Conquering Kilimanjaro

by Patti Hutchison

One hip. I should say… one good hip and one bad one. That had been my entire life. Almost 48 years and counting. I was born with a deformed right hip joint. I was put in traction as a baby, then in a cast for 8 weeks. And though I could walk and do all the activities of daily life including exercise, I had always been in some sort of pain or discomfort.

My husband, Kevin, and I love to travel. We love to take the children to places like New Orleans, DC, and Chicago. But that means lots and lots of walking. With each trip, it was getting harder and harder to spend the day walking. Advil wasn’t cutting it anymore. My favorite exercise is cross country cycling and even that wasn’t as easy as it used to be. I finally said enough is enough. I cannot continue living like this. I have too many things to do. That’s how I came to know Dr. Matthew Clayton.

Dr. Clayton, my husband, and I talked about the options available. We knew surgery would be an eventuality, but we exhausted everything else first. We did stretching, therapy, and regular cortisone injections. The injections would work for 6-8 weeks at first, but as time went on, they grew less and less effective. It was time to talk seriously about a total hip replacement. This wasn’t going to be a routine procedure, even for someone as experienced as Dr. Clayton. With a deformed hip joint, he wasn’t going to be able to know his exact procedure until I was actually on the operating table. So, we prepared ourselves for any one of three procedures. To further complicate things, it was going to be a posterior procedure. I had been told to be prepared for less flexibility and perhaps even less mobility due to the risk of a dislocation post-surgery. (Dr. Clayton did assure me that I’d be able to return to cycling without any issues.)

Tuesday morning, November 28th, 2017, was the day of surgery. Kevin and I had made all the preparations for

surgery. We had arranged the house to make room for the walker I knew I would be using for the next several weeks. My work knew I would be out for at least 2 months. (I stand for hours at my job.) We were ready to rebuild my hip. The staff at Crestwood are awesome. Dr. Clayton’s team, second to none. As for Dr. Clayton, I’ll let the rest of this speak for his skill as a surgeon.

Dr. Clayton had a primary plan for my total hip replacement. But he also had two contingency plans, but as it would turn out, he didn’t need them. They tell me it took less than two hours to complete the operation. No complications during surgery except for needing just one screw to hold the hip joint cup in place. By the evening I was up walking. Not just short trips to the bathroom, but around the halls of the hospital. We weren’t setting any speed records of course, but I was moving. It took a little bit, but I began to notice something. I didn’t have any hip pain. Sure, I could feel the pain from the incision, but the pain deep in my hip was gone. 48 years of pain was gone in an instant. When Dr. Clayton came in the next morning, I asked when I could go home. After he saw how much I had been walking, he told me I could go home that day. I was ecstatic. So, 33 hours after I arrived at the hospital, I was going home.

But my rapid recovery doesn’t end there. By Saturday, I was moving about the house without my walker. Still moving very slow and being very, very cautious, but sans the walker. By two weeks post-surgery, we were attending a Trans

Siberia Orchestra concert where I had to walk up several flights of stairs. (To be transparent, that did hurt a little bit.) By Christmas, there was still a little limp from the incision site, but overall, I couldn’t have asked for better results. I knew that my life was going to be so much better. And more importantly, my husband and I would be able to continue our adventures. And in mid-January (just 6 weeks after surgery), that’s when my husband popped the question. Why don’t we go to Africa and climb Mt. Kilimanjaro?

My husband had wanted to climb Kilimanjaro for years but wouldn’t do it without me. But being the eternal optimist he is, and seeing how well my recovery was going, he knew it was now a doable adventure. My first response was “I can’t climb a mountain.” But as the days went by, and I started to feel better, I was intrigued. So, I did some research. It’s a 9-day, 53-mile trek around the mountain that summits at 19,341 ft. where the oxygen is half of what it is at sea level. Though it isn’t technical, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It is very hard for everyone who attempts to summit it. Some places are very, very steep. And there are some areas where

you have to scramble over rocks. Altitude sickness is a very real possibility. People do die attempting to summit. But as I read about it, I started to think that maybe I could do this. It took a little more prodding from my husband (along with promising a safari) to convince me to give it a try. And we’d have 11 months to build my strength up. In fact, we would spend my 49th birthday on the mountain.

By late February I was able to begin the process of training for this grand adventure. We started off easy by doing simple hikes. We weren’t going to risk injury or over train. Slowly, methodically, we began to increase the mileage and elevation. And as spring arrived, we added our cycling back in. It felt so good to be able to do all these things without pain. Yeah, my glute was still an issue (I have a 9-inch incision through the muscle). But with every step or pedal stroke I was getting stronger. By May we were either doing 3-hour hikes or riding 20 miles on our bikes. By early June our cycling was up to 35 miles. The strength was back. And I could ride every day without that nagging pain from my hip. On June 30th, we rode 51 miles! And so, it continued for the summer. Except my husband was adding more and more hills for us to ride up. It was at my 6-month post-surgery visit with Dr. Clayton where we told him what we were going to do. He was so excited, we thought he was going to jump out of his shoes.

In August we had a setback. Not from my hip, but my back. A disc had bulged. It was bad. So right after Labor Day, I had my L4-L5 fused by Dr. Curt Freudenberger. This pretty much brought our cycling to a stop for the year. Kilimanjaro was now a question mark. We would have to make a decision by mid-October. I rested my back. I let the fused discs recover.

Mid-October came and I started to get back into hiking. Fortunately, everything felt good. Thankfully, my leg

strength was still good, and we could quickly get our hiking miles back up.

My husband is a physicist and plans out every single detail to the nth degree. He spent every day of the 11 months planning our African trip. So generally, I just have him tell us what we need to plan for, or train towards. But I must say, that as November arrived, my anticipation for what we were about to attempt began to fill my thoughts throughout every day. What would it be like to go to Africa? What would it be like to camp in a tent for 8 consecutive nights? What would the food be like? Could I really climb the highest free-standing mountain in the world?

Finally, the 10th of January 2019 arrived. It had been 408 days since my surgery. Time to fly to Africa. No turning back now. In 4 days, we would begin the climb.

Tanzania is a beautiful country. Yes, it’s a 3rd world country. The average person earns less than $5 a day. But the people are thankful for what they have. They are a very genuine people and are happy to see tourists. They are giving of themselves. They know tourism is an important part of their economy and every person we encountered along our journey went above and beyond anything we could ask. From keeping the restaurant open late our first night so that we could have a good meal upon arriving, to giving us guided tours of the shops and markets simply because we asked to see them. We both made a very concerted effort to learn and use their language, Swahili, and that was worth more than money to the Tanzanian people.

A climb such as Kilimanjaro cannot be accomplished without guides and porters. There were 15 climbers in our group and to support us, we had 2 lead guides, 5 assistant guides, and 47 porters. All the tents, food, and supplies

are carried by the porters. We were only required to carry small backpacks with our water, snacks, and rain gear. And I’m glad that’s all we carried. When leaving the main gate to begin the climb, there is no simple, easy beginning to kind of warm your legs up. Instead, from the first step you climb a series of “steps” cut into the ground that rises at over a 20% incline. For a person who likes a few miles to warm up when cycling, this was a shock to the system. I must admit, that I was questioning my ability to make the climb within the first hour. But with the encouragement of my husband, our

guides (who became our good friends), and my fellow climbers, I trudged on. It certainly didn’t hurt to hear my husband and one our assistant guides singing traditional Kilimanjaro songs in Swahili. Day one is the shortest day. Only about 3 miles through the rainforest. But it ascends just over 2000 ft. Night one was spent at 9500 ft. (You could already tell there was less oxygen.)

Day Two is very similar to Day One. A little longer, but another 2000 ft. in elevation gained. At this time, I’m still questioning my sanity. (And my husband’s!) Day two starts in the rainforest, but by

the end of the day, you emerge out of it into a more open area known as Moorland. Here is where you get your first view of the mountain. The beautiful snows of Kilimanjaro. Except it was cloud covered until right at dinner time when the clouds cleared, and you had an unobstructed view of this majestic mountain. Seeing what you’re about to ascend is beyond breathtaking. And very motivating.

Day Three is a generally a very easy day. Except for us it was raining the entire way. Only 1000 feet of elevation gain. Of course, this takes you to 12,500 ft. That’s really high!

Day Four is a unique day. You climb to nearly 14,500 feet then descend back down to 13,500 feet. This is done to help acclimate yourself and keep the dreaded, and potentially lethal, altitude sickness away. It’s also on this day that you begin to think that you’re going to get a chance to summit this mountain.

Day Five is the day you spend scrambling over large rocks. It’s the day I needed the most help from our guides. It’s also the day that they assigned our biggest and strongest guide, Mboyi, to my group. They all knew I had an artificial hip and would need to take extra precautions getting up (and down) over these rocky areas. At times Mboyi literally picked me up so that I wouldn’t bend my hip joint too far.

Day Six is the easiest day. A slight descent over a short 5-mile hike around to the north side of the mountain. The mountain begins to loom heavily on you at this point. The apprehension of what summit night will be like. It seems like you could just reach out and touch it, but you knew the hardest was still to come. Tomorrow things would change.

We woke to beautiful weather on Day Seven. After descending the past two days, today begins the continuous uphill journey to summit base camp. We started our day at 12,500 feet and would climb to 15,400 feet. Today is simply about reaching base camp. There are no rocks to scramble over. Nothing to do but place one foot in front of anoth-

Our first extended rest stop came around 17,500 ft. at Hans Meyer Cave. Hans Meyer was the first person to summit Kilimanjaro in 1889. It’s a great place to sit down and reflect on hard it must have been to summit at a time when the mountain was covered in ice. I was still feeling strong at this point of the climb, but that was about to change.

The energy expenditure required to climb in the cold, at extreme elevations, and at ascent angles of over 40% at times, is immense. Upwards of 1000 calories an hour. Your hope is that you’ve eaten enough to have the glycogen stored nicely away and to eat enough as you’re climbing to prevent the dreaded “bonk”. I’d like to say that happened for us, but I can’t. It is that way for almost everyone. Even our guides. It’s this section from Hans Meyer Cave to the summit rim at Gilman Point where people begin to give up and turn around. Even one of our group had to abandon her climb. But we trudged on. Step by step. At 18,000 feet you can look up and see what looks like the crater rim. It’s your first moment of hope among the misery of total exhaustion that has laid waste to your body. In reality it’s an illusion. The curvature of that area hides the rim from your view. You will walk for 30 minutes and look up and see what looks exactly the same. And on it goes. 30 minutes becomes an hour, then two. Our pace had become so slow that we could walk no more than 50-100 feet at a time without leaning all our body weight on our trekking poles. We had hoped to be to the crater rim by sunrise, but that time had come and gone. It was approaching 8:00 in the morning, over 9 hours after we had left camp when we finally caught a glimpse of the rim. This is where you shed your first tears. You know you’ll at least make it to the crater rim. It would be 8:30 when we finally stood at Gilman Point. But the work is far from done. This is only 18,700 feet. We still have to navigate the crater rim past Stella Point and then onto Uhuru Point, the summit of Kilimanjaro.

The hike from Gilman Point to the summit isn’t steep. Only an additional 700 feet up, except that those 700 feet will take you above 19,000 feet high. It is however a very long walk. For most people this will take about 2 hours. We were already way behind our planned schedule, so we had to move. It would take an hour and a half to reach Stella Point, halfway to the top of Africa. It was 10:00 and we hadn’t summited. We didn’t know if our guide would let us summit at this point. We could barely walk. We had absolutely no energy in our bodies. I will say that I have never been so exhausted in my entire life and I don’t believe I ever will be again. But I wanted to summit. My husband and I had come so far. This had been his dream. It had become mine. It’s amazing how the Kilimanjaro guides will

people to the summit. Even knowing that a 6-hour descent awaited, our guide Ezekiel was going to push us to the summit. He alleviated out doubts by doing an oximeter test on us to prove we still had it in us. 50% he said and we could still summit. We were at 70%! And then the snows came.

As we departed Stella Point, a snowstorm moved in. Not just any snowstorm. 30-40 mile an hour winds. Snow blowing sideways across the mountain. But we were not going to be denied. My husband kept saying “With each step, a success.” And that’s what we did. And at 11:30 a.m. on January 21st, 2019, in a blinding snowstorm, my husband and I embraced each other at the top of Africa, with tears flowing down our cheeks. It was the greatest thing I’ve ever done or will ever do. I’m so proud of my accomplishment. Of our accomplishment. But I wouldn’t have been there without the dream of my husband and the skilled hands of Dr. Clayton.

Dr. Clayton had a flag made for me to carry to the summit. Unfortunately, the wind was too strong to get a good picture

at the summit but were able to get a picture at Stella Point once we returned from the summit. But it made it there with me.

Our story isn’t quite over there though. We were still in the middle of the snowstorm as we began the journey to our new camp. As thrilled as we were with summiting, we still had the long, arduous descent before us. Descending Kilimanjaro isn’t like ascending. There aren’t a series of switchbacks. It’s basically a straight shot down the mountain. But whereas we started our night at 15,400 ft. and summited at 19,341 ft., we now had to find our way down to 11,000 feet. Most people think that descending is easy. It’s not. Your legs have no energy to support you. The rocks are slippery and tend to roll out from under you. (I feel a couple times.) I got to the point where Ezekiel had to literally grab me by the arm and hold me up as we hiked down the mountain. How he did this for hours is beyond me. Finally, at 7:30 p.m., in the dark, we entered camp. We had been on the mountain for nearly 21 hours!

When you reach this level of exhaustion, you only have one thing you can do

and that’s to cry. Cry for the agony of the day. Cry for the accomplishment. It’s been five months now and I still cry when I think about what we did. Something that two short years ago wasn’t a possibility. But now and for the rest of my life, I can say I conquered Mt. Kilimanjaro. No one can ever take that away from me.

I need to say thanks to my husband for his vision and planning. To our guides for motivating us and their friendship. And to Dr. Clayton and staff. I have a new hip that made a dream come true.