A Brief Account from a 56 year old type 1 Diabetic who did not make it to the Roof of Africa, but did manage to get into the Loft!
Cath my wife & I set off to climb Kilimanjaro on the 4th Feb 2011 with a company called Charity Challenge. We had never undertaken any sort of challenge before, friends and family we telling us we were being a bit ambitious for our first time.
I was the only diabetic in the group and the oldest, it was a large group with 29 climbers + A uk doctor and an English guide.
We also had 105 porters, yes that’s right 105, that carried all our food tents and cooking equipment + 1 chef and 1 head guide from Tanzania.
We took the Lemosho route which gives you the best chance to acclimatize to the altitude, every one in the group bonded almost immediately, which was fantastic and we will all remain friends forever.
From the start I did have some concerns about my diabetes, with checking my blood sugars and worrying about my insulin and testing machine getting too cold to work,
These concerns quickly disappeared when we started our accent.
Our fist night on the mountain was a bit uncomfortable ,only because Cath & I had never been camping in our life, this new experience was great, we laughed so much with the whole group making fools of themselves trying to inflate sleeping mats and organizing all your kit in the tent, my god what a relief that the tents were put up and taken down by our porters at each camp.
The food I thought was not sufficient for my needs as a diabetic, we did not have enough carbohydrate with each meal to sustain me. Fortunately I had taken enough EAT Natural Bars with me to get me through each day. ( 3 bars per day & 1 at night ) without which I would have not made 2 days on the mountain.
Still onwards and upwards Cath my gorgeous wife of 38 years was climbing to raise funds for The Alzheimer’s Society suggested to me that we split my insulin and my testing kits between us, and put it in our sleeping bags at night to stop it from freezing, which proved to be the right thing to do as the temp dropped at night, it varied over the days on the mountain but the higher we got the colder at night it was.
I wont go on about our trip because it is impossible to put it into words ,what was the best experience of our life, the only people that can under stand what we feel, are those who have attempted it and experienced it first hand.
If your diabetes is well controlled and you train hard you can achieve anything.
The reason I failed to reach the summit was due to altitude sickness, nothing to do with diabetes, I got to 4,600 mtrs which to me was the loft.
The roof ( Summit is 5895 mtrs.)
I was quite ill and I would like to try again but Cath will not have it, so it looks like its Machu Pichu next for us.