An Ice Cube on the Moon

Climbing Mt Kilimanjaro

I’ve never been so cold; walking at anything more than a snail’s pace is physically impossible; the air around me stinks of sulphur, and my girlfriend has just collapsed from exhaustion. Welcome to the roof of Africa, the top of Mt Kilimanjaro. To be honest, we’re not quite at the very top yet: we’re inside the volcanic crater, a few hundred metres below the summit at an altitude of 5600m. Although we’re in what is colloquially known as the ‘death zone’, the region at which it is physically impossible for the human body to adapt to the lack of oxygen, we’ll be spending the night here. So far we’ve been on the mountain for seven days, and today has been by far the hardest. The final climb up into the crater was tortuous: an unrelenting slog up precipitous slopes in sub-zero conditions. But we’re almost there now. Tomorrow we’ll walk uphill for a couple of hours to reach the summit before beginning our descent. I can’t wait to get back down.

It may not sound pleasant up here, and in many ways it isn’t, but for all the hardships we’re currently enduring, I’m still glad we opted to spend the night here. It’s like no place I’ve ever known, no place I’ve ever imagined. It’s hard to conceive of an environment that could be less conducive to life; it’s so stark and so desolate. But with that starkness and desolation comes an awe-inspiring beauty. Within the main crater stands a smaller crater, the Reusch Crater, on the rim of which we are now standing. In the centre of this crater is the ash pit, the still smouldering evidence of Kilimanjaro’s volcanic status: a circular hole, grey and ashen at the edge like the remnants of some gigantic barbecue, funnelling down to blackness of an unknown depth at its centre. The air around here is filled with the smell of sulphur and the ground is littered with bright yellow nuggets of the same. With absolutely no shelter, a bitterly cold wind seems to have risen from nowhere, whipping across the crater; it’s so cold that just taking off your gloves for a few seconds leaves your hands numb.

Away from the Reusch Crater and the ash pit, the rest of the outer crater is completely barren, a featureless plain of grey dust and small shards of loose rock that extends to the crater rim, completely and utterly barren. It could easily be the surface of the moon. Or at least, it could easily be the surface of the moon if it were not for one small detail. In the middle of this grey monotony stands a huge glacier, almost completely cubic in shape, its edges rising vertically from the crater floor. It looks as though somebody has come along and gently placed a giant ice cube on the top of the mountain. It seems so completely out of place that you cannot help but stop and stare; the shining brilliance of the glacier stands in luminous contrast to the black volcanic rock of its surroundings. Above the glacier hangs a pure blue sky, clouds only visible if you look over the rim of the crater, where they form a fluffy sea around the base of the mountain. Later, when dusk falls, we will look over the crater rim and watch the sun setting on the distant horizon, something that will provide me with another new experience: I don’t think I have ever before looked down on the sun.

And then, first thing in the morning, we’ll be gone again, leaving behind the glacier, the ash pit and the sulphur. Will I be sad? No: this is not a place intended for people and I’ll be much happier when we get back down the mountain. But I will definitely be glad we stopped by.

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