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In every inspiring natural creation there is a realism that speaks to you. In every moment on a mountain you find it more and more...

KILIMANJARO, TANZANIA

Dave
2004-02-22 13:14:18

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First Aid Kit

Advil (great for the headaches)

A prescription of Codeine and Tylenol combination (this will help all ailments – up to a point!)
Diamox assuming you have tested it on your self previously and you know you are not allergic to it
Chapstick

Razor

Band-Aids

Immodium

Pepto Bismol

Cough Drops

Gauze

Moleskin

Superglue

Rubber bands

Mountain Madness guides its clients on the Shira Plateau or the Fisher route. Dave climbed in December/January 1999-2000. The route he chose had about 80 climbers from various companies. To put this into perspective the other side of the mountain (which included the other routes) had 2000 people attempting the summit. Usually the client/guide-porter-cooks ratio is about 4 to 1. This means that for 2000 clients there were 8000 guides, cooks and porters. In summary, there were about 10,000 people on the popular side of the mountain, while on the Shira Plateau route there were about 320 people.

Our base camp was located around 5000 feet. We spent one night here. We drove into the camp from Arusha late at night. This camp was about 4.5 hours from downtown Arusha. Our guide drove us in large land rovers. Once off of the pavement about 1 hour outside of Arusha we drove on dirt roads to the camp. At one point we drove through deep puddles and muddy roads. At one point we were about to drive through what looked to be a very deep muddy river with steep banks on both sides, but Roger (probably short for something much less palatable to the western tongue) floored it and fortunately we splashed our way through without becoming stuck. Upon arriving in camp we promptly were treated to a warm meal and the immediately after fell into a deep sleep.

We had an entire rest day where we took some ...