 go. Welcome everyone. Today is going to be the first episode from Monday series. Someone has suggested that we start going live on Mondays, 6 p.m. Arizona time again, and then we will start Kilimanjaro series. So during these live streams, Monday, 6 p.m. Arizona time, we will focus solely on Kilimanjaro series. We will talk about Mount Kilimanjaro in general, how to prepare, and then share with you how things are progressing with us. We will try to limit the Monday live streams to 30 to 45 minutes, and then we will also have our Thursday live streams just like usual. We will try to stay pretty on topic with just Kilimanjaro stuff so that we don't, um, otherwise, you know, start double dipping on the topics for the other one. We want people that want to focus on one or the other to be able to find that. And obviously after we do Kilimanjaro, we would like the original purpose of the Thursday live to remain so. Hi Geraldine. Hi Geraldine. I saw your message on Instagram, but I was rushing to set everything up. All right, so since this is going to be the first episode of the series, we're going to keep it pretty, mellow, pretty simple, and we're just going to talk about the mountain in general. Sure, basic information for starters. Yeah, so I did take some notes here so that I don't give any wrong information, but there are a lot of information that goes into preparing and planning for Mount Kilimanjaro. So many topics to talk about, but for right now we'll just talk about the mountain itself. Geraldine feels famous whenever we use her name. All right, so we'll see how many people will join us today. This is the first time we are doing this live on Monday. The normal ones are on Thursday. So Mount Kilimanjaro. Where is Mount Kilimanjaro located? Africa. Technically, I guess it's Tanzania and it's right on the border, the northern border of Tanzania with Kenya. I should know this, Kenya, which is where the giraffes are that we were thinking about going to see. We're probably not going to do that sadly. But anyway, north side of Tanzania. So Mount Kilimanjaro is located in Tanzania, in Africa. And one of the things or one of the reasons why Mount Kilimanjaro is pretty famous, and you hear a lot of people, especially people who are into hiking and adventure traveling, talk about Mount Kilimanjaro, is because it's the highest mountain in Africa. The tallest mountain in Africa is Mount Kilimanjaro. And the elevation of the mountain is, I guess, I don't know. 19,322? Close. I hope so. So the mountain is 19,341 feet. So close. 20 feet off. So that's the elevation of the mountain. It's pretty high in meters. That's 5,895 meters above sea level. So it's pretty up there. And I will say the individual claim to fame, though, for this particular mountain is that it's the tallest, it's a freestanding mountain. Yes. Which means it's not in a range of mountains. There's not peak, peak, peak, peak, peak, peak. It's just Africa mountain. Kilimanjaro. Right there. Nothing else. And not only that, but it's the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, not just in Africa. So there isn't really a mountain that's higher than 19,341 feet that's standing on its own other than Kilimanjaro. The other reason why Mount Kilimanjaro is pretty famous is because it's one of the seven summits. And the seven summits are the seven highest mountains of every continent. One of these seven of them. The tallest one on each continent. So seven summits and Mount Kilimanjaro by way of being one of the summits makes it pretty important. And my understanding, too, is that there's a glacier on top of Kilimanjaro. And obviously, with the study of the world being what it is right now, there's not going to be the guarantee that there's going to be a glacier there forever, let alone for too long. I think they said within the next 20 years, it's very possible that there won't be a glacier there. Now, my understanding of that, though, they say that obviously that's a really good buzz phrase. There'll still be ice there in order for something to be classified as a glacier. It has to be ice that moves a certain amount per year. But still, the fact remains that it'll be receding. And they pull a lot of fresh water, water that they use to provide to hikers from the runoff from that glacier. So obviously, as the years go on, that may become less and less accessible, more expensive, the experience may change. We'd really like to try to get in there for the experience as it currently is. And a lot of people, obviously, because the glacier is not going to be there for long, I mean, 20 years to 30 years, a lot of people who are passionate about ice climbing really try to get to ice climb in Mount Kilimanjaro, which I can only imagine, but I'm sure it's pretty neat. Question for later. What inspired you guys to hike this mountain? Yeah, we will sneak that in here, I guess in the middle. That's a really good one. So the other thing about Mount Kilimanjaro, not only it's a mountain, but it's a dormant volcano, and it's got three volcanic cones. I wrote the names. I knew two of them. I didn't know the third one. I wrote it down, but I can't even read my hand right anymore. So three volcanic cones. Yeah. Ice cream, wafer, chocolate sprinkles. No. So we've got Kibo, and then we've got Movenzi, Mavenzi, I don't know how to say that. And then we've got Shira. And they refer to it as the Shira Plateau. So these are the three volcanic cones on the mountain. Now, as far as the activity of the volcano, the last activity happened about 200 years ago. It was not a major eruption, but the major eruption on the mountain happened about 360 thousand years ago. So it's pretty dormant. And if I remember, from whatever Netflix show I was watching, we're due for another super eruption at some point on that bad boy. I mean, geologically soon, but I think soon actually means like the numbers suggest quite soon. So who knows, maybe we'll, maybe we won't need our zoom scope. Wide frame. All right. So with that being said, the name of the mountain Mount Kilimanjaro, why is it called Mount Kilimanjaro? What does it mean? I don't have a clever one for this. So the name of the mountain is pretty tricky because the majority of people don't really know what it means. The closest that they got to was a term from the Shaga people or people who lived at the bottom of the mountain. They had their own Tanzanian dialect, not Swahili, they had their own dialect. And a lot of people think that the meaning of Kilimanjaro is something close to that which defeats the caravan or that which is hard for a bird to climb. So this is the best translation that they were able to come up with, but there isn't really just a straightforward translation. Oh, yeah. Interesting. I take a caravan back there meant like a group of people or a person, an expedition or something like that. Hey, Mark. Hey, it's Mark. We're starting to see familiar faces. This is great. Awesome. So we are still talking about Mount Kilimanjaro. This is the first series of Mount Kilimanjaro, Monday, 6 p.m. Arizona time. This is episode one. Kilimanjaro. Kilimanjaro. I see a hyphenated buzz phrase in the making. All right. So what do we got? I win, which is always true. I win. Remember that from Big Daddy? No. What's he doing? What game are we playing? I win. How do you play? I win. Let's play again. I win again. Coders and their buzz words, phrases. Ah. See, he knows. He knows. He knows. Let's see. What else? With the Kilimanjaro thing, though, you were saying that there are three peaks. And I recognize Kibo and Shira from the Shira Plateau that you were saying as well. And the way that the hike works is you kind of like, you don't just go straight up and tell me if I'm starting to step on bigger stuff. I got here late, so I didn't see the script. Anyway, so you go around the mountain, right? You don't just go straight up to the top and in an attempt to acclimatize as you go. So you do get to see a lot of the surrounding features on many of the different routes that you can take from bottom to top, of which there are many. That's definitely a different topic. But I'm under the impression, how many of those do we actually see on our route? I'm guessing Kibo and Shira, but are we going to see Moenze? Moenze? So the thing about Mount Kilimanjaro is that, first of all, it's not a mountain that you can climb on your own. Since 1991, the government of Tanzania had made a mandatory for people to be with a licensed guide and a company that takes you up the mountain. And then also, there isn't just one route to get to the top of the mountain. So it really depends on what route you are taking. And that will dictate what cones you will be able to see. So every route is different. There are nine routes, seven of them you can take to ascend the mountain. And then two of them you can take to descend the mountain. And obviously, every route takes different amount of days to get to the top of the mountain. And there are some volcanic cones that you will be able to see and some that you won't be able to see based on the route that you are taking. Okay. It's different for preparing supplies being out of country. You seem to have companies there that supply Moenze. So the way that we've understood some of the stuff that we're going to end on our trip are obviously, when you start to sleep higher up, you're going through a couple of different climate zones on this trip. You're getting some elevation. And at the bottom, obviously, there's a tropical zone in our area at the top. It's quite cold. And they had the opportunity, well, they still have it, obviously, to rent a couple pieces of equipment if you need to that otherwise, you know, might be like one-off things for you. Like you don't want to go purchase a zero-degree bag if you're not going to ever use it. Those things aren't cheap, let alone just hanging your garage. So you can just rent one from them. And I think they tell you how much space and how much weight they take up. Because the amount of weight that you can bring on and hand off to other people, et cetera, things you have to take into consideration as well. But bed rolls, tents, sleeping bags, stuff like that, they'll take care of for you. You can even ask them for a little toilet if you don't want to show everybody. Yeah, that also just depends. So obviously, you will have to go through a company and then they will supply you with, it's even mandatory for the company that you're going with that they have a group of porters and they have a cook and then they have the first guide and then the two guides. So the way it works, you will have the main guide in the front and then you will have the assistant guide in the back and then the porters are going to help carry your equipment. You will still have your own backpack. But by the end of the day, it's up to you how much you can carry. At the very minimum, you should be able to carry some of your day hike gear and then enough water for you to get up the mountain. You said soon, did you mean like sous chef? Like is that like the second? Yeah. Awesome. So the cook be cooking meals for y'all as well or just for the porters? Usually they cook for everyone. So they will provide you with all the necessary meals, at least that's from our experience when we hike the Inca Trail in Peru. So they would set camp and they cook for everyone, including the porters. And one of the things that really kind of comes down to obviously you pay for this trip, but you're kind of expected to tip as well at the end. And a lot of that money will go toward these porters, toward these people cooking new food and such directly. So yeah. So these are the the main things for anyone who's planning to climb Kilimanjaro. These are the big questions that you're going to be asking in the beginning. Which route do I want to choose that takes a good amount of time to decide what route do you want to go with? So that's something that we're going to talk about maybe in the next episode. And then what company do you want to climb the mountain with? Because there are more than 200 agencies that you can go and climb the mountain with. And the prices range from 1000 to pretty much $10,000, if not more, depending on you know how luxurious the trip can be. So it really depends how much you can afford. And it really takes time to decide what is the right tour operator to go with. So all of these we're going to talk about in the next episodes. So do you mind if we answer Geraldine's question really quick then? Yeah. Before we get too far away. So why did we pick this mountain? Originally last year we'd been talking about Elbrus. And I think after we were coming off of the Alaska High with the ice climbing that we were doing there, we were really excited about the prospect of doing some ice climbing. And Elbrus is the the tallest peak in Europe, despite the fact that it's actually in Russia. But it's still on you know the European plate. And the price was good and we just didn't kind of we didn't quite make it fit our schedule. And it was just a little too soon. And we started looking around and we decided that we'd always wanted to do Kilimanjaro as well. It was just more accessible, more available, matched our profile for the skills that we wanted to bring to the table and were comfortable with. And like we were saying earlier too with some of the stuff with the glaciers and other things, the experience was really one to capitalize on. Plus with the pandemic we were under the impression that everybody was dragging their feet on international travel. So some prices might be down. So we decided to commit to it. And I couldn't be more excited to be honest with you. Yeah. And also because obviously with the pandemic, a lot of other countries, the first one we wanted to do was mount Elbrus in Russia. But it's pretty hard to travel to Russia. And Tanzania was pretty open throughout the pandemic to be fair. So it just seemed to be the easiest option for this year. But yeah, pretty excited for Kilimanjaro. Let's talk about the difficulty of the climb being Kilimanjaro. Is Mount Kilimanjaro a difficult mountain? So first off, compared to other mountains or the seven summits or even some of the highest peak here in the U.S. Mount Kilimanjaro is not as technical, but that depends on the route, obviously. But generally speaking, it's not a technical mountain. You're not going to need any mountaineering skills or skills using ropes or climbing or using an ice axe or crampons. It's not going to be mandatory. The difficulty of Mount Kilimanjaro lays in how much pain can you handle because on an average, you will be climbing for at least five days or between five to eight days. And then also with the altitude. That's the biggest challenge is the altitude, the highest you go up, the more difficult it gets. So to be fair, it is a difficult climb. I mean, a lot of people say it's the most difficult thing they've ever done, but it's not as technical and as challenging as some other mountains. Yeah, I think that's a really fair statement to say that. It's not technical compared to the other ones. But you still have to drag your fat dairy here all the way up to the top of that mountain. And as you get another thousand feet up and you have twice, I think there's a pretty impressive ratio of oxygen that you lose in parts per million every thousand feet you go up. And like I said, the highest we've been is like 17,400 or something in Peru. So we know we've been close. But the real fear for us is the acclimatization. So we will be taking some dimox, of which actually that's what I didn't do before I came in. I'm going to go pick that up from the pharmacy, actually, because I got that today. Oh, nice. You got the prescription? Yep. So apparently I'm just going to have to hang on to these things. And we're taking those and we're going to take malaria pills, obviously, because we need to pay attention to malaria. Now, these pills that we're taking, not to get into medicine too much. We're going to take the daily ones. And once you kind of start taking them, you can't really stop taking them. So we're going to have to take them all the way through being on the mountain. And we're told that those mixed with some of the dimox might give us some queasiness. So we're going to practice those at some point too. And the doctor said it was fine for us to give them a trial run. But aside, side note, and we did, by the way, have a live stream. I'm going to link to it. And then we talked about our experience with the passport health. It's an agency that you go through. If you're traveling internationally, you go, you set an appointment with them, they sit with you, and then they walk you through all of the requirements as far as the vaccines, visa, and so on to different countries around the world. And we thought that was pretty helpful to meet with them. And we talked about the whole experience in the previous live stream as well. It's like 85 bucks for a single person, 60 for the second person, if you go as like a couple. So that 145 total. You get a little bit of money off and feel it online. Can you answer Mark's question? Sure. 17,000 feet. Did you notice a huge difference in breathing? I personally haven't noticed a difference on breathing, but it's pretty much the headaches. The headaches for me, when we were up higher than 15,000 feet, it was pretty bad. Especially when I was, even when I was descending at some point, ascending was horrible. I had to take breaks every two minutes. The guide who went with us, the only reason we took a guide when we went to that mountain in Peru is because we needed someone to drive us to the trail head. So the guide had an oxygen canister and he was asking the whole time, do you need oxygen? Do you need oxygen? I didn't take oxygen from him, but it was mainly the headaches. And to be fair, I didn't take any, you know, Advil or anything of that sort. You didn't have to take mule either. And when you go up there, it's really ridiculous. I'll say for me, I totally noticed a different breathing. I was definitely, now we had to climatize. We did this Rainbow Mountain after we did the Inca Trail. So we had to climatize to 13,000 feet or something already on the trail and we're kind of already doing some physical work in that area. So we were much more prepared. When we did Humphreys Peak here in Arizona the one time, it's pretty low here in Phoenix, just getting up to 11,000 feet. Took our breath away the first time we were up there because we just went from, you know, 1,600 feet up to 11,000. Man, yeah, you can feel your heart beating every time you bend over and stand back up like you've got to take a minute, like you feel like you see the spots. You've got to make sure you're hydrated. You can definitely tell, but that's what the acclimatization time is for. We pick a longer trip up the mountain because we know we want that time for our body to adjust. Because you just need to be able to get oxygen around all the necessary parts and your body will react to the depleted amount of oxygen in the air over time. That's the acclimatization. But there are a lot of, I'm sorry, Glenn. No, if I can ramble on for a minute. No, I was going to say, there are a lot of things that you can do in order for the altitude sickness to not hit you very hard. I mean, there's so many tips. Maybe we can just talk about it in a whole other live stream, but really with the diamox really helps if your doctor approves of it. Drinking a lot of water is very important to make sure that you are hydrated. And then a lot of people recommend drinking orange juice. Obviously, you want to stay away from alcohol as well. You want to make sure that you are eating proper food. And then when we were on Peru, we were chewing on coca candy and coca leaves. So they pretty much just give you the leaves and then you roll them and then you chew on them the whole time. And it helps a little bit. And yeah, and also the candies, oh my god, I love the coca candies, but I couldn't bring any to the US. And they give us a little tea in the, on the high as well. So they would just kind of take the leaves. One of the things the porters will do, and I'm hearkening back to a bit of Peru with this, is when you get high enough, they'll boil water for you and make sure you have clean water. And some of the services provided typically also include some warm water at the end of the day to kind of wash off your feet and your face, etc. And they'll usually give you something when you get out of bed as well to kind of get you up and go and partial like a little alarm clock. With the altitude though for the Rainbow Mountain, I will definitely say when we went up though, man, I was, I was definitely moving slow. They have something they talk about on Kilimanjaro. One of the phrase they say is pulley, pulley, slowly, slowly. And no rush. There's not a lot of distance. I think it's like a 40 mile hike in total over the course of the six days of the scent that we're doing. Granted, some of it you kind of just burn time, acclimatize and going up and a little bit down. They always want you to hike high during the day to get your body used to that altitude and then go down a bit and sleep where you have more oxygen capable of replenishing your body while you're sleeping. So they say hike high, sleep low. And when we got all the way up there though, I just, I just felt like I couldn't move and they're going to talk about this thing called a rest step is where you take a step and then you breathe and then you take a step and then you breathe. And I hope it doesn't come to that for me. But man, because that feels like that's just slow progress, but I'm kind of like mentally calibrating for taking the altitude very seriously when we get there. Question from Mark. When you climb, is this similar to Mount McKinsey, which is cloud covered constantly or is Kilimanjaro have more clear days? I guess it just depends. The cool thing about Mount Kilimanjaro is the fact that it has different ecological systems. I mean when you're hiking, you're going through cultivated lands and then it's the rainforest and then it's the desert alpine and then the tundra and then the the arctic towards the summit. And I think just by way of being very diverse, the weather is gonna be constantly changing. So it's very common for it to rain. Like you said, it's going to be covered in fog and then we can also get clear days. It really just depends. And as a result too of it being a freestanding mountain, there's not a ridge, right? There's not a hard divide between one climatological system and another climatological system. Usually what'll end up happening is all that air coming in for like a weatherman. Bounce off the mountain and shoot straight up and you get a lot of this hot air from the ground that pushes straight up into the sky. As it moves up there and cools off very rapidly, that's where a lot of the excess moisture needs to be shed and you get a lot of weather variety higher up there. This being a freestanding mountain, it's got a couple of other eccentricities because it can be a bit more random there. So you just have to pick the right season. It is quite consistent. But at the end of the day, I mean, there's no guarantee. I mean, we might get stuck and might have to go back down. Who knows? Yeah, I think that's exactly what I was thinking after reading Mark's question. How long will they allow you on the summit? And please video, take a video when you are up there. So that's the thing with mountains like this. You really, I mean, we don't know, we don't have a guarantee that we are going to make it up the mountain. Obviously, if we make it all the way up, I'm certainly taking a video. If I can do a live stream, I'll do a live stream, which probably will not be possible. But it's just with mountains like this, you invest a lot of time and money and effort, but there are no guarantees that you are going to get up the mountain. And then also, it depends on how your body is dealing with the altitude. They check your blood pressure and then heart rate. And then if the guy blood oxygen level as well, and if the guy decides that you're not a good fit to continue on, then you're not going to continue on. And you just have to take it as a champion and go back. There is no resistance. So you pretty much, you're just going, you're giving it the best by way of training physically and mentally and being on a good diet right now. But there is no guarantee that you will go, you will make it up the mountain. And if you don't, I mean the company, there's nothing that they can do about it. You just have to try another time. I will say, I think I did understand a little bit too mark your question, how much time on the summit? I think they give us about 15 to 20 minutes. 15 to 20, yeah. Is how much time you really get. There's a good amount of people going up, right? So it's not like you can really stand. I can't say that I've seen any things that make it look like Everest, like people are standing in line. But I certainly don't think it's going to be a solo experience. But I'll take a video, celebrate. I debated bringing a little step ladder with me. Whip it out of my back, you know what I mean? And then step up and stand two feet taller than everybody else. Take that. I don't know if I'm gonna do that though. Yeah, but also it depends on what route you're choosing. Some routes have higher chances or higher success rates. And the route that we chose is the Machami route. It has a higher success rate. So usually the way it works the longer the, when you spend more days on the mountain your success rates are higher. And so that's what we what we went with. I think there's one or two routes that start in Kenya and then a couple of them start from various areas all around the mountain. And they all have different profiles and different success rates as a result of the path they take to the top. Lake Ibiza said though there are two main ways off the mountain though. A lot of people coming up but they don't want you walking past a lot. So as you can imagine coming down from that too is like danger on your knees and your ankles after a lot of hiking. You got to take going down just as seriously as you do take going up. What's happening here? It's part of the training. Have you also picked a summon pose and started practicing it? No. I have not. But now you've got me thinking about it. You go watch old WWF or WWB. We don't we don't have any glamorous poses on the summit. It's usually we both are looking like we're gonna die and then someone is wearing funny pink gloves that don't fit and all our summit photos are ugly. Oh and I was going to say too about the mule though. We were talking about the rainbow mountain. Wow I'm way back in the day now. They brought mules up to the mountain too and would let people ride up rainbow mountain and Peru mules. I don't think they're going to do that here. I mean I feel bad for those mules. The big people. They're like oh yeah I got the top of the mountain. Cool. So I think we pretty much covered what I wanted to talk about today as far as just an intro about the mountain and then the last the next live streams will focus on specific topics. So we'll have one to talk specifically about the routes and one to talk about how to pick a tour agency and then maybe one to talk about gear and another one talking about how to prepare physically and mentally. So I'm just gonna see. We do one for unnecessary things that you can justify buying. I really want to get one of those like GPS clocks or little watches or whatever so I can tell my altitude while I'm up there because lord knows I'm going to be going up the hill. I can really feel that 17,010. It's a lot more than 17,004 just a few steps ago. I like stuff like that. Get those goggles. Dude the the joolbows right the ones I was telling. I think I'm going to pull the trigger on them today because they look pretty sweet with the curlies around and the oh man I'm really bird man. It's funny there's a company that's reached out to me about two days ago and they they reached. Sorry I said do it. What? I was just celebrating with the all caps and the exclamation point I was pumped up. Anyway so any questions about the mountain? I think the end of the breakfast club. Oh I know the I mean I'm very familiar with the breakfast club. I don't think I know a pose that would be at the end of it. I don't know. Let me see what else to say. I think I wasn't reading everything. It was like you got to watch it again. I guess I do. How long will they allow you? And please video when I'm to... We read all of the cards. Sorry sorry sorry. You gotta practice your pen spin tricks. Okay awesome so the plan for this one was to go for 30 minutes so I guess we'll we'll wrap it up here. Awesome. Cool. Well thanks guys for joining. Yep and we'll uh we'll we'll come back next week obviously with some more stuff to just kind of chat and share about. All right. Bye everybody. Talk to you guys next week.