by hours.

Two guides remained with us, one at the point setting the requisite slow pace, and a sweep bringing up the rear. It felt liberating to be underway, especially with plenty of air for chatting and laughing. The clouds came, marking the line between bright mornings and rainy afternoons that became a daily pattern. As we gained altitude, the rain thickened to sleet and we watched the clouds climb up the slopes to deliver it. Never had I been so glad of my pricey, extravagant kit: polypropylene underwear, layers of synthetics, a plush sleeping bag. I surrounded myself with unnatural fibers and stayed warm and dry. On Kilimanjaro, good gear tells.

The trail turned slippery and steeper. Charles Moerbeour oldest team member, a soft-spoken retired oilman who now raises longhorns near Austinsuddenly had his feet fly out from under him. He hooked an arm around a small sapling, missing by an elbow a 40-foot slide down the bank. We dusted him off, exchanging a few arched eyebrows. The mountain was tapping us on the shoulder. Kilimanjaro doesn't turn away all its pilgrims, but it demands of them a supplicant's posture: a processional pace, a lowered head. "Pole, pole," the guides say in Swahili. "Slowly, slowly" became our plainchant.

Matthewthe boyish young guide at the head of our linecarried, of all things, our eggs. Deemed too fragile for a porter's pack, he carried four dozen of them stacked in cardboard pallets bound with twine. I watched them, their numbers dwindling after every breakfast. "If he can get a bunch of raw eggs up Kilimanjaro," I thought, "he can deliver six amateur climbers."

Every day we walked and walked and walked, often in rain and snow. The world opened up as we left the trees behind. The Shira Plateau was a long scrubby flat at 12,500 feet that took a day to cross. A stray dog followed us this far, hoping we were one of the poaching parties that sometimes hunt this high. But he gave up when we began to gain altitude in earnest. More of Tanzania spread beneath us, green and utterly separate from the chilly, airless world that drew us ever upward. We rose above even the bizarre shrubs that cling to Kili's middle ranges. Now only rocks brushed our boots. One morning, we had to wait for the sun to strike the towering Barranco Wall to burn off enough ice for us to scramble up the rock cracks in safety.