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!