High Country Trail Shoe
Rosina Garcia is a runner and coach based in Santa Barbara, CA. Last summer, she embarked on a climb up Kilimanjaro.
I never dreamed of climbing mountains. When I started running in 2010, it was only to join the track team so that I could get out of PE. Over the past 16 years, running and the outdoors have been constants in my life and have shown me what is possible, both physically and mentally.
I signed up for this trip as part of Alison Mariella Désir’s group with Soraka Tours, a Tanzanian- and woman-owned company. Alison is a trailblazer in the running and outdoor spaces and is the reason why I trail run and climb mountains. She has opened doors for me and other BIPOC folks and makes every space she enters better. If you know me, you know I’m a little spicy – ok, maybe a lot spicy – and the fact that the 15 of us gelled so well together on this trip speaks to the type of people Alison attracts. One thing that unified our group was our communal shock at the lack of humility on the mountain.
We saw other groups try to hike from campsite to campsite, to the point of even calling my friends and me slow and telling us we were in the way. I may or may not have suggested a race 15,000 feet up. However, our guides were always telling us, “Pole, pole,” which translates to, “Slowly, slowly.” As someone with short legs who is always in a rush to catch up and get places, this was the most powerful lesson I learned. I’ll let you guess if our haters made it to the peak or not.
The final ascent was brutal and physically the most discomfortable I’ve ever been. We had an alpine start in order to reach the summit at a reasonable time, otherwise it would not have been safe to descend in the scree and in the erratic mountain weather. I wanted to hike faster to be warmer, but the thin air prevented that. We had to take breaks to eat and drink, but my water froze, and too long of a break meant the cold kicked in and we’d have to start moving again – slowly. Every step was laborious. It was dark, and I kept telling myself that everything would be better when the sun rose.
Spoiler: It wasn’t.
It somehow got windier and windier, and our group photos at the peak have us all looking a little unhinged. But we eventually made it. I may have even cried a little. Just a month before this trip, a close friend of mine died by suicide. Though I originally signed up for this trip for the plot, just for the hell of it, it quickly turned into something with deeper meaning. On the final ascent, with every step I thought of Sinthia and left a lot of my sadness and grief on the mountain. Uhuru is the name of the peak on Kilimanjaro, and it means freedom. There was freedom in relinquishing some of my grief, and I felt a little lighter with every step thereafter. But little did I know at the time that the worst part of the trip was yet to come.
We descended 9,000 feet total that day: down to basecamp, then further to a lower camp to shorten the next morning’s hike out. It was the worst part of the whole journey. I fell asleep mid-bite at dinner, dehydrated and pounding with an altitude headache, having had less than a liter of water in 24 hours.
The next morning, we reached the base of the mountain. The most profound part of this climb was not reaching the peak but the experience of doing this in community: sharing meals together, yapping about everything under the sun, looking at the stars, expressing gratitude for this experience and each other. I want things to be better in the outdoor community and this adventure showed me how that can look. It also exemplified everything I love about it too. And though I never dreamed of climbing mountains, I am so grateful it was with this group.
