Team Sole Sisters

For most, New Year’s resolutions seldom see the light of February. For us however, we knew 2011 was going to be extraordinarily different. Why? We were going to make it so. Having endured and overcome some rather unexpected and crushing setbacks over the previous couple of years, we wanted to regain our enthusiasm for life. We set out with the idea of making this year one of new beginnings and one that would be life changing in more ways than one. We were going to achieve something far bigger than ever before, something that would require much more of everything we had.

Living under the shadow of one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature, the majestic Table Mountain, it’s easy to understand how we’ve come to love mountains. They have a way of refreshing your spirit; they make you feel energised, drawing you back for more. Not sure how really, but they do. After a pretty exciting family brainstorming session one evening back in January, we came up with the idea to tackle the world’s highest free-standing mountain. As we thought through and discussed the dream together however, a deep sense of anxiety about whether it could be done seemed to swamp us. Bearing in mind that climbing any mountain is a personal journey that requires each individual to overcome their own physical and mental challenges, this was going to push the boundaries for us and there were serious risks to consider. Sure, getting to the top requires a level of team work, but at the end of the day it’s ultimately your own personality that will determine whether or not you reach your goal or turn your back on your dream.

Not many kids on this planet have reached the highest peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We’re a family and families do stuff together, right? If we were going to tackle Kili, we would need to plan to summit when Hannah was legally allowed to do so. Climbing above 3 000 m (9 842 ft) Above Mean Sea Level (AMSL) on Kili is discouraged by the Kilimanjaro National Parks and summiting at any age younger than 10 is illegal. Ok, so to do this thing right we had to aim at summiting on Hannah’s 10th birthday. We researched the idea and discovered that no one had ever actually done that. What would we do without Google? If Hannah was successful, she would become the youngest person to legally summit Africa’s highest peak. She would set a new world record. Game on!

As fortune would have it, we would be able to ‘head for the hills’ during the October school holidays. It did however mean two weeks off school, but hey, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to achieve something extraordinary. It’s quite amazing how things seem to come together when you have a goal and purpose, and you work together to pull out all the stops to make it happen. As we began to prepare we started to see the goal in our mind’s eye like we had already achieved it. Anxiety was soon replaced by the excitement of the adventure. What if we could achieve our goal of summiting Kilimanjaro? More to point; what couldn’t we achieve after that? Our minds started to wander about reaching other summits – the seven other highest continental peaks, perhaps? Scaling the highest peaks of each of the world’s seven continents was surely not out of reach. Ok, let’s keep this real… let’s start with Kili and see how we go.

Although most of the popular routes up Mt Kilimanjaro are not technical climbs that require special climbing gear like ropes, crampons and ice axes, it is the fourth highest peak of the ‘7 summits challenge’ at 5 895 m (19 341 ft) AMSL. The oxygen level at that altitude is less than half of what it is at sea level, where we live in Cape Town. Young lungs and little bodies need to be specially trained for the challenges and changes that take place over the 8 days of the trek. This was not so much a climb we would be preparing for, but a very tough trek up into the sky, that fewer than 30% of the people that attempt it complete, so we had a lot to do before October.