Steve Cram was kind enough to come and speak to us all and offer us his top ten tips following his successful climb in November 2009, before he went out to Vancouver to cover the winter olympics. Even better he had climbed the same route as we were going to take - the Machame route and had done it over the same number of days. In Steve's group 28 climbers started and 21 managed to get to the summit.
As well as regailing us with stories of beautiful sunsets and his first meal on Kilimanjaro of chicken and chips cooked by the team, he gave us a really honest account of how hard we would find it and shared some of his top tips.
These included:
- Drinking lots of water and then drinking a bit more
- Take a really good sleeping bag
- Make sure you purify the water
- Keep your water bottle in someone eles bag - so every time you stop you don't have to take your bag off
- Eat Jelly babies!
- Take things to break the monotony - Joke books, quizzes etc
- Celebrate the little things
- Adopt a positive mental attitude (sounds like an advert for lucozade doesn't it)
All the way through Steve reinforced the fact that it was as much about desire to get to the top as opposed to being superfit. Some poor soul on his trip actually managed to get to the top, but on the final day was sick 32 times and was walking for 19hours!!!! We did ask who had counted it - but everyone questioned whether if they were feeling that rough if they would have been able to keep going!.
Finally he showed us a picture of them all at the summit - which made it worth it!
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