Summit Day - Part 1

Andrew Neville successfully completed his epic journey to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro during Friday morning in support of local charity the Harley Staples Fund.

Andrew gave LCFC.com his exclusive account of the summit assault during day 8 of his Kili climb.

"So, the day had finally arrived. The day I had been thinking about for well over a year, and which I had been worrying about and being apprehensive about for most of this year."

"We had dinner early and were briefed at about 6.30pm. The briefing was sobering to say the least. We would probably get sick, we would probably get severe headaches, and it would get extremely cold. We would also be walking for the vast majority of 24 hours!

We were advised to go to bed at 7pm and get as much sleep as we could. I finally managed to get some sleep at about 8pm, but my mind was completely pre-occupied by the task by then and so was awake again by 10.45pm. At 11pm we were woken up and told to get ready (not easy by head torch light in a freezing tent!!). Boots, socks (two pairs if you wanted), thermal long johns, then two more layers of trousers, gaiters, gloves (inner gloves and thick outer ones), five to six layers of tops, then overcoat, balaclava, warm hat, buff, head torch, walking poles, and finally backpack with your water, energy bars, sunglasses and valuables in it.

Breakfast was at 11.30pm and the five members of our party were then checked for our equipment before we started walking at about midnight. We were put in strict order which I think was according to our chances of making it. I was third in line with my friend Brian behind me as he had a better chance than me.

I knew that I was already very tired before we even started the summit assault and not really in good enough physical condition to complete the climb (spending most of my time behind a desk or a car steering wheel during most weeks) so I figured I had to get myself right mentally to have any chance of reaching the top.

I can always remember Seamus McDonagh, our Goalkeeping Coach when Tim Flowers was our goalkeeper, telling Tim to "get into the zone". I think that meant to block everything out of your mind and concentrate completely on the task in hand. At midnight I knew I had done everything I could have done in the preceding five days, and followed our instructions to the letter, so I got myself into my "zone"."

"I wanted to do this for myself, to challenge myself, but I also wanted to do it for my family, for my friends, for my sponsors, and for Harley Staples` fund. I didn`t want to get this far and then to let everyone down, unless medically I had to admit defeat.

The climb was broken into four stages - A, B, C and D. Robert from Cardiff was second in line so I chose to use his feet as my rhythm. His right foot forward, my in breath, his left foot forward my out breath. I can`t describe how slowly you have to walk, but it is very slow as you have no energy to proceed at any sort of speed. Fighting for breath is fairly continual, more so the higher you go.

Embarrassingly I was the first guy to call a halt to our snake, after about 20 minutes (lead guide first, followed by us five, followed by three assistant guides) as I was too hot! The guides helped me out of my overcoat and outer gloves and we moved off again!

We got through stages A and B fairly easily. The walking poles were helping me a lot - both by stabilising me and helping push me up steep sections. We had fairly regular breaks for drinks and to rest, as the higher we went the more exhausting it was becoming. Also, having a pee (which is frequent when you are on altitude pills and drinking a lot at altitude) is not easy when you have a few layers on your lower body!"

"As we started stage C I looked back and saw that Brian had started to really struggle. At one point he slumped against a rock and laid his head against it. I shouted encouragement but was worried about him (we had agreed beforehand that we would not prevent each other from continuing if the other one had to stop). At about that time (about two 2am) I tried to suck some water (from my backpack water container) but none came out. We had been told to drink regularly, but to blow back down our pipes after each drink to stop the pipe from freezing. It was then clear my pipe had frozen - so had Brian`s, and his lack of water and sleep was by then becoming a major cause for concern.

I shouted to the lead guide to check on Brian`s condition so we stopped while he did that. Fortunately he was not showing any signs of altitude sickness, just of fatigue. So we continued. Between about 3am and 5am we saw a number of people being rushed down the mountain past us. I chose not to look at any of them as I didn`t want to be distracted or demoralised.

We then stopped again as we were all getting colder so I put on my overcoat and over gloves. By that time I was feeling quite OK. I was tired, but the sickness and headache I was expecting hadn`t arrived, and the line of lights (from the head torches of groups ahead of us) was getting shorter, so I assumed we were getting closer to Stella Point.

I was coping with the cold reasonably well, but had to crib water off other members of the group and our guides as mine was completely frozen by then. The only cold that was bothering me was my fingers - the tips of which I was beginning to lose any feeling in, and that worried me as we had been warned about frostbite during our briefing.

Dawn was welcome, and also quite awesome! By that time we were walking on rocks amid the snow, although it wasn`t slippery as the snow was either side of us. Excitement overtook me in the last hour when I got irritated with a group holding up my pace rhythm, and took the stupid decision to overtake them.

It took me about two minutes to regain my breath as were by then at nearly 5500m. I shouted to the group "come on guys, let`s do this" as we all really wanted everyone in our group to get to the summit. Brian was still struggling, but was also still going."