Summit night

Well we are back at camp after a most eventful summit night. 13 of the 16 of the group successfully summited the highest free standing mountain in the world that is kilimanjaro.

Sadly Brian Harris, Tony Woodhams and Antonio duarte ( who chose yesterday not to try because of AMS but is already fully recovered) didn't quite make it.

But the statistics just don't tell the story on this climb. We have had extreme altitude induced nausea, sickness, complete personality and memory loss, dizziness, loss of balance, single eye and both eye temporary blindness and lots more besides!

We "arose" at 10pm Wednesday night local time already dressed in just about every piece of clothing we had with us. It was about minus 6 outside so not too bad. And fortunately no wind or rain. We ate a small biscuit meal, drank plenty of liquid and set off at 11pm.

Our summit attempt comprised a climb of 4,400 feet (so just more than Ben Nevis) but at altitude less than half of that at sea level. For non experienced climbers even putting one foot in front of the other at this low oxygen level is extremely challenging.

The first part of the climb was pretty straight forward but the gradient soon changed to very steep and loose scree underfoot which takes twice the effort. At this juncture our summit guide was, in my opinion, climbing far too fast. More on that later!

After an hour, and just as the gradient turned even steeper at about 15,500 feet our strong willed Irish member Allyson Gormley had a significant bout of altitude sickness and was markedly sick. Of course Allyson being Allyson, immediately she had been sick turned to Jaz (our maximum Adventure leader from the UK who organised the trip with me) and literally bellowed "I'm not stopping you know so let's get going". Now Allyson has pretty much been suffering from various forms of acute mountain sickness (AMS) for the whole trip. The fact that she stubbornly refused to admit defeat at any juncture and just got on with it and reached the summit is a frankly phenomenal achievement. Ireland be proud. Certainly we all are.

Just as Allyson started climbing again, and at approximately 16,000 feet one of the group's strongest climbers in Tony Woodhams who had made absolute mincemeat of every previous day was severely affected by AMS and literally lost his eyesight and had both eye blurring and no proper visibility. When a human body cannot cope with certain levels of altitude it tends to shut down what it regards as non essential functions thereby ensuring continuity of life necessary functions such as the brain, heart etc. In such circumstances the only solution is to descend immediately back to the level where things were fine. This was put into place immediately and Tony descended. He is fine and his eyesight is fully back to normal.

At this point our leader Jaz noticed that we were ascending too fast and made a "line order" change putting first Brian Harris and then myself at the front to ensure we ascended without using up our reserves too quickly. This worked.

Some time later at around 17,000 feet we then witnessed a truly bizarre event. Liam Robb completely lost all sense of where he was, who he was and what he was doing. As a result Liam has no memory whatsoever of the latter stages of the summit climb and the further trek to the summit post. The reason Liam was not asked to descend is that in this kind of AMS induced out-of-body robotic state people often breath fine and from a well being point of view are normal. Thus Liam was allowed to continue to ascend. Liam successfully reached the summit which is an amazing achievement given the fact that he genuinely can't remember a thing! The price Liam did pay is that in doing so and without any person - function to control behaviour, Liam has used up all of - and more besides - his energy reserves and is completely and totally spent asleep in his tent. He will be dine for sure in a few hours.

At about 18,000 feet sadly Brian Harris (who despite being in his 60's had easily dealt with all previous days) had a bout of AMS which brought on dizziness and a loss of balance. Even though we were so close to the top Brian's AMS had to be dealt with and he had to descend. This was so unlucky for Brian as physically he would have got there. Brian is back in camp and gas fully recovered already.

At 5.15am we reached to crater rim (kilimanjaro is an inactive volcano) called Stella Point. This was impressively quick at 6 hours 15 minutes given the stops we had made due to the AMS. What it also confirmed however was that we were indeed climbing a little to fast at the start.

From there, after a 15 minute break we made the further 45 minute journey to Uhuru Peak and the summit. We arrived well before sunrise and were one of the first groups to arrive.

During the latter stages of the climb, Shannon Millar also had AMS and has temporary blindness in one eye. This did not stop her submitting as she was so close. It will like all the others disappear later today when we start to descend to lower altitude and this improvement has already started to be evidenced at base camp.

So, the summiters:

Nigel Howlett, George Rolls, Mike Falconer, Grant Lumley, Dan Radley, the Sportingbet contest winners in Lisa Caswell, Allyson Gormley, Shannon Millar and Mike Wilesmith, Andrew Black, Liam Robb, Jane Kerindi and myself all successfully submitted.

All agreed that it was intensely hard and for most the hardest thing they had ever done. Some of the successful members have had notably tough weeks AMS-wise All have had an immensely challenging week physically and mentally.

There was a lot of emotion at the top with several men in tears!At the top the views were spectacular. We saw the sunrise, the crater, the glaciers, Uhuru peak, and neighbouring mountains in Mawenzi and Muru. Our time at the summit was short as several people had some form of AMS. Dan's AMS induced headache was particularly strong and one doesn't leave that to get worse at 19,341 feet! Again Dan has already fully recoved at base camp.

We are all back at camp now, pretty tired but extremely satisfied: as are our three friends who didn't quite get there but have played such an important part in this adventure.

Ad for me, well I am just made up. I'm made up for two reasons. Firstly, it looks as if we will have raised £120,000 for charity from this adventure which is just magnificent. Secondly, I managed today very well indeed and given that I struggled last time that is down to the understanding and selfish support of my family who have been "kilimajaro'd" for many months now as i have lost weight and got fit..... and also a man called Gareth Hicks who trained me for this and self evidently put me in great shape.

Well I'll sign off now. This will be the last blog posting as later today and tomorrow we will descend and rhen return to our hotels and then home. We all smell, look like death and are so looking forward to a shower, a change of clothes, a proper bed, a beer and then of course back home!!!

In the meantime thanks for reading. On average the blog has been read by 275 different people each day and that's just great. Every member of this very strong and friendly group has put their heart and souls into this week and no doubt will have many tales to tell and photos to share. We will be producing a website with the best of the photos on so if anyone would like a link please email me at nigel@nigelandpaula.com

Cheers

Sent from Nigel Payne's iPhone