That was one insane and brutal summit hike!

We started at about 2300 on Monday and trekked for 8 hours up steep, rocky terrain at an agonisingly slow pace.

Temperature was well below -20 and the altitude took no prisoners.

It was particularly hard to balance the right moving speed to stay warm vs not moving too fast against the altitude. On top of that most of our water froze, despite our best efforts.

The guides were incredible and I’m 100% certain we would not have made it to the top without them. The best moments were when they broke into Swahili singing – excellent motivation.

!!Gross chat warning!!

On the other hand the worst moment was when my bowels let me down. So there I was squatting with my arse out in -20, in the dark, begging another team mate for some wet wipes. It got worse but I’ll save you the details!

Seeing the sunrise at Stella point and finally reaching the summit an hour later was epic, despite being quite busy. Lots of hugs and photos ensued.

But our chief guide was keen to get us down pretty pronto. So we braced ourselves for a knee burner of a descent, reaching our base camp about 2 hours later.

The summit hike is definitely up there as one of the hardest things I’ve done. Pushing through altitude sickness was a real grit grinder. Without a doubt I had underestimated how much determination was required to push to the top. And the risk to life is very real. We definitely passed some potential casualties in other groups. One guy even curled up on the side of the track until his guide got him moving again.

There are no accurate death figures for Kili available but we know it happens, the guides are just not allowed to tell us. Kili is the easiest of the 7 Summits but it’s still the highest mountain in Africa.

We should never underestimate the mountain.