CHARITY FUNDRAISER – MOUNT KILIMANJARO

In August 2017 I raised £7129.45 for the Children’s Cancer wards by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. This was in no way an easy task (resulting in missing toenails, breathing difficulties and extreme exhaustion.) The food was awful, the ground was rough to sleep on but it was all worth it in the end. Below are some pictures from my adventure.

Thank you to all who supported me in this – Gary Earp.

Having left Heathrow and having a stopover at Addis Ababa we finally arrived in Tanzania

This was our final bit of luxury of a 1 night sleep in a proper bed

Paul my travelling companion and I sat at the Machame Gate. This is the gate to the national park and is at 1800m

Lulled into a false sense of security with a gentle trek though the rain forest

This is me and my new Polish friend Kaisha who was part of our group. We are now at cloud level and already starting to feel cold

Although our African guides did amazingly well carrying and cooking food on the side of a mountain, our appetites started to go the higher we went

Things started to get very remote as we reached heights above the clouds. We could see Mount Meru in the distance which is 1400m smaller than Kilimanjaro. The ground was very rough to sleep on so sleep wasn’t very comfortable

Long arduous days trekking. We would set off at 6.00 am when it was freezing cold outside. As the sun came up we had to remove layers as it became very hot

We had reached the Lava Tower camp at 4600 m. Although it was very warm in the day, it was becoming very difficult to breathe because of the lack of oxygen

Me having a minute feeling very very tired and dirty

From the open barren landscape, we suddenly came across the stinky penis trees which were a welcome sight after hours of nothingness

Kaisha and I having some vitamin C after arriving at camp on the day of the final nights push. We went to bed at 6pm and had to be back up at 9pm ready for the final push through the night starting at 10pm

Lunar Landscape with the sun coming up behind us. This was at 5 am after we had been trekking through temps of -15 for 7 hours and still hadn’t reached the top

Finally reached the top at 9.00 am. 11 hours after we started. Me with my tribute poster to the people killed in the terrorist attacks and thanking my sponsors