The road to Kilimanjaro

“You should consider coming along,” ended my phone conversation with Alan Arnette a little over a year ago. We had been speaking about his campaign “memories are everything” to raise research funds and awareness for Alzheimer’s disease, a campaign that I had been supporting, and his climb of Kilimanjaro. Alan knew of my interest in tackling bigger mountains. I did not give it much thought at first, Kili was not a mountain that I had been thinking about, but I began to realize that this was a real great opportunity to climb a big mountain, to hang out with Alan and all the while show support for his campaign. I could not resist, and I ended up calling IMG in Ashford Washington and actually speaking with Phil Ershler about the Kili trip. I was pretty much hooked. The safari afterward? I thought at first, Nah, I want to go climb a mountain. That turned out to be silly. All of this was on my mind when the KLM flight landed, on time, at Kilimanjaro (JRO). It was the beginning of a great adventure. I had met Alan in the Amsterdam airport. After landing, I stepped off of the stairs onto the tarmack, and walked, quickly, into passport control to try to get a good spot in line. It’s a bit of a scrum to get the visa, but they were, in fact, pretty efficient. Passport, cash, fingerprints, off you go to get your duffles. By 9:30, I was walking off with Alan to meet our IMG guide Eben Reckford and the rest of the team. It was a beautiful evening, and we were all excited to be driving into the hotel in Moshi. The view of the mountain on a clear day from the town of Moshi is spectacular: