Reflections from Ascending Africa's Tallest Mountain

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Welcome to The Ascend Archives. This week is a special edition with some initial reflections from my latest adventure. Next week we’ll be back to the regular cadence!

Soo… that happened on Wednesday.

It was an incredible experience and I couldn’t have done it without the help of my guides and team of porters.

In May, it took me close to 6 hours to complete a 70.3 Ironman. It was the most difficult physical feat of my life. On Wednesday in Kilimanjaro, I hiked for 13.5 hours ascending 4,000+ ft in elevation and then descending 9,000+ ft. I think this is the new winner for most difficult physical feat of my life.

I guess 2024 is my year for doing hard things…

This newsletter is called Ascend Archives because I liked the metaphor of climbing different mountains (taking on different challenges) in our lives. I had no idea that 9 months after starting it, I would have actually ascended a 19,000-foot mountain.

But here we are.

I’ve now been off the mountain for a few days. I got my first shower. I slept in a bed. I got to use a toilet. These simple things we take for granted, I have appreciated more than ever.

There are so many stories from the past week that I’ll weave into future newsletters, and there are probably many takeaways I haven’t been able to process yet, but I wanted to share some initial thoughts I had while on the mountain.

Focusing on the Task At Hand

Coming into this 7-day hike, I was looking forward to having space to think, journal, read and enjoy being off the grid.

My last major hiking trip was a 5-day hike through Patagonia. It was 60 miles through mountains and rapidly changing weather, but we ended each day with warm showers, cold beers, and beds to sleep in. I made new friends, had plenty of energy to daydream on hikes and let my mind wander.

However, I quickly realized Kilimanjaro was different.

This trip was about achieving one goal: making it to the top. And to do that, we needed to focus on the task at hand.

During our introduction briefing, I asked our guide, Hussein, if he recommended we take Diamox (a medication for altitude sickness). He said, “No, you don’t need that. There are only 4 things you need to get to the top of the mountain: sleep, water, food, and “Pole, Pole”.

Every hour of sleep mattered. Getting into our tents by 8 PM each night, I averaged 2-3 hours of sleep between then and midnight. Then, after getting up to pee, I’d settle back into my tent and roll around in my sleeping bag for a few hours. My mind would race about the day before, the day ahead, and random thoughts like my high school basketball days, past trips, and my days working at EY. My goal was to get back to sleep for at least 3 more hours before they woke us up at 6 AM for the day.

Water intake had to be strategic. I drank a combination of hot tea, regular water, and water with electrolyte packets I brought. The water had to be treated with chemicals for it to be safe to drink, so we needed to plan each morning depending on whether it was a long or short day. Even in the cold when we weren’t thirsty, we needed to keep drinking to stay hydrated.

“Sunko”, our chef, was not shy about portions. Breakfast consisted of 2 bowls of porridge, 2-egg omelet, toast, fruit, and some sort of meat. Packed lunches included chicken, bananas, bread, falafel, apples, and more. Every dinner started with a hearty vegetable soup followed by a main course of protein, carbs, and more veggies. Eating all that food was a struggle, especially when headaches from the altitude kicked in and we lost our appetite. But we forced ourselves to take multiple servings because we needed the fuel.

“Pole, Pole” means “Slow, Slow” in Kiswahili. Typically, when I go hiking and hit an uphill portion I’ll push my way to the top then stop for a few minutes to catch my breath. At the elevation we were at, that strategy was not going to work. It’s so difficult to regain your breath that the goal is to never lose it in the first place. That means when we were ascending uphill, we were taking tiny steps, inching our way to the top. It felt like we were moving in slow motion at times. There were plenty of days I just wanted to push through and get done with a hike but we had to take our time to keep our heart rate down.

I found that throughout the week, I had limited energy to focus on anything that wasn’t those four things. When I woke up each morning, there was no time to do my Miracle Morning routine of reading, journaling, and meditating. It was freezing cold, so I just brushed my teeth real quick, rolled up my sleeping bag, took my meds, grabbed a hot cup of tea, and scarfed down some food. On the hikes, I wasn’t thinking about my next business idea or some new thing I wanted to try; I was thinking about one foot in front of the other, I was taking in my surroundings, and talking with Tim & our guides. When we would finally reach camp, I had no energy or interest to read a book, I just wanted to lay down in my tent, recover for the next day, and stay warm.

It was a constant focus on the next thing. It reminded me of my Iron Man 70.3 experience: six hours of intense effort. People would always ask me how I went that long just being in my head and not listening to music or podcasts.

The answer is, sure I was in my own thoughts, but my mind couldn’t wander and I never got bored. I was focused on the task at hand. When I was swimming in 55-degree water battling a strong current, I was thinking “How do I get to the next buoy so that I can get the hell out of here”. While on the bike, I was thinking “How much further until the turnaround point”. During the run, I was thinking “I was too slow on my last mile, let me pick up the pace on the next one”.

When tackling these intense challenges, I’m forced to be super present. It’s the only way to achieve the goal.

Why Am I Doing This?

When choosing a vacation, it would have been so much easier to just go on a safari, sit on a beach, or take a trip to Europe.

So I found myself questioning why did I choose to do this?

Why did I decide to be mentally and physically exhausted, to be forced to chug tons of water and food, and to struggle to get sleep in a cold tent?

The word that came to mind was perspective.

Perspective in terms of pushing to see what I’m capable of, but also it's seeing other ways of life. Our guide Hussein is 46 years old and has climbed this mountain over 300 times in the past 18 years. We asked him if he planned on retiring anytime soon. His response? “I’d love to retire, but I can’t. This is my only source of income for my wife and two kids. I need to continue to climb this mountain because it’s my economic life”.

Many people might have a similar response to the question of why not retire. They need their job to pay the bills. But from my point of view, Hussein’s job is another level of incredible difficultly. Up to 3 times per month, he is leading clients up to the summit: an activity that I deemed to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Yes, it’s gotten easier for him over time and would for me if I continued to do it but that doesn’t take away the fact he’s sleeping in tents, constantly battling elevation, carrying heavy bags up a mountain, and is away from his family. That to me is a level of hard I’ve never witnessed.

This isn’t to say that other people’s jobs aren’t hard or even that my life in Austin isn’t hard. There are issues I deal with back home that are justified to be difficult. I’m not trying to discredit any of that. I just think it was beneficial for me to see a different kind of hard. I've gained a perspective that I can bring back to my world in the US that can help me push through things that seem hard in the moment. When a client is asking for edits for the 5th time. When it’s 6:30 am and I’ve hit snooze on my alarm 3 times because I don’t want to go to the gym. When there is a sensitive conversation I need to have. All of these situations require perseverance and discipline, skills that are built by spending 7 days on a mountain.

Final Thoughts

I want to end with a caveat that what is easy vs what is hard is all relative. This experience on Kilimanjaro was difficult for me, but I’ve talked to several others who had no issues with it. While for others, this feat seems impossible.

This past year has been an experimentation of what amount of hard I can handle. The Ironman was incredibly painful yet rewarding. I finished that race excited for the next one so that I can improve my time. Climbing this mountain was also painful yet rewarding. But this time I have no desire to climb another mountain. This feels like a one and done hard experience for me.

I found my hard and now I’m ready to relax and get back to work.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew