The Trail of Tears - Part 1: The Weather

Mt. Kilimanjaro DID NOT want us there. It did everything it could to break our spirit and turn us back. One of its primary weapons – the weather.

Day one gave us a false sense of hope. Rain was predicted, but for the most part things remained dry. There was a moment when some light rain started to fall. We put on our rain gear, yet the rain quickly passed. We made it to base camp with high hopes. We felt like we beat the weather. Even Kenna was captured on camera saying that he knew the weather was going to be good despite the numerous predictions of rain.

I was nestled sung as a bug in a tent when I was woke by the tap tap of raindrops. After a few minutes the skies opened up and unleashed a total downpour. I thought it would pass, but it didn’t. It never freakin’ stopped – never ever. It rained EVERY day for several hours per day. Mother Nature was absolutely relentless. Working in the rain is difficut enough when you have a nice warm, dry hotel room to go back to at the completion of the day. However, when you are on a 7-day climb you are outside 100% of the time. Once you get wet it is difficult to dry off and the fact that it rained every day made it virtually impossible to ever get dry. Being wet in freezing temperatures is not fun – at all.


It's a beautiful day for a hike!


The weather made the climb both physically and mentally difficult. From a physical standpoint it is extremely uncomfortable to be wet all the time and it is also really harsh on the equipment. Working with rain gear on the camera is like shooting with a condom on. You become disconnected from the camera, the controls are difficult to manipulate, and everything takes much longer so it is easy to miss spontaneous moments. Keeping the lens clean is critical and extremely frustrating. Electronic equipment wasn’t designed to work in such conditions and as a result Mother Nature took the life of 2 cameras and turned them into dead weight we had to haul the rest of the climb.


Just another gorgeous day at camp


Mentally it was brutal also. I was constantly praying for a break in the weather. Not only was the precipitation difficult to deal with, but the visibility was awful. For much of the time I couldn’t see more than 20 yards in front of me! If we had good weather and clear visibility we could take a moment to soak in the awesomeness of the location and get motivated to keep climbing. However, it was a very claustrophobic feeling and for all we knew we could have been anywhere in the world. We didn’t have to fly all the way to Tanzania only to see some rocks and the ground below us!

The higher we got, the more difficult things became. The rain turned into sideways sleet pounding the exposed skin on our faces. One night I was in my tent and touched my face. That was a mistake. I felt like I was stabbing myself with a knife, but it was just my finger. My skin was totally trashed. Eventually the sleet turned into snow as Mount Kilimanjaro made its final attempt to break us with its weather. When you have been climbing all day for 6 days and you can taste the summit, it takes more than rain, sleet, and snow to stop you. I wasn’t going to stop until my body completely shut down. Fortunately it stayed strong, got me to the summit and just as important all the way back down.


Let it snow


The weather was brutal, but not enough to stop us. It wasn’t Mt. Kilimanjaro’s only weapon though. Altitude sickness was another. Stay tuned while I peel off my face.


Thanks to Marcin Kapron and Artur D. for the photos. Click on them to enlarge.

15 Frames of Fame

Pardon the interruption of my Africa stories, but holy crap I just got like totally famous! They say everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. Well, it looks like I only got about 15 frames, which is approximately 1/2 second but I'll take it. NBC is playing the behind the scenes footage of a commercial I shot for Jerry Seinfeld’s new show “The Marriage Ref” in heavy rotation. Last night it was on during Jay Leno’s show. If you look carefully you can see me lying on my belly on a sheet of ice in –15 degrees lining up a shot of Jerry’s shoe. OH the glamour.

I think the difficult conditions were worth it though. The clips from the spot look good and it will be a fun piece. Jerry and Tom were real troopers to be out there for hours in loafers and thin jackets. The other troopers were the awesome crew including my man Claire Popkin - camera assistant extraordinaire, cool as ice director Christian Charles, and the legendary Bob Fisher. Thanks to Jay Lavely a.k.a. Jay Lovely for the use of his lens and polarizer which were on the camera 90% of the time. With all of the traveling I do, I hope I won’t need a marriage ref anytime soon.

Here is a link to the video:
The Marriage Ref - Fishing Shack

Oh, What a Landing!

So I will be posting details about our epic climb up Kilimanjaro, but the first story that pops into my head happened after the climb. Many of the SOTS climbers and a few crewmembers including myself traveled to Ethiopia to visit Somali refugee camps and study their clean water situation. We had to fly from Addis Ababa, our home base, to Jijiga, which is one of the driest places on Earth and is located near the Ethiopia-Somalia border. Jijiga is too far away to get there by car, so the UN chartered a plane for us - a very small one!

We pack ourselves and our equipment into a little prop plane with no toilet. Instead of the pilot coming on the intercom and explaining the flight details like we are all used to, he simply turned around in his seat and said, “About one hour. The flight will be about one hour.” OK groovy - I think I can last one hour without having to pee. I left my special pee bottle on the top of Kilimanjaro, so I had no choice but to go easy on the bottle of water in front of me. We then find out that we will not be landing at an airport, but a very small landing strip. OK, I can deal with that – I think.

We take off and all is well. The flight is very smooth and our bladders behave. We are on our final approach to Jijiga and about to touch down when suddenly the pilot guns the engines and we go into an aggressive climb. I can see him and the co-pilot in heavy discussion. Apparently they can’t find the landing strip. Wonderful. We start to circle around as the pilot looks for a place to land. My face is glued to the window and I am doing my best to help our pilot find good landing spot. If I see one I will tap him on the shoulder and let him know!


"Hey man, do you see a runway down there???"


He finds a reasonable spot to land and swings around to attempt another landing. As he is doing this he says, “I wonder if they are going to move the camels off the runway.” Let’s hope they do Mr. Pilot, but right now I am more concerned with the large building right in front of us as we are touching down. Let me tell you, it is very strange to be able to see out the front of a plane especially when landing on a dirt field in the middle of a town. Yes, that is exactly what we did – land in a field in the middle of a town, not a landing strip. Apparently our pilot was given the wrong coordinates. Ugh.

Well, he did a great job of improvising and got us down safely so major props to him. As we are letting out large sighs of relief I see people appearing on the horizon – hundreds of them! They start to surround the plane and it is quite unsettling. Fortunately they don’t seem to be hostile – just very excited and curious as to why a plane landed right in the middle of their town. More and more people surround us when suddenly dudes with sticks show up and drive them back from the plane. We are all instructed to wait in the plane for UN vehicles to come pick us up and take us to the correct location.


Our ride out of there


Suddenly dudes with AK-47s show up. Is this real, or am I dreaming we are in the film Black Hawk Down? Well, it is real and God I HOPE the guys with the AK-47s are on our team. Fortunately they appear to be and provide backup to the guys with sticks as the crowd is driven further back. The UN vehicles show up and we immediately get in and are on our way to the refugee camp. The UN vehicles tell us they won’t stop and we are not allowed to take any video or pictures out the window. It is a bit of a dicey political situation that I don’t fully understand and we were in a place we shouldn’t have been so we respect their wishes and get out of there as efficiently as possible.


View of our plane from inside the UN vehicle - we come in peace


This was certainly a situation I won’t soon forget. As I look out the window I see a level of poverty I have never witnessed. I always knew I was lucky to be born where I was, but what I see out the window simply twists my brain. I am so glad to be part of this group that is doing incredible things to help people in need.

For more details on our visit to Ethiopia check out Elizabeth Gore’s blog post. Thank you Elizabeth for being so awesome!
Summit on the Summit Blog

SUMMIT!!!

I successfully made it to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro!!! It was absolutely brutal. Details to come, but sleep is my top priority now.

Preparing for the Climb

I have spent the past couple of days traveling and prepping the shoot
here at the Arusha hotel @ 3,000ft. I am pretty jet lagged, my stomach
is queezy and I am concious of every breath. This is nothing compared
to what we will face starting on Jan. 7th. After our last meeting with
our guide we were all wondering when the next flight back to NY is. It
doesn't look like bailing is an option at this point so I decided to
put on a mask and pray to the gods instead.

On my way...

All the preperation & training is over. I am on my way to Africa! I should be updating the blog, but anything is possible when I get there so I just don't know for sure. Here is a link to the offical website:

Summit on the Summit Website

Even if I can't update the Captain's Blog you will be able to get info there.

The adventure begins NOW!!!

The training continues...

...at Graham Hills with Edwin but no bikes!