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Hello - My name is Gavin Roper and my partner's name is Kelly Love, we both live in Fence Burnley and are new to the website. We hope you like our story
On the 31st August 2007, Kelly and I set off to Tanzania to try and climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
Kilimanjaro Uhuru Peak stands at 19,340 ft (5,895 meters) and it takes 7 days and 6 nights to complete.
So why did we do this you ask? (I know that's what I'd been thinking in the run up, traipsing up and down the Lake District every weekend since Last New Year!) Well two reasons:.
1) We wanted a challenge to help us keep fit.
2) And wanted to raise some money for a well worth charity - Macmillan Cancer Care.
So having received Macmillan's fundraising activities pack we came upon the Kilimanjaro trek, minds made up I e-mailed them to enquire about a place for us, unfortunately they were booked solid until 2009!
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Not to be deterred we made the decision to organise ourselves and go ahead with the trip anyway.
After many long and late nights surfing the internet I found a company called Nature Discovery, who couldn't have been more helpful.
They also had the added bonus of being highly recommended for really taking care of their workers and campaigning for better working conditions for everyone working on the mountain.
So we booked ourselves in and began training hard to do everything we possibly could to make sure we made it to the top.
We took The Machame (Whiskey) Route which is a rugged combination of routes which begins through the rainforest at Machame Village on the southwest side of the mountain, and over seven days the route rises onto the edge of the Shira Plateau, down into the beautiful Great Barranco Valley, then circumvents the Kibo massif counter-clockwise through alpine desert until reaching Barafu Camp.
The trek to the summit was done overnight to the crater rim on the steep screen slopes of the east-south-east facing Mweka Route.
The trek winds through some beautiful scenery, which changes quite dramatically every day. The route was done in seven days includes an extra day at Karanga Valley Camp, at 13,000 feet (3,950 mt.), between Barranco and Barafu Camps, to help split the long day in half, and also it is important for acclimatization.
The route was physically challenging and the overnight trek to the summit required mental and physical toughness, due to the high altitude and short amount of time to rest before the overnight summit attempt, but all this is nothing compared to the challenge that faces cancer patients each day.
We managed to reach the top and I proposed to my girlfriend of 13 years!
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