19 341 Feet: Kilimanjaro Part XVIII

Climbing Kilimanjaro with Claire

The only woman on our expedition

I can hear her breathing.

I hate when I can hear somebody breathing. Especially when I’m trying to sleep. I grew up with snorers — three brothers and a father whose combined witching hour wheezings sounded like a midnight lumber mill. I despise a loud sleeper.

We are a few hours away from our final ascent. The steepest, the coldest, the windiest, the darkest, and the most dangerous of times. Every second of sleep counts, and I haven’t counted a single second. So why doesn’t Claire’s breathing bother me?

I should be glowering up at the bunk above me, casting spells against this woman in an ancient language, cursing her to grow a long ugly hair in between her eyebrows with each and every emphatic exhale.

Instead, I’m listening, trying to soak up her soundtrack. I wouldn’t want silence over her sighs. I know I won’t fall asleep tonight unless she falls asleep first.

Claire is the only woman on this expedition. She has red hair, blue-green eyes, and all the other features you might find on a fiery lass in a Dublin pub. Yet here she is, scaling up the side of Africa’s tallest mountain.

We met on Tinder, but I tell people that I rescued her after she fell off a yacht. We knew we liked each other, but we didn’t know if things would truly work out between us until we took a spontaneous trip to Havana together.

Spontaneous, and also a tiny bit disastrous. Nothing worked out . . . except for us. Somehow, we laughed our way through a week of scams, sunburns, sickness, and struggle, and left the country with our first shared memories. We were starting to become something bigger than a couple of bodies choosing to bump into each other.

Claire is every ounce as tough as that stereotypical scrappy lass in that proverbial Irish pub. Before we left for Tanzania, I suggested that we should make a plan, just in case one of us couldn’t keep climbing.

“Oh,” Claire said, as if the thought had never occurred to her. “If you have to turn around that’s okay. I’ll see you on the way down.” We only had to plan for what happens if I can’t make it.

I’m not going to tell the story of Claire climbing Kilimanjaro. It’s a good story, but it belongs to her. All I can do is tell the story of what it is like to climb Kilimanjaro with Claire.

It’s a nightmare!

No, it’s not. I just know that she reads these articles, and any chance I get to rouse a little fire inside her, I’ll take it.

Climbing this mountain with Claire is almost cheating. She’s my escalator, my God mode, my source of unlimited lives. I could describe our journey in broad brush strokes, but I think that would just leave you with hallmark card cliches about perseverance and love. So here’s something specific.

We were crossing The Saddle yesterday — a windswept alpine desert I have written about elsewhere. For this story, all you need to know is that this stretch of our climb was long, cold, and lonely. We usually travel in single file, but The Saddle is wide open. Without ever discussing it, Claire and I found ourselves side-by-side.

I honestly don’t know which one of us started singing.

I said maaaaaaaaybe, your tiny lip balm will save meeeeeeee.

But I know that both of us carried on.

Hey, I just met you. And this is crazy. But here’s my number. Climb Kili maybe?

Whoaaaaaa we’re halfway there! Whoaaaaa: Kilimanjaro needs stairs!

Wake me up, before you go go! I’m not planning on climbing solo!

Can anybody find meeeeeeee, somewhere for lunch!

Here comes the summit do do do do, here comes the summit I say, it’s alright

It was nothing more than showing off, both of us trying to prove how clever we could be. But in the midst of that childish nonsense, I was no longer worried about the wind, or mountain sickness, or oxygen deprivation. I was simply grateful to be who I was, where I was. I wouldn’t trade that moment for any other moment I’ve ever lived.

I want to get to the top of Kilimanjaro. I really do. But if I don’t make it that’s okay, because what I really want is to be with Claire back at the bottom again. And then, after that, to be with Claire everywhere else too.

She’s my peak.

Catch the previous part of my Kilimanjaro series here:

Check out this tale of embarrassment by Nicholas Patton: