I’ve never had a desire to climb anything higher than the three
story rock climbing wall at the YMCA, done with a safety harness and a guy
holding the rope below who tells you where to put your hands and feet. I’ve watched
plenty of people do the wall as I used a treadmill across the gym but I never had
the guts to sign up because I didn’t think my old hips joints could make the
necessary stretches. I wish they’d had walls like that when I was a kid. Maybe
I wouldn’t be afraid of heights now if they did. As a young adult in the 1960s The
Empire State Building had me crab-crawling the floor of the observation deck where
I had my first, full-blown panic attack and when a group of us was about to get
on an elevator in the Sears Tower ten years later, which at the time was the
tallest building in the world, I felt another panic attack coming and I refused
to get in. So mountain climbing? No way, Jose`. Never in a 100 years. I’d
probably panic at the top and stay until my bones bleached in the sun and other
climbers started decorating my skeleton up like a snowman.
This week I went to a lecture at the senior hall that was
presented by a local university professor who has climbed the Himalayas in India,
Ben Nevis in Scotland and other mountains around the globe, and he's over half way to
joining the elite mountaineers who have climbed the highest mountains on each
of the seven continents. But this lecture focused on climbing Mount Kenya
(17,057 feet) and Mount Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet), ancient volcanic mountains
and the tallest in Africa. Someone asked him what the appeal of climbing is and
at first he joked that he climbs for the views, then he said he does it for the
adventure. He started rappelling down the sides of buildings at ten and climbed
his first mountain at fourteen. If you watch the History or Discovery Channel
you may have seen some of his recorded lectures and heard his delightful Australian
accent. Craig Benjamin also lecturers on cruises sponsored by both the New York
Times and Scientific American and his bio page on Wikipedia includes a long
list of books and articles he’s written. He’s the real deal, an expert on
ancient Central Asian history. Mountain climbing is his hobby. A fascinating
hobby but I’ll stick to knitting.
One thing I found interesting is he said climbing Mount
Kilimanjaro is more like steep walking, except for the glacier on the summit which
takes serious ice climbing expertise and equipment which few people do
including the lecturer. And all his photographs supported the “steep walk’
observation. You aren’t climbing straight up like I envisioned but rather
you’re going on spiraling paths around three volcanic cones to get to the
summit. The climb didn’t look at all scary---hard but no places where you could
fall off sharp cliffs. His team of six averaged around three miles a day
carrying fifteen pound backpacks and they were supported by two dozen porters who
carried 40 pound packs, everything from tables and chairs, tents, food and water
to a canvas outhouse or as he called it, “The loo.”
The park only allows 200 people on the mountain at any one
time and the law requires they weigh everyone’s packs and inspect everyone’s
boots and socks before you can go. Kilimanjaro took them 4½ days to climb up
to the rapidly shrinking snow cap (global warming) and 1½ days to climb down
and it costs $2,000 per person plus airfare. It’s a major source of income for
the country. Another interesting fact is every day they’d climb up x-number of
feet and the tour guide would make them come back down a fourth of the way to
camp for the night. That got their systems acclimated to the high altitude so
they were less likely to get sick from the lack of oxygen in the mountains.
I’ve been in the mountains out in Colorado and on roads so
narrow we had to fold our truck mirrors in so we could hug the high side or risk falling 100s of feet below and the
evidence of tragic accidents like that could be seen if you looked down. I’ve
been in mountainous area where we had to use come-alongs and winches to get
yourselves out of muddy mountain ruts---my husband’s idea of a fun afternoon,
playing in the mud. Don loved the Rocky Mountains and he camped in them for several weeks every year for over 25 years, pretending he was a mountain man. He had a 35 mm camera with telephoto lens that could turn a
speck on the horizon into a moose so close up you could count his eyelashes. He
was a good photographer and judging by the hundreds of slides he’d come home
with, it’s pretty safe to say one of the things he loved about The Rockies was the
views. Me? I’d still like to see the view from the top of the rock climbing
wall at the YMCA which is pretty funny given the fact that I gave away my six foot step
ladder for fear I’d try to use it and fall to my death. And I'm pretty sure I'm still afraid of heights. ©
