Christmas in Africa or Europe? Love these kinds of ‘hard’ decisions.

One of our hikes in Peru was a volcano, El Misti 19,101. But due to several terrible guide companies looking for fast cash they rushed the acclimatization process. Basically one night sleeping at 14,000ft to "acclimatize" and then the summit push around 0230. But b/c of this rushed time 60 to 75% of the hikers suffered altitude sickness.

Although this was a terrible experience that summit stuck in my mind. My life’s must do list contains things like, trek to base camp Everest, bag some Sierra 14ers and at least one of the 7 summits. Everest being completely unaffordable and a little dangerous -to say the least- I started to think of what a fellow El Misti hiker had said. She remarked that El Misti was only 300ft shorter then Kilimanjaro but that the Kilimanjaro hike was 5-7 days for acclimatization.

After some day dreaming and many of our destination conversations with Tracy we quickly spawned the idea of climbing Kilimanjaro being the highest peak for us to date along with it being one of the 7 summits.

The when was the most difficult as I was still in school and knew it would have to wait until I was done. Being back to work the wheels have begun to spin a great deal quicker. Time off and an incoming pay allows me to gather the means required for a trip of this nature.

The when was still a little uncertain as the mountain -like all mountains above 5000ft- have ideal times to climb them -especially when they are above 14,000ft. We are not prepared finically or physically to go before Kenya’s rainy season in 3 months or so. The fall isn’t bad September is a possibility but can get some rain. Although a little colder the clearest time of year is late December to the end of February.

So it might be September or late December of 2008. If December we would have just shy of a year to save and train for the trip, September obviously a little tighter. The idea would be to fly to Europe then to Nairobi. Once there meet with the guides and start our slow climb to acclimatize. With 6 day trek we can spend a little more time on the first day or so taking other side trails to bide time while acclimatizing properly and slowly.

Once the trek is over it would be nice to spend some time in Kenya but with the ongoing violence it would be best to head back to Europe (Spain or Greece or Germany…) for 5 to 7 days of R and R and site seeing, exactly where in Europe will be determined later. So there is a possibility of spending and interesting Christmas or New Year (09) in Africa or somewhere in Europe. This of course is a year a way so many things could change but this is hopefully the plan that will be completed.

The other major trip option for 2008 would be California to hike in the sierras, drive to Vegas for 2 or 3 days and then maybe back to Utah for some skiing or something along those lines. Not sure as there are so many places to explore…