Berg

DISPATCHES

Hear Wally's Call from Africa

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This looks like a great team to me: 14 of us, all together. Of course, the Climb for the Cure women, Debbie and Barbara, Bonnie, Jeannine, and Kathryn, all took off together from Denver a few days ago, they had a little send off at the British Airways gate: Channel 9 News, from Denver, was there. They met up with most of the others in London. I think the crew pretty much had a lot of fun in their one day running around London before their night flight, through the evening, down to Nairobi.

We all met up in the morning and this feels, to me, to be a great team. We've got the sisters Yael and Tali. We've got our father-son team, Bill Dunker and Paul Dunker. Geoff Shor, from Denver, came on kind of late and was sort of attached to the Climb for the Cure effort from Denver. He had the misfortune of having one of his bags stolen from his porch in Denver about five minutes before he went out to the Denver airport, in Denver, to get started on this trip. But, hey, this is Africa, "hakuna matata," as we say, we'll be able to deal with things. Geoff, in a great spirit, just flew on over here and we pulled together some gear for him and we're going to be fine.

We also have Mark Kelleher, who came on pretty much at last minute — good buddy of Keith Wilson, who some of you, if you were following dispatches, remember the trek to Everest Base Camp with me just a couple of months ago. And Jeff Petola is here as well. And this entire crew seems to me like they're folks who are up for this adventure. It's going to be a big one.

We have underway, right now, out at the Machame gate, about 40-45 porters and staff. Of course, Tobias is out there. These guys are waiting and ready to go. This year in Africa it's dry — you've probably heard about the drought in Kenya. I'm sitting here at the mountain village looking at a kind of distressingly brown tent to the banana plants and all the other lush vegetation that's usually around here. But no doubt, as we walk through that forest zone this afternoon — those of you who remember our dispatches from previous seasons — we're still going to get some rain I bet. We'll be at 9,600-9,800 feet or so tonight, and we'll definitely be on Kilimanjaro and be underway.

I look forward to giving you dispatches about this adventure as we go. The spirit of this thing means a lot to me. It's great to be back on Kilimanjaro with friends, getting ready to share an adventure. The whole staff of people that I've worked with for years; it was great to sit here with Sally and Sharzina and some of our friends from the community, our agent here in Tanzania, work on our courage quilt that represents the spirit of the effort we're doing, in memory of many people who have been lost to breast cancer, and pull some of the local folks into the handiwork involved in that. The team members will be carrying this quilt to the summit.

I could tell when we were all sitting around that the Alpine Ascents clients who came here to climb on Kili with us this year, who maybe heard about this project a little late on, it's just amazing how many of them had an enthusiasm for this that goes back to their own experiences in their life and things that they have been supporting on their own elsewhere — be that breast cancer or another cause. And we've got a great scene going here with this effort.

The team, I should mention, has raised an excess of $100,000. This is totally apart, of course, from our challenges on this climb. But this message, right at the outset, goes out to all of those people back home who support us. We're still short of our goal, but, as Mark Kelleher told me last night, that represents a huge amount of money, in terms of research for breast cancer: it hires a couple of researchers per year, it pays for a lot of good effort for this cause. And it's part of why we're here, but the adventure, living life to its fullest, is also why we're here. And that's what the reports are going to be about as we go along our day-to-day adventures on the mountain, and, of course, in a few days from now we'll try to reach the summit.

—Alpine Ascents Guide Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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