10 Years From Idea to Adventure That Started It All: Climbing Kilimanjaro
Kim HarrisonOne Tuesday morning before work, minutes before rushing out the door to catch the Tube, I clicked ‘pay’ on my climb to Kilimanjaro.
After travelling post-uni, I had paused the adventures and I fell into London life. I started building a career, I had rent to pay, friends to see, and my world quickly filled up. Adventure slowly faded into ‘one day’, but I think it was always there in the background, waiting for the right moment to become loud.
Returning from travelling at 22 years old, I still had the travel bug and I'm not sure who brought it up first, but climbing Kilimanjaro was a topic of conversation.
Travel books were purchased (we had the internet but it wasn’t the overwhelming wealth of information it is now. Believe it or not, we travelled without iPhones, it was 2008!). But the Kilimanjaro book sat on the bookshelf for the next ten years. It moved from flat to flat as I lived in London and was ignored.
Until that one Tuesday morning, ten years later, when I booked it.
What gave me the push?
I didn’t know it at the time but I was nearing burnout. Something I’m sure is a familiar feeling for some. I was starting to think there should be more to life than spending hours on the Tube.
People at work would celebrate 5 years, 10 years at the company and I have to admit that this made me a little sad. Being in the same workplace for 10 years was not a milestone I wanted to achieve.
I think that’s when the adventure idea started to creep back to the front of my mind.
So Kilimanjaro got booked. I don’t know the exact trigger for booking but I’m glad I did. I had no idea if this would be the answer to my burnout or if I would even like it, but what I know now is that taking that leap is part of the adventure, and you will always have great stories to tell.
The next steps was to prepare for the trip. Researching gear, long training walks. I already had the walking boots and I started cautiously balancing buying the right gear and not spending a fortune on one trip when I may not even have liked it.
I didn’t buy a fancy down jacket or other expensive gear. I just used layers of hoodies from Primark and an old backpack, which seems crazy now as I own at least two down jackets and three proper hiking backpacks, but the gear I had did the job at the time.
I had no idea what I was doing but the important thing is that I did it.
Friends and family knew I was going but I didn’t tell work as I didn’t want too many opinions from other people.
When I did eventually mention it to colleagues, it was met with, ‘Oh, my friend did that but didn’t make it to the summit. She got sick... but I’m sure you will be fine.’
Unfortunately, when you tell some people you're doing something big, someone will often tell you why it won't work. It has taken me years to ignore these comments, but that’s a topic for another blog.
I had the new(ish) gear, I had done some training, and was on a plane to Kilimanjaro.
Trying something completely outside my comfort zone, having no idea if I had done enough training, and about to meet a group of strangers to hike with for eight days.
What could go wrong?
Well, the first night, chatting about altitude sickness and whether to take medicine or not, put some doubts in my mind.
I had done my research and decided not to use it, but on that first night I started to get nervous that I had made the wrong decision and had to give myself a talking to that it was too late now and this was all learning.
Fast forward a few years and a few more trips to altitude, I never had to take anything for altitude, but I didn’t know that then.
It was a tough few days of climbing, slowly getting closer to the summit but at the same time looking up and the summit looked like it wasn’t getting any closer.
On the summit push all I did for hour was watch my feet highlighted by my head torch as we waited for the sunrise. Just one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.
(Photo: The sunrise on the way to the summit)
But my old backpack held up, my layers of clothes kept me warm, and I pushed slowly towards the summit with new friends.
We started at midnight, summited at 8am, and finally, after 14 hours of walking, got back to camp, finishing our summit push day.
I don’t think I really registered a feeling at the summit. For me, it sank in afterwards.
A real - ‘I can’t believe I did that.’
When you start to think about the hours and hours of walking, it seems impossible, but we did it.
The feeling triggered something as this was the start of my adventure thinking, which got a boost when I got back to work and all of my projects were handed back to me. The sense of ‘I want to do more than this’ really skyrocketed.
Kilimanjaro was my "Start the Journey" moment.
I didn’t know what I was starting, but I knew I had to start.
This climb helped me take the leap to working with a charity in Nepal for three months, a couple of hikes to Everest Base Camp, a move to New Zealand for a year, and climbing a 6,400m mountain, and eventually finding my way back to my first hobby, swimming.
Not all big adventures are summits.
Starting Dawn Journeys is a mountain for me. This has taken five years from idea to a live website, but the important thing is that I started (and restarted a couple of times).
The mountain wasn't really the adventure. It was the decision to stop waiting for one day.
What's been sitting on your bookshelf for ten years?
(Photo: The book that was ignored and memories of the climb)
