OK, backtrack with me a bit here, to the 2 days leading up to our final ascent...

We left the Horombo camp on the morning of the 5th (feels like 17 days ago, but it was Monday), with a sunny sky and a perfect view of the "snow" on Kilimanjaro's peak to climb towards (more about that "snow" a little further on...)

We were still hiking through the Moorlands on the mountain, which are crazy beautiful -- the valleys are filled with these Dr. Seuss-ish trees that I couldn't get enough of.

There are 5 climate zones on Kilimanjaro, and as you ascend, it's literally as if someone has drawn a line across the landscape and the trees that grow on one side of that line no longer grow on the other side. So when we reached the end of the Moorlands and encountered the Alpine Desert, it was truly a sight to behold. It feels like you're about to step onto another planet (or a Star Wars set). The path leading to the final climb stretches before you until it meets the horizon. There is no sound except your own steps, your own breath, and the odd greeting of "Jambo" to the porters who pass with their loads on their heads.

Walking was pretty slow at this point, and breathing was much more laboured. It's a unique sensation to feel the effects of high altitude.

We arrived at Kibo Hut at the afternoon's end, and our only goal was to have a quick light meal, and get into bed by 6pm for a brief rest.

At 10pm, we are woken up for our final cup of hot tea, and a plate of crappy broken cookies with pink icing (the food situation, as you might imagine, is not so luxurious the further you get from the bottom!)... and then we dress for our Big Night.

11pm -- we are standing outside Kibo Hut under a clear night sky full of stars, and a bright, full moon. We don't need our headlamps. We have moon shadows to keep us company on our final climb. It is cold. (Very.)

We're ready.

The first part of the climb is on a steep incline of scree that we traverse in switchbacks (walking on scree is like walking on 3 inches deep of kitty litter). We are in single file, and have to hang closely together for the entire night. The porters call out "Pole Pole" repeatedly and sing little cheerleading songs in Swahili to keep our spirits up. The first bit seems pretty manageable, but after a while, the intensity grows, and there is the teensiest hint of the fatigue that will set in later. It really looks like we are on the moon.

We stop once every hour for a short 5 minute rest and water break -- no one's really interested in eating their power snacks, because it's so cold and because the altitude makes you feel a bit sick to your stomach.

The scree lasts for quite a while and is very tiring. When we first started out, I thought optimistically (or maybe it was cockiness) "Well, this isn't SO bad" about the steepness, but walk in that stuff uphill for 2 or 3 hours in increasingly thinning air and it's pretty darn tough... Then we hit rockier turf -- which turns into boulders, and at times, we have to climb with our hands and feet across and up. It's very steep at this point, and becoming very intense. It's 2am, 3am, 4am -- the hours are going by and it feels like both a million years and a minute. Everything is warped -- your head is wonky, your heart is beating hard, you're working hard to breathe. We're looking up, and can see the top of the mountain, but it seems to take SO long to make any headway.

We have to coax a couple of girls to keep going... exhaustion and dizziness is setting in, and the mental game is definitely on, much more so than the physical. This climb is absolutely about conquering your mind, not the mountain.

We use the tool of envisioning each of you, our loved ones and biggest supporters at home, cheering us on at each turn, encouraging us to keep going, to do our best. (Thank you for being there. We needed you.)

At last we reach the final boulder to climb over, and we are at the top of the mountain -- Gilman's Point. There are 3 different points at the top of Kilimanjaro on this route -- Gilman's Point is the first, then Stella Point a little further on, and finally Uhuru Peak at the ultimate summit.

We collapse onto rocks, some weeping with exhaustion. But we're not done here, there is one final stretch... except for one of us. Chombo, our lead guide, has been keeping a careful eye on Kavielle, who is suffering from altitude sickness -- she can go no further. He sends her back down to safety with a guide.

(I would like to say here that Kavielle was a total trooper getting as far as she did -- she'd been struggling for quite some time with the symptoms of altitude sickness but pushed her way with help and encouragement from her fellow climbers. And she made it to the top. She is now sporting a lovely certificate marked with Gilman's Point. Congrats Kavielle.)

The rest of us have another 200 ft of vertical to get through -- the walk from Gilman's Point to Uhuru Peak. The guides tell us that it gets easier from here, but honestly, it feels like the longest part of the journey, and the girls look like they are about to start dropping off like flies. We are all so, SO exhausted (and dizzy and nauseous), but we are determined to get there. We've come so far, and we are so close.

We round a corner from the back of the mountain and are greeted by a sky on fire -- sunrise on Kilimanjaro. Gasps. It is breathtaking. It gives us that tiny boost of energy we need to continue on.

Many of the girls now need a buddy to hang on to for this final stretch... someone to talk to them, encourage them, convince them, DRAG them -- delirium is setting in and it's so easy to sit down on a rock and not get up again. We are now at Stella's Point, and that is the end of the climb for Maedy. She is done. Again, a guide escorts her to a safe place, and the rest of us plod on. Not much further...

We are now climbing beside the glacier that caps Kilimanjaro -- the "snow" that I referred to earlier looks, from the bottom, like a nice patch of tobogganing snow, but in fact, it is this monumental Arctic construction of ice. It is so, so spectacular, and luckily Catherine was there to capture its beauty in photographs because it was pretty hard to appreciate it in the state of mind you're in at the top. I, for one, feel extraordinarily lucky to have seen the Snows of Kilimanjaro in person, as they predict the ice cap will be completely gone by the year 2030 due to global warming.

At long last, we turn a corner, the sky is now morning blue, and the Uhuru Peak sign is visible -- funny how having your photo taken hanging on to a wooden pole is enough to get you to push yourself past a limit that otherwise feels insurmountable. We trickle in and collect ourselves for our victory group shot. We have lost 2 more girls -- Danica and Taleisa are not with us.

Chombo is encouraging us to get it together and head back down -- it's not safe to stay up at the top too long, 10 minutes is really all you should hang out there for. So we're dispersing and taking our final snaps, when to our absolute delight, Taleisa and Danica appear, trudging those final steps to the peak. Awesome awesome awesome.

This is what a girl can do.

I would like to say that going back down was easy, and I guess in a way it was... there was just that minor group puke incident that I mentioned before, and then we re-traced our steps back down the mountain -- along the crater, down through the boulders, and finally skiing on our heels down the scree to Kibo Hut. It took us 7 1/2 hours to get up that mountain, and 3 hours to come back down.

Rest at Kibo.

* * * * *

It felt great to get our normal strides back on the way down the mountain. "Pole Pole" turned into "Haraka Haraka" (faster faster). We welcomed back our breath.

We had warm sunshine with us on our way down, and we stopped in the Alpine Desert to have a little check-in. The girls were feeling great -- so proud that they made it, so amazed at the challenges and the hurdles they had to overcome, so happy that they pushed through and didn't give up, so much more confident in what they felt capable of doing. It was such a huge accomplishment.

The evening before we made the final ascent, we had asked the girls to bring a piece of paper and a pen with them to dinner. We reminded them of the story of the eagle ascending Kilimanjaro and shedding its feathers, and then put a twist on it, likening the process of transformation to the butterfly, and its metamorphosis from caterpillar to cocoon to a completely new creature -- a relevant analogy for Girl Impact as we use the butterfly as our symbol of change and the butterfly effect as our reference for feminine impact.

We asked them to reflect for a moment on all the things they had learned on this journey (including their time at the Limuru School), and then on one side of the page, each girl wrote down a few things that they felt they were shedding or letting go of, and on the other side, a few things that they wanted to manifest for themselves as part of their transformation. No one else was to see their piece of paper. They folded them up into little squares and tucked them in their pockets for the climb.

And now that we were back in the desert, it was time for the Transformation Machine. We gathered in a close circle and built a tiny fire -- just enough to let each girl place their little folded square of paper into the middle of the circle and watch it light and burn away into ash.

The butterflies are released.

* * * * *

Our goal on the way back down was to get to a hot shower as quickly as possible (honestly, we looked like coal miners at the bottom). The weather was on our side, and the landscape that we had hiked through in cloud and icy rain 2 days ago was now bright and warm and sunny. An excellent way to leave.

We stayed one last night back in the Horombo Hut on the way down, and our final day of hiking back through the Moorlands, back through the rainforest, ended in a celebration march back through the gate. We all signed our names in the official register and noted which peak we had made it to (for which we later received certificates of our climb), and piled back on the bus.

* * * * *

We left Tanzania on the night of Oct 8, 2009, with a huge orange African sun burning its way into the horizon as it set over the silhouettes of distant Acacia trees.

We are on our way home.

P.S. I've updated a couple of the previous posts that had only a couple of iPhone photos due to the poor internet connection -- you can now see Catherine's lovely photos for those days. Read on!

Apologies to the loyal followers who have been waiting anxiously for the blog to show up again... as luck would have it, we couldn't connect to the internet the last couple of days on the mountain.

So I will backtrack and fill in the gaps tomorrow (it's very late here now), but let me first tell you what I know you are all dying to hear...

WE MADE IT TO THE TOP!!

Above: The Girl Impact team at Uhuru Peak, the highest point of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Missing from this summit photo are Taleisa & Danica... we thought they weren't going to make it, but sure enough, as soon as we dispersed from this photo, they came crawling around the corner to make their victory walk to the summit.

19 out of 19 of us made it to the top of the mountain, to Gilman's Point. 17 out of 19 of us made it to the summit, Uhuru Peak, at 19,334 ft. We lost one along the way to altitude sickness, and one to exhaustion (everyone's fine). There was a LOT of barfing on the way down.

It was hard hard hard.

It was another world.

It was incredible.

We are now back in Moshi at the Springlands Hotel where we each had The Best Shower Ever (you would not believe how dirty we were!)... and everyone is tucked in bed now, sleeping off their hard work.

Please check in tomorrow for the rest of the details from the last couple of days, and thank you again for keeping us in your thoughts and for sending us your messages and encouragement. It made all the difference in the world.


* * * * *

Our first P.S. goes out to Cal (Jane Shaw's son), who turned 10 years old while we were on our climb -- happy birthday Cal!!


And for our second P.S. We would like to send out some very special thank yous:

Nike Canada outfitted each of us with all of our technical clothes for this journey, so we were dry, comfortable, efficient (not to mention lookin' GOOD!) Seriously. Thank you Nike.

Kraft Canada believed in the vision of Girl Impact from the very beginning, and donated the seed money for this project, for which we are eternally grateful. We could not have done it without your faith in us. Thank you.

We're extremely thankful for all the physical training we went through as a team at our summer boot camps -- the effort on this climb was INTENSE, and we were SO well prepared by our trainers back at home, Daryl Devonish and Gillian Frechette.

And we would like to give a big shout-out to our guides on this trip, who kept us safe and took care of our every need for the last 6 days: Chombo, Mzui, Deo, Lucas, Benjamin, and Chef.

Asanti Sana... Thank You.

There is an African myth about Kilimanjaro.

The story goes: as you climb the mountain, you are like an eagle—as you ascend, you begin to shed your feathers—first the top layer, then the middle feathers, then the bottom layer, and finally you shed your beak. So by the time you reach the top, you are reborn. You grow new feathers, and your beak becomes re-formed—you are a new, stronger eagle, ready to soar.

Day 2 of our climb took us out of the rainforest and into the moorlands, so our view opened up to see the climb ahead of us. The landscape is spectacular—grassy hills, short , gnarly black trees, electric yellow flowers. We reached a point where we were above the first level of clouds, so we also looked out on a blanket of cotton candy.

We're definitely feeling the increased difficulty due to altitude, but our guides have been great about keeping the pace—"Pole pole" (pol-ay pol-ay) they say to remind us... "Slowly, slowly."

We arrived at our second camp at around 5pm, and the place was just abuzz. There were a lot of people, and guides scurrying all over the place... The dinner building was chaos.

We went to bed at around 8:30 under a clear sky and a nearly full moon, and we could see the snow on the peak of Kilimanjaro shining far above us. Magical.

Sunday morning. Today is a rest day—in part to let us acclimatize but mainly because we have a pretty gruelling 2 days ahead of us.

Tomorrow we will climb for 6 hours to Kibo, our next camp, and it is getting steeper and harder to breathe. We will sleep briefly and then get up at midnight to depart for our summit climb.

So how are the girls faring? We are definitely seeing some nerves...and some challenges. The climb is more gruelling than some were anticipating, but larger than that is the mental challenge. They're homesick, they're feeling like "I'm 17, what am I doing on this mountain?"... And they're feeling afraid that they won't make it.

Today we've seen lots of long faces and quite a few tears.

Marnie gave the team a great motivating talk at breakfast about how we now need to see the team as a cable, and not a chain. A chain will always break at the weakest link, but a cable is made up of many small strands that wind around each other -- so each of us now has to wrap our strengths around another's weakness, and together we will become an unbreakable source of strength.

This is what a girl can do...

We are climbing the Marangu Route up Kilimanjaro and today's hike was through the rainforest—great big trees dripping with green moss, a beautiful light mist descending, waterfalls, monkeys...

Turns out the Internet connection is fleeting so I can only post a short note and not so many photos.

When we arrived at our camp (we are staying in the mandara hut), we got settled in with our bunk beds and sleeping bags and then our porters brought us hot tea and the best popcorn on earth. Mmmm.

We went for another short walk to see a very beautiful crater and then it was time for dinner. Now I'll admit, I was not expecting much in the way of food on this trip (although perhaps seeing the porters who walked by us carrying a thousand pounds of groceries on their HEADS might have tipped me off...) so it was a very pleasant surprise to be served an AMAZING meal of rice, vegetable stew, cooked cabbage and beef stew (or fish for the non-meat eaters). Full-on YUM.

And we're all getting used to the idea of the ladies tree...

We'd like to give a very big thank you to myescapades.ca, who so generously donated the girls' Kilimanjaro treks—thank you Firdosh for believing in the vision, and Glenn for making it happen.

We are sleeping tonight at 9,000 ft.

All is cool.

I have to start out by saying it's a very satisfying thing to see a giraffe hanging out by the side of a road.

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Secondly, I would like to thank all of you who are reading this blog daily and writing comments. It means so much to all of us that you are watching and following our journey, and the girls are so happy when I deliver a message to them from a loved one.

Now back to our story...

* * * * *

Road trip today from Nairobi to Moshi, which is the town at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Along the way, we also sighted zebras and gazelles and ginormous termite mounds that are as big as a person -- it was all quite thrilling actually.

But let me backtrack a little...

This morning we left the Limuru Girls School -- it was a very emotional goodbye for all involved -- the Kenyan girls, the Toronto girls, the teachers and staff at Limuru, and our team of Girl Impact women. The girls have traded pages and pages worth of email addresses and penpal addresses, and have penned countless more pages of journal entries for memories. The Girl Impact that was generated by this visit was bigger than we ever imagined, on both sides. We will miss our new friends... until next time.

Above: co-founders Jane Shaw and Leanne Nicolle with Margaret, principal of Limuru Girls' School.

Above: the tea field I keep talking about.

So imagine a pretty somber crowd on the bus ride starting out. The drive (we thought) was supposed to take about 5 1/2 hours, and we crossed the border from Kenya into Tanzania at about hour 3. This gave everyone the chance to have a much-needed nap and to start thinking about the prospects of a nice HOT shower -- our first in a week!

As we drove out of Nairobi, the landscape started to rapidly change and we saw the lush green fields fade away into scruffy, dusty, barren, grey plains. It was easy to understand the devastation of the drought when we saw it -- you could see where there used to be grass for the animals to graze on -- now just scraggly, twiggy plants. You could see the few remaining leaves on the trees drooping with thirst. The few cows that we saw being led by Masai men were bony and slow (not that I think cows are normally speedy, but you get the point).

Despite the bleak reality, it was fascinating to see the classic African landscape with the huge flat-topped trees and the mountains in the distance -- (and I believe I've already mentioned the wildlife!)

We drove past Masai people and dwellings -- the electric colours of their clothing is such a beautiful sight in this landscape and it was pretty cool to see the circle of 8-10 small circular mud huts that would comprise a village.

About 9 1/2 hours later on our 5 1/2 hour drive, our bus driver slowed the bus and pulled over to the side of the road... and pointed out the window.

And we saw her. Kilimanjaro.

It is a spectacular sight and unfortunately I don't have a picture that does it justice. You look at the horizon line and you can see a dark grey shape hulking there near the land, so you know there's a mountain there... but then you look up, and you hit clouds, and then you keep looking up, and poking out way up above the clouds is the top of the mountain -- the snow all lit up by the sun, and the first word that comes to your mind is majestic. OK, or maybe WHOA.

And all of sudden it seemed real.

Tomorrow, we start our climb.

* * * * *

Today's P.S. -- while we've done everything we can to try to ensure we'll be connected to you during our climb, it's impossible to know at this point how successful we'll be with an internet connection and our power situation. I intend to blog everyday as long as I can get a data connection on my iPhone, so I hope you'll bear with me and understand if I don't show up one day. Wish us luck!

* * * * *

And finally -- P.S. number 2-- many of you have sent lovely comments about how much you're enjoying the stories and the amazing photos, so I just want to introduce the new media team behind the scenes.

There's Catherine Farquharson, our photographer, who joined us on Tuesday and has been snapping photos like crazy ever since she got here. Catherine's very stealthy and slight and so you hardly notice her as she's doing her work -- but it allows her to get right in there and her own warm smile contributes to how lovely her portraits end up. If you don't already know about it, the gi Promise Photo Project is one of Girl Impact's fundraising projects, featuring Catherine's photos from this trip -- get details about how to be a part of it here.

Above: Catherine Farquharson in the dorms at Limuru Girls' School.

Roz Allen is our videographer and resident "geek" -- Roz has done an unbelievable amount of legwork in getting us all kitted out with the most cutting-edge solar power options available to ensure that we can film this experience from start to finish -- even to the top of one of the world's biggest mountains. Roz has already shot hours and hours of incredible footage this week that we intend to put into some kind of documentary form to chronicle this adventure. You'll have to stay tuned for more details about this. Like Catherine, Roz is totally immersed with her camera in every situation in a most unobtrusive way -- in fact, on Sunday, the soccer game played AROUND Roz, as she was right in the action, oblivious to the fact that her shins were in great peril most of the time.

Above: Roz Allen

And then there's me, Laura, your faithful blogger, picking out the moments of each day that I want to highlight in words and pictures to chronicle our story. I've been the creative director for Girl Impact since the beginning, and it's been a big treat and a real pleasure to work with this incredible all-female crew.

Above: Laura Wills with Toronto gi Kavielle