The howling wind drives a rhythmic, frigid pelting hail against the tent walls, resonating into our ears and pounding the door of our consciousness like the big bad wolf threatening to blow our house down. We sit like piggies in paralyzed silence, unable to muster a retort. For now we enjoy our sloth-like pose, but in a few short hours we'd have to face the wolf, with her white glacial fangs gleaming across the Tanzanian wilderness.

After our feeble attempt at dinner, we plod back to our tents, with Kibo looming overhead in the occluded moonlight. She is light years away. Between 8pm and the remainder of eternity I pass my time in a semi-unconscious state, rolling about in my sleeping bag like a cocooned caterpillar, dreaming I will emerge with wings to fly to Uhuru Peak. I suppose I did manage a much needed wink or two, because I'm awoken by a cacophonous mumbling and clanking of equipment. I crawl from my sleeping bag at midnight feeling as if my fairy godmother had turned me into a rotten pumpkin rather than an agile butterfly. I now remember the time long ago when she warned me never to climb 4,000 feet in frigid darkness at high altitude on zero sleep.

I quickly put on my gear, a reasonably simple process, as I'd worn everything to bed but my boots, jacket, gloves, and headlamp. I am glad to have made my life a bit easier, because even simple mathematics at high altitude is confounding. Deciding what to wear upon waking at Barafu Camp on Kilimanjaro makes quantum physics look like child's play. By 12:05 I'm out of my tent and ready for battle...boots tied, gaiters strapped, wind proofed, headlamp shining, and water bottle in holster...ready to draw and shoot down water faster than you can say "hydrate".

The next six or seven hours I've been dreading from the first moment I set eyes on the climb itinerary. It's roots reach back to long, long ago, in a far off land, when a soft-middled nitwit with his charts and calculations before him, deemed it more favorable to camp at low altitude, awake at midnight and then trek all night...all for the glory of witnessing the sunrise upon arriving at the summit. It's a nice idea for those with an aesthetic longing, and somewhere buried in an obscure science text I'm sure the design is justified by solid reason... but on this morning, seeing the sunrise in seven hours time from our camp would be just as awe-inspiring, I'm sure. Nevertheless, I'm all dressed up...and I'm ready to go to the ball.

Jonas

After a cup of scalding tea, we're ready. Like an old steam engine pulling away from the station, we groan into motion, with our flashlights probing the eternal twisting path through the African night. The waxing moon is already bidding us good night and good luck, as it fades into the frozen oblivion of Kibo's southwestern Heim glacier. Freddy leads us slowly, forging his steady feet deliberately onward, like a steady locomotive churning to the rhythm of the engineer's heartbeat. He strides confidently without the use of a light, embracing each step in recognition of his past footprints from a hundred prior climbs. In his wake, we stumble, wheeze, and crawl, but are never for a moment anything but grateful for his lead. Jonas, our other guide walks behind the pack, acting as the plug which prevents us from draining into the abyss of hopelessness.

The lights of our headlamps quickly begin to wane, and we are forced to stop, pry our hands from the sanctity of their gloved warmth, and replace batteries. Every eye desperately scans the nearby rocks for a resting spot, or perhaps a suitable place to die. Freddy wisely instructs us to stay on our feet, as sitting will only exacerbate our fatigue.

Without further ado we move on, our group taking turns warding off the rising tide of mountain sickness. My revitalized headlamp shines eerily on the scree underfoot, the light moving outward in concentric circles and swirling at the edges, like a psychedelic whirlpool. I reassure myself that I am not at a Grateful Dead show, and stagger on, though soon swearing I can hear the gnomes from the Wizard of Oz chanting "All - we - are ...We owe - her", as the wicked witch of East Africa cackles on in hopes of our demise. We trudge on, our faith and our doubts waging a true war of attrition. We dream modestly of lazy Sundays in bed, more desperately envision a peaceful margarita-sipping afternoon on a beach in Aruba, and with a dangerous regressive passion long for our blissful time as an unborn zygote.

Dawn finally breaches into the inky obsidian of the night, and over my shoulder to the east, the jagged silhouette of Mawenzi (16,893ft.) juts into the crimson mist below. Massive indigo streaked glaciers soon flank our sides, and Stella Point, at the rim of Kibo's flat top, suddenly seems well within reach. Between intermittent sips of half-frozen slushy water, I mesmerize myself with the simple mantra of counting footsteps, inching slowly up Kibo's upper slope. My friends are close behind, singing, groaning, and distracting themselves naming capitals of U.S. states.

At 6:30am we crest Stella Point, gasping for oxygen, which here is one-half of that at sea level. Smiles creep from the corners of our mouths, as we gaze down upon the reflection of the red sun through a thin veneer of clouds so far below...a dizzying reminder of the heights we have scaled. Our celebration is short, as Uhuru Peak awaits. I had originally envisioned an easy saunter from Stella Point to the summit, and only now saw the scope of my underestimation, because even winking is arduous at 19,000 feet. Our taste of success at Stella has spawned our zeal for the prize, and we are off again across the gentle slope toward it. No sooner than a half step has passed when that very zeal reaches our stomachs, and we are again returning nutrients to the soil. The white naped ravens, who deem such an opportunity a gourmet meal, caw with delight.

We continue on nevertheless. At this point, we could notice a missing limb or two and continue unfazed to Uhuru. Arriving at the relatively unpointed "peak", we bumble about aimlessly like stooges, fumbling with our cameras, scribbling monosyllabic victory symbols in the summit logbook, and gawking with marvel at the panoramas of ethereal wonder. We all feel a certain anticlimactic sentiment, half expecting fireworks, a welcoming committee hosted by Ed McMahon, and an earth-shattering revelation where the meaning of life comes into perfect clarity...but only find only a frigid, oxygen-depleted and wind-swept mountaintop in the stratosphere.

We pose for a toothy group shot, which takes a valiant border collie- type effort from our guides, and then stare expectantly into the sky, awaiting our helicopter lift to the nearest hotel, where we'll be promptly tucked in bed. After ten seconds or so we give up and resign ourselves to the long slog down. Our day ends a few decades later at Mweka Camp, nestled in thick heather on Kili's southern slopes. Though our legs have all the rigidity of canned spaghetti and our faces carry a gaunt, lobotomized look, our hearts are filled with joy and our bellies with Kilimanjaro lager. We are happy.

Walking the next morning the verdant track twisting downward to the Mweka gate, it occurs to me that we have experienced an eclectic voyage like no other. As we strode from the moss cloaked tropical rainforest through many worlds to the barren glaciers of Kibo, our spirits had undergone a journey conceived in a whim for adventure, but ultimately measured by our will to take one more step, when we had not another step left in us. For us, Kilimanjaro has been more than the myth and the legend, more than the mystical landmark in the vast, acacia dotted savanna, but a metaphysical journey from one end of the earth to another.