5 Mistakes I Made On Kilimanjaro

I made 5 mistakes before, during and after my Kilimanjaro climb in June. Tune into today's show to learn what they were.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You know that feeling when you're out on a hike and the terrain is rocky and uncertain the wind is howling in your ears and your legs feel like jelly. That was me on summit night during our Mount Kilimanjaro climb, realizing that I had made a few mistakes in my training. But hey, let's rewind a little bit. Hi everyone, I'm Rebecca, the founder of Hike Like a Woman. Welcome back to the pod. This is the place where I talk about what I've been up to. Sometimes we interview people here, but usually this is just a raw, unfiltered show. Rarely do I even say who I am or interrupt the conversation for ads. Why? Because I like you, but I haven't asked today If you like the show and like hanging out with me. Can you do me a favor and share this episode with a friend, especially if you have a friend who might be interested in climbing Mount Kilimanjaro? Awesome, thank you. So today we are going to be talking about Kilimanjaro. In fact, we're going to be talking about Kilimanjaro for the next few weeks, because this is the biggest outdoor adventure I've ever done and I've been getting a ton of questions about it. This week I'm talking about mistakes. Next week I'm talking about mistakes. Next week I'm talking about mindset. And then the third week, I'm going to talk about why our group of 24 women were so successful on the mountain. So keep listening, because today I'm sharing five mistakes that I made before, during and after my Kilimanjaro climb that you can hopefully avoid. If Kilimanjaro is on your bucket list and, to be honest, kilimanjaro or not, these are lessons that will help you prepare for any big adventure. Let's start with mistake number one skipping strength training. So when it comes to hiking, cardio gets all the glory, and leading up to the Kilimanjaro hike, I had a training plan and I was following a training plan, and part of that plan was cardio and I was really focused on walking and hiking. I was trying to get between 15,000 and 20,000 steps a day. I stopped going to the gym lifting weights because I was thinking that all I needed was time on tired legs. That became my mantra. Actually, time on tired legs Long, slow distance was the game that I was playing and it was what I was preparing my body for. Now, in doing so, it certainly didn't hurt me. On the mountain, I went in with a lot of cardio and the ability to hike slowly for a long distance, but in doing all of this long, slow distance, I didn't gain any muscle and I also didn't lose any fat which weight loss has been a goal of mine since I finished cancer treatment and I didn't lose any weight because the intensity wasn't there. So what I found was, even though I can walk forever, I was missing some major strength, especially on the Bronco wall and on summit night. So check out our video. We just published a video over on our YouTube channel all about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and we talk a little bit about the Bronco wall on that video. So go check that out if you're if you're into YouTube, go check that out if you're, if you're into YouTube.

Speaker 1: 3:09

So in doing in looking back at my training, I would say that my training was good, but it can be better. And right now I'm devouring a book. It's a lot like reading an old exercise physiology textbook. I actually have a degree in exercise science but it's called Training for the Uphill Athlete. It's by Steve Stephen House, steve House, scott Johnston and Killian Jornet and it's actually designed for trail runners and mountaineers, ski mountaineers and I'm not any of those things. But this is a book that's kind of. I'm using it as my Bible as I start to put together my training plan for Kilimanjaro in 2025. So things like lunges, squats, some good upper body training, that would have really helped me going into my first Kilimanjaro climb. So I am, like I said, to fix this. I'm going back to my roots and I'm studying this book. I will link it below for those who are interested. But what I'm trying to figure out right now is how can I balance this long, slow distance game, this pole a pole, a slowly, slowly walking uphill, with building the strength that is needed to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and maybe the strength that's not necessarily needed, but the strength that will make climbing Kilimanjaro just a little bit easier. So stay tuned. I have a lot more coming about how I'm training for Kilimanjaro on our YouTube channel. Training for Kilimanjaro on our YouTube channel.

Speaker 1: 4:48

This brings me to mistake number two, and that is flying out of a risky regional airport. So it takes like 30 to 40 hours to get from where I live in southeastern Wyoming to Tanzania. It is two a day and a half. Two days of traveling is two a day and a half, two days of traveling, and so, because it's such a long trip, I decided to fly out of my local airport. I live in a town called Laramie and our biggest like international airport hub is Denver. Denver is about a two and a half drive two and a half hour drive for me to get from my house to the Denver airport.

Speaker 1: 5:26

Typically I like to fly out of the airport that's in my town, the Laramie Regional Airport. I like to fly out of Laramie because I don't have to drive to Denver, I don't have to fight traffic, I don't have to pay for parking at the airport and there's some downsides to this. So Laramie only has one or two flights a day. So sometimes it's hard lining up flight schedules. But when I booked this trip to Africa I was like I't want to cut into my husband's work day or I don't want to take a shuttle to get to Denver. So I thought I will just fly out of Laramie and it will be really convenient and usually it's more money to fly out of Laramie. But it kind of balances itself when you figure like time driving and paying for parking.

Speaker 1: 6:21

So for this trip I booked my flight out of Laramie and that was a big mistake because half of the time when I fly into or out of Laramie the plane doesn't even make it off the ground or it's delayed by hours or even days. So I booked my flight out of Laramie and I had about an hour to make my flight from Laramie to Denver, so that's like a half an hour flight. So I had about an hour to make my flight from Denver to London and then London on to Addis Ababa and then Addis Ababa on to Kilimanjaro. When I checked in my flight to Laramie everything was on time and good to go. I was feeling pretty confident that I was going to get out.

Speaker 1: 7:03

And it was funny because earlier that afternoon my husband had a conversation with me and he was like do I just need to cancel my afternoon and drive you to Denver so you can be sure you get on that flight from Denver to London? Because that was a super important flight for me to get on. And I was like no, I think it's going to be good, I think everything will be all right, I think I'll be able to get out of Laramie. But about a half an hour before my flight was set to leave from Laramie, we got notifications that our flight was delayed first by 20 minutes and then 45 minutes and then an hour. And it was so funny because I'm sitting in the terminal and everyone's getting kind of frustrated because evidently there was a storm in Denver that caused delays. And there were these two guys in the terminal and they were headed to a concert in Las Vegas and they were freaking out about how they weren't going to get to the concert on time. And I just laughed in in in in my heart because I was like you're worried about getting to a concert in time? I got to get to Africa, man. So anyway, I ended up getting on the flight and the ticket agents told me that a lot of flights out of Denver had been delayed, so there was a really good chance that I was going to make my flight from Denver to London. I get eventually get to Denver, and as soon as I get to the Denver airport I run down the terminal as fast as I can, and they had just closed the doors to London like five minutes before I arrived, and so it was really sad.

Speaker 1: 8:28

Anyway, it's by now, it's really late at night and United Airlines couldn't get me on another flight to Kilimanjaro for three days, and if I was on a flight three days later I would miss the first two days of the climb. So I had to pay out of pocket to book another flight on American Airlines and it ended up costing me about twenty six hundred dollars. I was super annoyed and United would not return my ticket, would not refund my ticket I don't know why just because they're united. Anyway, right now I'm working with my travel insurance company that I used that does cover delayed flights or missed flights trying to get my ticket refunded or the cost of this new ticket paid. I'm working with travel insurance right now. It's probably going to be a long thing. Even if I don't get refunded for this ticket, it was $2,600 out of pocket. Worth it to get to climb Mount Kilimanjaro on top of everything else that I paid Absolutely. But I'll keep you posted on whether or not this travel insurance company comes through.

Speaker 1: 9:37

It is World Nomads and I'm going to do a whole big review on our YouTube channel about World Nomads because there was some other stuff that came up on the trip. So I don't know that I'll be using them in the future. But we'll see. Maybe they'll pull through with this and give me some money and then I'll be okay. That's a really long drawn out story to say that from now on, when it comes to trips that I'm leading. I'm going to fly in a few days early. As much as I want to see my small local airport seat succeed, as much as I want to just keep flying out of the Laramie Regional Airport, I just can't risk it. So from now on I'll be driving to Denver, just for the peace of mind. Plus, tickets are typically cheaper flying out of Denver. So while that's inconvenient, I think it all balances out in the long run.

Speaker 1: 10:21

This leads me into mistake number three. Originally I was supposed to land in Kilimanjaro at the Kilimanjaro International Airport at like 10 o'clock in the morning on May 31st, but with my flight issues I arrived in Tanzania, in Kilimanjaro, about, I think, around 10 PM the night before the group met, so 10 PM on May 31st. I didn't really set me behind too far. But when I put together this itinerary I was really concerned with altitude, and Moshi is at a lower elevation than Laramie, where I live, and so I thought I'm going to just get there at the last minute because I want to just keep my body at altitude longer. And that wasn't really a good strategy, because when I arrived in Moshi I didn't have much time to rest or recover from the long travel and especially from the stressful delayed flight, new flight situation. Jet lag is a total beast and I barely had time to rest and relax before meeting the group and before we started trekking and honestly, I needed a little bit of time before meeting the group to just kind of organize my own gear, to organize my own thoughts to script out YouTube videos year, to organize my own thoughts to script out YouTube videos, and I also spent a good chunk of June 1st talking to our guides and our guiding company and there was just a lot for me to do behind the scenes as the trip leader. So next year, when we climb Kilimanjaro as a Big Hike Lake and Wind group in August of 2025, I'm actually going to come in three days early and I'm going to go on a safari before the climb, because everybody who went on a safari this year had so much fun and so I feel like I missed out on that safari experience. But also I want to have some time to rest and recover from traveling and then if I run into flight delays or problems as I'm trying to get to Tanzania, it's not so much of a problem because you know if I have to miss one day or two days of a safari. That is much easier to cancel or to join the group later than to catch up with the group on the mountain.

Speaker 1: 12:39

The fourth mistake that I made was underestimating the importance of training with trekking poles. This is interesting to me and I put a lot of thought into figuring out why why I have this weird relationship with trekking poles. I am a cross country skier. I love to cross country ski, I teach ski lessons, my kids are on the ski team, my family skis a lot, a lot of cross country skiing and a lot of downhill skiing. So it's ski season, I'm using my ski poles a ton and then I move on to a month, month and a half of hiking on dry trails where I rarely used my poles. It's so funny because I have the ski background right, but when it comes to hiking, I hate hiking with poles.

Speaker 1: 13:25

When I was doing all of my training hikes leading up to the climb, I only used my trekking poles on about 10% of my hikes, and that turned out to be a mistake because my hands were not conditioned and I didn't get any blisters from my trekking poles, but I did have some hot spots and some portions on the trail when I just took my poles off and didn't use them. And the other thing about trekking poles is there were sections of the climb that were really steep so I'd be lifting up my trekking poles and my arms just weren't used to using my poles when I was hiking, especially on those really steep parts of the trail. After a few days my arms and shoulders were actually sore from my trekking poles. They were more sore than my legs. And this takes me back to the strength thing that we talked about. Now I'm trying to do at least 10 minutes on the skier, which is like this cross-country ski machine every time I go to the gym. I'm also trying to hike with my trekking poles more and include them now on about 80% of my hikes.

Speaker 1: 14:35

We're going to talk about clothing and gear on Kilimanjaro in one of our upcoming YouTube videos clothing and gear on Kilimanjaro in one of our upcoming YouTube videos. I'm going to start by saying that typically I hate using trekking poles when I hike, but on Kilimanjaro they were fantastic. One of our guides said something like when you hike without trekking poles, you only have two legs, but when you hike with poles, you have four legs, and I found that hiking poles on Kilimanjaro helps prevent my hands from swelling. My hands swell a lot when I'm hiking and I think that's probably due to some neuropathy that I have as a result of chemotherapy. Trekking poles kept my hands from swelling and also there were some sections, especially going downhill, when I felt really comfortable using my poles because I could kind of stick them out in front of me and it really helped. I think that trekking poles are an amazing thing to have on Mount Kilimanjaro, but I always thought about them as kind of an accessory to my hiking kit, not a critical piece of equipment.

Speaker 1: 15:40

Finally, my fifth mistake was neglecting my own self-care towards the end of the trip, kind of from summit night on. If you hear or watch or read a lot about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, you know that summit night is really exciting. It's a long night of scrambling to the peak, to Yuru Peak, which is at 13,000, I'm sorry, 19,341 feet. You actually climb most of the summit at night. We started around 1130 pm, probably closer to midnight, when we started hiking and you basically just hike all night long and then the sun comes up. By the time the sun comes up, some people are already at the summit. Some people are at Stella point, which is the last point before the summit, um, but it's a long night. I think, um, I think we started, uh you know, close to midnight and then I don't even know what time we got back to our camp, but it was definitely like I want to see 8, 9 am. I don't know, I'll have to look at my pictures and go back.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Anyway, summit Night is a long night of walking, and on Summit Night I kind of just stopped taking care of myself. It actually started a few days before Summit Night, once I got to about 13,000 feet. So, like within the first couple of days, I just I lost my appetite and I wasn't nauseous. I didn't get sick, I didn't feel sick, but I had a hard time eating. I just didn't feel like eating and it was really hard to get calories into my body. I basically had to force myself to eat most of our meals. I just I wasn't hungry Food, food just was not appealing to me, so so I didn't eat a ton on our trip. And then, on summit night, I just kind of stopped taking care of myself and first of all, I lost my sunscreen and lip balm, which are two crucial things that you need on Mount Kilimanjaro. As I mentioned before, I wasn't eating enough and I probably wasn't drinking enough. I think I was drinking enough leading up to summit night, but during the climb that night I didn't drink a lot. And then the next day I didn't drink a lot and as the trip leader there was a lot going on.

Speaker 1: 18:09

And after we got off the summit we had someone who was suffering from altitude sickness. She needed to get evacuated off the mountain quickly. So I was helping out with her and we got off the mountain and I didn't have time for lunch, maybe just a few bites, because there was just so much going on with that evac. And then we had to hike a little bit more to get down the mountain to our final campsite and there was just a lot of stuff going on. When we got to camp, I think we had stopped at a camp that was higher than we were supposed to be at, so our dinner was at the lower camp, so we had to have porters bring our dinner up to where we were. There was just some other stuff that was going on. And after so so we did the summit, we got back to our campsite, we had this evac and then we had to keep hiking another four hours to get to our camp that night. And then we got to the camp and then our dinner wasn't there.

Speaker 1: 19:08

It was just like this long day, with a lot of random stuff that just popped up and I didn't eat, I didn't drink. I should have said to the group like, hey, I need to eat, I need to drink, I need to take care of myself too, but I didn't. So I learned a lot about self-care and how it's important when you're the trip leader especially, you got to put that oxygen mask on yourself first. Right, like they say when you get on a plane, that's what you got to do, and so, anyway, that is just a long winded way of me saying that I my biggest mistake was the last two days of the trip, when I didn't take good care of myself and self-care is not selfish and I didn't take care of my skin, because it's brutal at 19,000 feet. I wasn't eating, I wasn't drinking, I stopped changing my socks, I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't resting. All of that stuff is really important for everyone on a trip like this. Kilimanjaro confessional and even with these mistakes, the climb was an unforgettable experience and I'm actually glad for these mistakes, because now I'm better equipped for future climbs.

Speaker 1: 20:20

And, speaking of future climbs, if you're interested in joining me on our next Kilimanjaro climb, so we're taking another group of 24 women up to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro August of 2025. So you have plenty of time to think about it. Head on over to our website, hikelikeawomancom. There you're going to find all of the details. I mentioned earlier that I also have a video that we just published with the full story of our trip, and I did a kind of like a trip report, a slideshow too. So you can go to our website and find both of those videos, or head on over to our YouTube channel to find our YouTube channel. I post weekly over there. All you got to do is go over to YouTube and just take it, type in hike like a woman and you'll be able to find all of our videos about Kilimanjaro. Anyway, this is Rebecca. Thanks for being here, thanks for being part of our hikeike Like a Woman community, and I will be back next week sharing a little bit about the mindset that I had on Kilimanjaro that made the climb a success, despite these five mistakes that I mentioned earlier. Thanks so much. I'll see you next week. Hey, real quick before you go. You know that here at Hike, like a Woman, I rarely promote products or services, but I do want to tell you about a new partnership that we have with Global Rescue and I think this is really important. I think it can save lives.

Speaker 1: 21:39

On Kilimanjaro, we had a member of our group get altitude sickness and need to be evacuated quickly off of the mountain. This isn't my story to tell out of respect for this person, but what I want to say is that our guides recommended calling in a helicopter for this evacuation. So this girl's really sick. She's on the phone with the medical evacuation company and they want to charge her credit card $5,000 before they'll come and get her. All because I had recommended a travel insurance company that didn't offer high altitude rescue travel insurance company that didn't offer high altitude rescue. I felt terrible. Thankfully, she was escorted safely down the mountain by guides and porters and she felt good once she got down a few thousand feet. But as a trip leader, this was a major failure of mine.

Speaker 1: 22:24

Since coming home, I've been researching travel insurance and rescue insurance and I've discovered that the best company out there is Global Rescue. They will literally pick you up from anywhere in the world, get you to a treatment facility, get you home to the US, not just if you're sick or injured, but also if there's a natural disaster or a terrorist act. Whatever happens, wherever you go, they'll be able to take care of you. They also have doctors on call. So let's say you're in an urban area and you get bitten by a spider and that spider bite starts to look pretty funky. You just log into their app and you can talk right with a physician and they'll tell you where to go and what to do to get taken care of.

Speaker 1: 23:09

So Global Rescue provides rescue memberships, but they also work with another company to provide regular care of. So Global Rescue provides rescue memberships, but they also work with another company to provide regular travel insurance. So that would be like your flight stuff or trip cancellations, trip delays, all of that stuff. So if you're climbing Kilimanjaro or a big mountain, or even if you're just traveling abroad, you need to protect yourself, and that's why I am using and recommending Global Rescue. You can learn all about them by visiting my website, hikelikeawomancom. All you got to do is head to hikelikeawomancom, click that tab that says travel safely to find out all the information that you need to know about Global Rescue. Thanks so much for letting me share this very, very important thing.