Laughter and tears on Kilimanjaro

THE elation of conquering the highest mountain in Africa is often replaced with sudden nausea and severe headaches for amateur climbers when the dreaded altitude sickness becomes a reality.
That was the experience of at least two members of a 13-strong Clare group of charity mountain climbers who experienced both the highs and lows of ascending and descending Kilimanjaro’s 19,341ft.
Up to 170 children receive therapy on a regular basis at the Clare Crusaders Clinic in Barfield, with the number continuing to rise due to a lack of public services. The group raised almost €30,000 from the climb.
It included three members of one Barefield family Oliver Clune (69) and his two sons Conor (36) and Brian (39); Clare Crusaders’ clinic manager, Ann Norton; Montessori teacher, Aoiffe Lynch; Ennis town councillor Mary Howard; HSE paramedic Alan West, Stephen Coote, Ronan Mulqueen, Barry Lynch, Geraldine Sharkey, Olive Walsh and Claire McGovern. Team leader Ian Taylor has climbed Mount Everest and had scaled Kilimanjaro 11 times previously.
On the way down from the top near Stella Point, there were a few dramatic incidents when two of the women became quite ill.
People were vomiting and suffering from headaches, with HSE paramedic, Alan West, recalling that there was a moment when “things were a bit funny”.
Ann Norton fainted and collapsed. She went to the toilet and didn’t come back. Out of the corner of his eye, Alan remember seeing her collapse.
“There was a moment everyone looked at each other and then starting running towards Ann. Thankfully, we gave Ann some oxygen and she came around quite quickly. We laid her down on the ground. The only thing to do was to get her down off the mountain. We gave her some glucose. On way down it happened again,” he recalls.
Conor and Alan assisted Ann with the descent. Having put so much effort into getting to the top, Alan believes people weren’t as fully focused or mentally prepared for a lot of downhill walking.
“Ian Taylor had to make a quick descent with Geraldine Sharkey because she didn’t look well. Ger she was sick from day two with a lack of appetite and she was not sleeping very well. If I had any of those symptoms, I would not have gone to the top; it was a monumental effort for her to do the climb. It was amazing she did it.
“Ian spotted things early and managed things well. Anyone who needed to be helped down had a shoulder or an arm to hang on to. People were always sharing drink, chocolates and tablets.
“You see people at the top staggering around, getting sick and sleeping on rocks. It is a strange place. There are a lot of people up there that are not well, the only way of treating them is to get them back down,” he recalls.
“The higher you got, altitude became an issue; you would be more tired and the appetite reduces. On last day, I felt a tightness in my chest, you were conscious there wasn’t as much oxygen to breathe. If you left the track to go to toilet, your heart was pounding in your chest. If you become short of breadth, it can play on psyche a lot and it is quite tough on the legs.”
Alan maintains the altitude is the one thing you can’t prepare for. “There are people coming down who haven’t made it to the top, they are sick or are being helped down. They have to pass down the line as you are coming up and psychologically you are thinking, will I make it?”
While Ann Norton has some health problems that would have provided her with a valid reason to opt out of the trip, she was determined to do it. She didn’t feel well on the way down.
“I hit the ground. There were plenty of people there to look after me. Between the altitude and sheer exhaustion, my body gave up. I was more embarrassed than anything else, I am the type of person that gets on with things.
“I came down the mountain apologising, I was mortified. I phoned Cathal (husband) and told him I collapsed, Cathal said ‘did you get to the summit, that is all that matters’,” she recalls.
Barry Lynch remembers getting a buzz in his head on the third or fourth day, while Conor suffered from altitude sickness during the final ascent. 
“I couldn’t look down. Alan was behind me and caught me a few times. I was looking at what two people in front of me were seeing. I was trying to copy it and sometimes you would trip,” he recalls.
The training completed by the group before the trip in Wicklow and Kerry, including climbing Carrowtowhill and Mullaghmore in North Clare, helped prepare them for the challenge. However, a number of sceptics believed Oliver Clune was mad to embark on such a demanding challenge.
“I expected it would be reasonably tough. I was prepared for it. Ian had us prepared and told us what to expect. For the final ascent we were ‘looking up the stairway to heaven’.
“A few hours afterwards, we still seemed to be the same distance away. But it was great when we reached the summit. The sunrise and glacier were spectacular. It lived up to my expectations,” Oliver said.
“I was elated and glad to be there, you had to fight for every step on the way up. It was cold too; the water was freezing in our bottles.”
An experienced climber, Oliver has scaled the highest peaks in Kerry, Down and Ben Nevis in Scotland, after being bitten by the climbing bug in his later years.
The former senior hurler with St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield was involved in several great battles with arch-rivals Éire Óg in the sixties.
“I love climbing. I love the buzz when I reach the top. Only for Ann, Ian and all the other members of the team, I would never have gone to Kilimanjaro.
“I had enough belief in my own ability and the group training was a big help in Mullaghmore,” he added.
He admitted the seven-hour steep climb on Barranco Wall was difficult. Food was a problem and he didn’t eat much, apart from porridge in the morning.
“I enjoyed the camaraderie, the great banter, distinctive laughs and jokes from the ladies during the Beranka Wall. A little joke helps to raise people’s spirits.
“Getting used to coming back down was a little more difficult as you were feeling a little sick.
“Having my two sons there was extra special.   I like climbing with Conor; we have been climbing together for a few years. It was an added security for me and helped me psychologically. It is very important to be focused on the psychological aspect. I love to see the summit and be looking up. For a few days we were climbing and couldn’t see the summit,” he noted.
The poverty in Tanzania also struck a note with Oliver. “Everything we have here, we take for granted. You would be thinking about it for many days. The toilets were something unbelievable, even in the villages, in shops and public houses, an open sewer. I never came across anything like that.”
However, it was all worth it in the end. “It was a wonderful trip for a wonderful group and a wonderful charity. That was the most important, we were doing it for the clinic,” he explains.
Group members adopted a varied approach for their preparations.
Having joined the group two months before their departure date, paramedic Alan West hadn’t as much time to prepare but found he wasn’t too far behind when it came to fitness.
His fears about the possibility of food poisoning proved unfounded as the food was very good despite being cooked and prepared on the mountain.
“There is always a concern meeting new people and living in close quarters. The first night in the hotel, they all went off in pairs and I was left on my own as the latecomer. I was wondering was it my deodorant or lack of, but overall the group dynamic were fantastic,” he joked.
Barry Lynch did some reading where he learned people had died climbing the mountain and thus wasn’t a walk in the park.
After researching Kilimanjaro, Conor Clune decided “ignorance is bliss” and decided to forgo further research, while Aoiffe Lynch relied on Ann Norton for her information.
While Aoiffe considers herself reasonably fit, she recalled the only person in the group who didn’t have altitude sickness was a smoker.
Her biggest fear is snakes and she was afraid to look to either side of her in case she saw one.
“If I saw a snake, I would have probably got to the top four days earlier than everyone else or else I would need the helicopter,” she joked.
When a relative phoned Ann and asked if she would be able for it, it put the “fear of god in her” and left her mother in a state of anxiousness. She scared the wits out of herself by watching the worst possible clips of people getting sick on the way up the mountain and having to step over bodies.
“I used to be going into the clinic saying this is after happening and what if this happens.
“Eventually I had to stop because I was driving myself cracked. I didn’t know how I would feel leaving the kids and Nicole and Cathal at home.
“It was amazing; once I got into the car outside the door, I focused on myself. It was the first time in 14 years I only had to think of me, that was an amazing experience for myself as well. Life is very busy. There are so many things going on. It was great to be able to think about yourself and take one day at a time,” she said.
The trip was littered with incidents that gave people a timely lift when they were struggling. Some occurred before they got near the mountain. On the flight from Amsterdam, the group had consumed a few drinks. Ann unintentionally swallowed a sweet while Mary Howard was telling a story. Two Americans on the plane had to perform the Heimlich Maneuver to get the sweet out of her.
“I nearly died before I got off the plane, “ she joked.
“From start to finish, we made a laugh of everything, people thought we were off our heads. There was a sea of orange in Dublin Airport as all of us had our orange hoods,” she recalled.
When the plane landed in Tanzania, Ann looked for a toilet and was told go behind the bush, which set the scene for the trip.
Barry Lynch hadn’t completed ten feet on the climb when he fell into a pothole and ended up on his backside. Group members rushed over with babywipes, wiping him down.
“I was so embarrassed. I was preparing myself for altitude sickness, snow blindness but the first pothole had my name on it,” he laughed.
The standing joke was asking Alan how much neurofen or paracetamol was appropriate when people already knew.
The Africans were fascinated with Ann because of her blonde hair while Geraldine’s red hair also proved a big hit.
There were downsides too, including trying to get used to sleeping on a three-inch mattress that had to be blown up every night. The fact it was always situated on a rocky slope made sleeping even more difficult.
Barry missed the comfort of having a proper bed and a toilet and joked that the last time he went camping was in Lisdoonvarna in 1982 when ten cans of beer acted as his sleeping tablet. 
He wasn’t used to getting up to go to the toilet outside the in the bush at 5am in ice cold temperatures.
Although Aoiffe had never camped, she got used to going to the toilet in the open air after a while. “The lack of toilet facilities was interesting. The last night the camp got wet, we were so tired, we smelled bad, it didn’t make a difference. There was no moaning. The baby wipes had run out.  I enjoyed all of it,” she says.
If it had happened on the first night, Conor insisted he would have returned to the hotel and said “good luck”.
Ann noted, “It is 90% mental and 10% physical. I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere in the evening when we played games like charades and Guess Who. Bedtime was 8pm. I often felt how I am going into that orange rubber bed on stones, you would be tossing and turning for a long while.
“I used to wake at about 5.30am every morning. It was so cold; it was easier to stay in bed even though it was not comfortable.
“You could put on a clean pair of trousers, but by the time you crawled out of the tent, you were rotten.
“You were never clean…There was mud and volcanic ash all around you. When you are lying on a tent, your bag is sitting on muck; you are living out of a bag.
“Every day was different but an amazing experience. One day four it felt like we were climbing a wall. My head was fit to explode.
“It started raining, it was really tough and we were getting wetter and wetter. Every one went to their tent and there was very little talk; it was miserable. Once you sat down and took the p*** out of someone else, there was always someone more miserable than you,” she says.
Barry said when you got up in the morning you didn’t have to ask any questions because everyone’s face screamed “what a night”.
The group spent six days walking to the base of the mountain arriving at 12 noon, ate dinner, were back in their tents at 2pm and rested until 10.30pm. They started the last major ascent at 12 midnight in the dark with head torches.
Alan recalls the last eight and a half hours of climbing were painful. “You think the lights ahead of you are stars but they are people, it is that high,” he says.
Barry and Conor agreed that the last ascent was “never ending”.
Ann recalled, “Brian was in front of me, I never watched anyone’s behind as long in my life. He was quite unsteady at times, at one stage he was sleeping. It was amazing how everyone dealt with things differently.
“I focused in on the clinic and why I was doing it towards the end, my head was geared around Nicole. By the time I got to Stellar Point, I was crying but I could not understand why. I just sat on a rock and cried.
“I said ‘what are you like, you have not even got there’. If only someone would bring down the piece of wood and have our photographs taken. I went to the toilet in the dark. I went over to the corner, I hit my head off a rock and I came back into line,” she recalls.
Ian prepared them for the last day with a motivational “pep talk” about the challenges ahead; he was frank about what could go wrong.
Once the group got to the top, relief was the overriding emotion. There were no scenes of great jubilation but they spent about 40 minutes taking photographs and a brief rest.
Aoiffe said if anyone had tried to hug her she would have probably hit them she was so tired.
Barry described the summit as like the moon, desert-like and barren with lava dust. Yet he knew he was in a “special place”.
Alan said there is a picturesque contrast between the volcanic rock and snow capped glacier running down the side.
“When you do have a panoramic view, it is incredible.
“From day one you are always looking down on cloud. There was some really gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, particularly sunsets in the evening time against the backdrop of clouds and what that did in terms of colours,” he says.
Conor said the countless photographs or vivid descriptions can’t do it justice. “You can’t describe it. You see people getting emotional crying and doing jigs, I don’t know how they had the energy to do it.
“When you up at Stellar Point you think you are at the top, but you have another 695m to go, which takes 45 minutes. If you hear someone saying you are nearly there, you would trip them,” he adds.
Ann described the Sunday as a “curse”. 
“It was one of the hardest days, coming down in muck. It was pure watery and slippy, it was constant ploughing up and trying to balance yourself.
“When we arrived at the gate of the camp we were told we had to walk further because it was too mucky to drive up.”
Despite this she added, “It was an experience of a lifetime. I would do it again.  It was one of the most amazing experiences I ever had”.