Eight days that changed me.
It started, like a lot of the best things in life do, as a conversation between two people.
A wild idea. Wouldn't it be something to climb Kilimanjaro? The tallest mountain in Africa, the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, 19,341 feet of dream sitting on the far side of the planet. It could have stayed exactly that, a conversation. But the idea caught fire. Two of us became three, then five, then seven, as friends and neighbors heard the plan and decided they couldn't stand the thought of missing it. By the time we boarded our flights on August 5, 2026, we were a team of seven ordinary people chasing a decidedly un-ordinary goal: Todd Schrader, who dreamed the whole thing up, Acer and Sage Rogers, Dawn McCombs, Gary Garcia, my neighbor Scott Organ, and me.
We chose Peak Planet to get us there. I could tell you now that it was the best decision we made, but you wouldn't yet understand why, so let me just say this: over the eight days that followed, this company and its people would show me, again and again, what it looks like when a team treats your dream, and your safety, as if it were their own.
We would summit at sunrise. We would stand on the roof of Africa together, all seven of us, and weep and laugh and hold each other in the thin, freezing air.
And then, on the very last morning, in a moment I never saw coming, the mountain would test every ounce of faith I had placed in these people. What happened next, and the seven men who answered, is the reason I will spend the rest of my life telling anyone who will listen that Peak Planet is, without question, the best guide service on Kilimanjaro.
This is how all of it unfolded.
Day 1 — A Waterfall, a Village, and the First Sign of What We'd Signed Up For
Our Peak Planet driver, John, was waiting for us the moment we landed in Tanzania. He gathered our crew, loaded us up, and drove us to Stella Maris, the little lodge that would be our home base before the mountain. But John wasn't just a driver. Before our trip had even officially begun, on the very day we arrived, he told us that during our one day of downtime he wanted to take us out to see a waterfall, visit a local village, and spend real time in the community. I didn't know it yet, but that offer was the first small sign of how this whole company operates: always giving you more than you came for.
It turned out to be one of the most amazing days of my life.
We hiked three and a half miles to a waterfall, winding past hundreds of vendors along the way, their stalls full of paintings and African artifacts, color everywhere you looked. Even here, on a day meant purely for fun, the Peak Planet team was looking out for us, steering us toward reputable shops and quietly making sure none of us got taken advantage of by anyone. It was a small thing, but it was the first of a hundred small things that told us these people had our backs.
When we reached the falls and made our way back, we stopped into a local village, where the tribe opened their world to us. We ate native foods. And after lunch, they handed us the tools to husk, roast, and grind our own coffee, by hand, the way it has been done here for generations.
I'll never forget it. The husking was done with a blunt wooden pole, pounding the beans until they shed their husks. Then we then roasted the coffee beans, ground it all down into a fine powder and added hot water, coffee, start to finish, made with our own hands. The whole time, the locals sang native songs, their voices carrying through the grinding and the pounding until the work itself felt like music. It was unforgettable.
When we got back to the lodge that evening, we finally met the people who would carry us up Kilimanjaro. Meshack Matiko, our head guide. Victor Teemba, Chacha Joseph, and Gibson Mabiri, our assistant guides. They walked us through the trip in extraordinary detail, answered every question we could think of, and returned again and again to one word: safety. Always first. Always the priority.
Then they handed out our rental gear, and I have to take a second on this, because it told me everything about how seriously this outfit takes its craft. The sleeping bag was nearly new, a zero-degree bag from a great manufacturer. My rain gear still had the tags on it. The puffy jacket they issued for the cold days was top quality, warm, and genuinely windproof. Every single piece of gear we rented was solid, cared for, and ready for the mountain. Nothing about it felt like an afterthought.
After dinner, it was off to bed. The adventure we'd come halfway around the world for was about to begin.
Day 2 — Into the Rainforest, and Meeting the 31
We woke at the hotel at 7 a.m., went down for breakfast, and there they were: the crew that was going to get us to the top of Kilimanjaro. It wasn't just our four guides. It was those four plus twenty-five support staff and two chefs, thirty-one people in all, there to carry the seven of us to the roof of Africa. Let that sink in. Thirty-one for seven.
Before we left, the whole team broke into song, “Jambo Bwana,” the joyful Swahili anthem of the mountain, voices and clapping rising together, hakuna matata, no worries, tembea pole pole, walk slowly, slowly. We would hear that song again and again over the next week, at the gate, on the trail, on summit morning, and it never once stopped lifting us. Then we loaded onto two buses and headed for Mount Kilimanjaro National Park.
They started us with an amazing lunch at the gate, and then we set off, up into the rainforest. The forest swallowed us in the best way, dense and green and dripping, moss hanging from the branches, birdsong everywhere. Along the trail grew wild impatiens in vivid red and yellow, the kind that, we learned, bloom nowhere else on Earth but this mountain. It felt like a fitting welcome: even the flowers here were found only on Kilimanjaro.
We ended the day at Machame Camp, 6.7 miles and 4,400 feet of climbing later. And here's what stopped me in my tracks: by the time we arrived, our tents were already up. The bathrooms were set up. The mess hall was ready. All we had to do was walk in and eat.
And the food. I did not expect this. The meals that first night were genuinely, surprisingly delicious, and they set the standard for every breakfast, lunch, and dinner over the next five days. I regret not keeping a journal of what they fed us, because so many of the dishes were never repeated, and every one was tasty, healthy, loaded with the carbs we needed for the climb, and filling; if you left hungry then it was your own fault! Every meal was hot. Every meal was made right there, on the spot.
We were in bed by about 8:30 that night, ready to wake at 6, be at the mess hall by 6:30, packed and moving by 7 a.m. sharp. We never quite hit 7:00 on the nose, but we were close every single day, another quiet sign of a team that ran like clockwork.
Day 3 — Onto the Roof of the Moorland
We climbed out of the rainforest on the third day, and the world changed around us. The dense, dripping canopy gave way to something stranger and more beautiful: the moorland, a high, open landscape of giant heather and everlasting flowers, where the plants seem to belong to another planet. Gone were the towering trees; in their place, rolling rocky hills stretched toward the sky, and for the first time the mountain felt truly vast.
Our destination was Shira Hut Camp, at 12,600 feet. By now the rhythm was familiar and comforting: wake early, a warm breakfast, and off into the thinning air, always pole pole, slowly, slowly, just as Jambo Bwana had promised us.
When we reached camp, the guides took us on a short acclimatization hike, only a couple hundred meters up, but it opened onto an overlook displaying Mt. Kilimanjaro and the vast hiker camp below, a scene I won't forget. And behind us, floating above a sea of clouds, stood Mount Meru, Tanzania's second-tallest peak, looking close enough to touch. Nearby were caves where climbers and travelers had sheltered and slept in years past, a reminder that people have been making this pilgrimage up the mountain far longer than any of us.
Here's something that struck me by the third day: not one of our group of seven had any trouble with the altitude. Everyone was strong. Everyone stayed hydrated. Everyone kept eating. All the training we'd poured in before the trip was paying off, and so was the guides' relentless discipline about pace, water, and rest. They were managing us as carefully as the mountain demanded, and it showed.
Back at camp, it was the pattern we'd already come to love: hot food waiting, a briefing for the next day, and an early night under a sky full of stars, with Kilimanjaro watching over us.
Day 4 — Climbing High, Sleeping Low, and the Strangest Garden on Earth
The fourth day taught us the mountain's oldest trick for staying alive up high: climb high, sleep low. We rose early, ate warm, and set off with our sights on Lava Tower, a massive volcanic plug at 15,150 feet. The higher we climbed, the stranger and more beautiful the landscape became.
This is where Kilimanjaro stops looking like anywhere else on Earth. All around us stood the giant groundsels, found almost nowhere else in the world, thick trunks skirted in their own dried leaves, topped with bursts of green like something out of a lost prehistoric age. Among them grew the giant lobelias, tight spirals of leaves that trap water in their hearts to survive the freezing nights. We had walked, in just a few days, from dripping rainforest full of wild red impatiens up into a garden that felt like it belonged to another planet.
Lava Tower itself was spectacular. And here's what filled me with quiet pride: by 15,150 feet, not one of our group of seven was struggling with the altitude. Everyone was strong. Everyone was hydrated. Everyone was fed. The training had paid off, and so had the guides' constant, patient discipline, pole pole, always pole pole.
Then, as planned, we came back down, dropping to Barranco Camp at 12,800 feet to let our bodies bank the day's climb. It was one of the most beautiful camps of the whole trip, tucked along a valley with Kilimanjaro herself towering directly above us. We rolled in with the afternoon still ahead of us, time to wash up, relax, and, best of all, nap. These middle days of the climb gave us something precious: hours in the afternoon to rest our bodies and quiet our minds, all of it pointing toward the one day that loomed over everything else, summit day.
And I have to pause on the camp life itself, because it was extraordinary. We slept in spacious, well-made three-season tents, roomy for two, on cots that kept us up off the cold ground. The meals never stopped amazing us: hot dishes, vegetables and salads, and an endless supply of hot chocolate, hot water, tea, honey, pretty much anything you could want when you're a world away from home. Despite the fact that we were camping at nearly 13,000 feet on the side of the tallest mountain in Africa, you may as well have felt at home. That night, like every night, it was a hot meal, a briefing for the day ahead, and early to bed.
Day 5 — The Barranco Wall, and Mama Simba
Morning brought the Barranco Wall, the steep, storied scramble that rises straight up out of camp and intimidates nearly everyone who looks up at it. This was the day the mountain started asking harder questions of us.
It was here that Dawn, whom the guides had lovingly nicknamed “Mama Simba,” Mama Lion, for her strength, began to shine. She had a mantra she carried up that Wall, words she repeated to herself, first for all of us, then for herself: “Let us be safe, let us be protected, let us be strong; I am safe, I am protected, and I am strong.” Step by step, she climbed it, and watching her, so did the rest of us.
Above the Wall, the trail rolled and undulated along the flank of Kibo with tremendous views of the Southern Icefields. The land turned to scree, with pockets of stubborn green tucked into sheltered hollows. We pressed on past Karanga Camp at 13,100 feet and continued up the relentless, compacted path to Barafu Camp at 14,800 feet, the launching point for the summit. We reached Barafu with time to rest, and rest we did, napping in shifts, forcing down food, trying to bank whatever energy we could. Everything now pointed to the night ahead.
There was a different feeling in camp that evening. Quieter. We ate early and well, the guides walked us through what the night would demand, and we tried to sleep, knowing we'd be waking in the dark to attempt the roof of Africa. Nobody said much. Each of us, in our own way, was getting ready for one of the hardest things we'd ever done.
Day 6 — The Summit: Into the Dark, Toward the Light
Summit day doesn't begin at dawn. It begins in the dark.
We had finished the climb to Barafu around 1 p.m. the day before, eaten, and tried to nap through the afternoon. We forced down dinner. And then, at 10 p.m., while the rest of the world slept, we woke. By 10:30 we were in the mess tent, gear sorted, choking down a snack while our head guide, Meshack Matiko, gave us the briefing that would carry us through to the summit.
Before we stepped off, Meshack said something I would return to again and again over the next seven hours. “If you're ever doubting your ability to make it to the top,” he told us, “remember: pain is only temporary. Pride is forever.” I thought about those words every time I hit the wall that night. And I hit it more than once.
At 11 p.m. sharp, we walked out into the black. It was the seven of us, Todd, Acer and Sage Rogers, Dawn McCombs, Gary Garcia, my neighbor Scott Organ, and me, together with eight members of our Peak Planet crew who would see us to the top: our four guides, Meshack Matiko, Victor Teemba, Chacha Joseph, and Gibson Mabiri, and our summit porter team, Daniel Ndiege, Mwita Joseph, Nelson Machange, and Meshack Isango. From 14,800 feet, we would climb through the night to 19,341 feet, the roof of Africa.
There is no easy way to describe the hours that followed. It was grueling. Cold that deepened as the night wore on. Thin air that turned every single step into a negotiation with your own body. And a trail of headlamps snaking up the mountain ahead of and behind us, the only light in a vast, freezing darkness.
About three and a half hours in, as we entered the hardest stretch, our guides began to sing. Jambo Bwana rose into the dark first, and then a handful of other songs, the same joyful voices that had carried us from the very first morning at the gate, now pulling us up through the coldest, cruelest hours between 3 a.m. and sunrise. The singing did something I still can't fully put into words. It distracted us from the pain. It reminded us we were not alone up there. It kept our feet moving when our minds were wanting us to stop.
Somewhere in that darkness, Dawn, our Mama Simba, was climbing with her mantra running silently through her mind: “Let us be safe, let us be protected, let us be strong; I am safe, I am protected, and I am strong.” She had carried those words up the Barranco Wall days earlier, and now she carried them up the mountain in the dark.
And then, at about 4:30 a.m., I did something I'll remember for the rest of my life. I switched off my headlamp and looked up. The night sky over Kilimanjaro exploded above me, more stars than I ever knew existed, brilliant and endless and close enough to touch. In the space of maybe thirty minutes, I counted more than twelve shooting stars streaking across the horizon. Standing above 18,000 feet in the freezing dark, exhausted beyond words, I watched the heavens put on a show that seemed staged just for us. It was, quite simply, spectacular.
We reached the crater rim, Stella Point, at 5:19 a.m. From there, one final push remained. And here is where the mastery of our guides revealed itself completely. Over five days, these men had studied our every move, our pace, our mindset, our strength and our doubt, and they knew exactly what we were capable of. Meshack had timed the entire night to perfection. At 6:24 a.m., we stepped up to the monument at Uhuru Peak, exactly as the sun broke across the horizon.
We made it as a team. All seven of us, climbing in single file, with Todd, the man who dreamed up this whole trip, leading the pack to the top.
I felt two things at once up there, and they didn't cancel each other out so much as collide. Exhaustion, complete, bone-deep exhaustion, the night and the cold and the thin air having taken everything I had. And pure, overwhelming excitement. I was a little disoriented from the altitude, honestly, but I was so alive with the joy of standing there. I thought of my family. I wished, more than anything, that I could have shared that moment with my two kids, Lillian and Ainsley. And I felt a quiet, fierce pride that I had made it to the top of Africa without a single physical problem, no altitude sickness, no headache, nothing, just my own two legs and a mountain of preparation. Sunrise from the summit. Rebirth, in the oldest sense of the word.
Then came a moment I will never forget, and it wasn't my own. After the team photos, I looked over at Dawn and Gary, husband and wife, and saw them holding each other with tears welling up in their eyes. This year they were celebrating milestone birthdays and wedding anniversary, and here they were, in each other's arms, on the roof of Africa at sunrise. Some achievements are too big for words. That embrace said everything.
Our guides were adamant that every one of us got the photos we'd come for. The climbers waiting their turn behind us were impatient, but respectful; they understood. These men had carried us through the night, and they were not about to let us come all this way and leave without capturing the memory forever.
All told, it took us about seven hours to reach the summit and three to descend back to base camp. We took a short nap at Barafu, and then, legs unsteady, we continued down to high camp, our last rest before the final day and the hike out. Meshack's words stayed with me the whole way down. The pain had been temporary. The pride would be forever.
Day 7 — The Fall, and the Seven Who Got Me Down
I woke on the seventh morning in the highest of spirits. We'd summited. We'd done the thing we came halfway around the world to do. I had a great breakfast, we ate the surprise congratulatory cake the chef’s had made, and then we gathered outside the mess tent for a final celebration with the support team, the whole crew and all seven of us, together one last time.
It was everything you'd want it to be. Singing. Laughter. Words of appreciation passing back and forth between the porters, the guides, and us, each of us trying to put into words what these people had done for us over seven days. When my turn came, I stepped up onto a stump to give my thanks to the crew who had carried our dream up a mountain.
In that moment of pure exuberance, I stepped backwards off a small patch of sloping grass, stumbled, and just as I caught my balance, I felt it: a sharp, sickening pop in the back of my right leg. I had torn a muscle in my calf.
Just like that. Not on the summit. Not on the Barranco Wall. On slightly sloped, sandy ground, at camp, in the middle of thanking the very people who were about to save my day.
What happened next told me everything about this team. There was no hesitation, not a second of it. As I stood balancing on one leg, they went to work like a machine that had drilled this a hundred times. Someone appeared with a chair and eased me into it. The first-aid kit was open before I'd even caught my breath. Gibson was already at my leg, carefully checking my Achilles and my calf, while Meshack worked an anesthetic cream into the muscle and tried to massage out what we were all still hoping was just a bad cramp. But it became clear, fast, that this was no Charlie horse. I couldn't put any weight on the foot. I was not going to be able to walk out under my own power.
Here's a detail I can't leave out. The night before, at the end of summit day, Acer and I had noticed an antiquated-looking gurney sitting at camp, a single wheel, a pair of shocks, an old-school contraption, and we'd actually joked about how that thing could ever be of any use to anyone. At the start of Day 7, I found out exactly how.
Meshack Matiko and the crew quickly gathered my gear, placed me in a sleeping bag and strapped me into that antiquated gurney. And in that moment, I struggled to hold it together. I was wrapped up in the emotion of it, embarrassed, grateful, overwhelmed, and I had a hard time not breaking down to cry.
About five minutes into being wheeled down the mountain on that one-wheeled gurney, I made a decision. I was going to stop feeling sorry for myself, and start being appreciative of what these extraordinary men were doing for me. And what they did for me, I will never forget.
I had thought they'd only need to wheel me a short way, about 2-miles, to a nearby camp where a four-wheel-drive road came through. I was wrong. That was just the first stop. From there, they had to carry me the rest of the way down to the four-wheel-drive trail at the park's edge, a descent from Millennium Camp at 12,500 feet all the way down to Mweka Gate at 5,400 feet. All told, more than seven miles of trail and over 7,000 feet of descent. They got me down the entire way.
What stunned me most was the community among my rescue team. These men laughed. They chatted. They joked with one another as they wrestled me down a trail booby-trapped with hundreds of thousands of rocks, drops, roots, stairs, and every obstacle you can imagine. Each one they overcame with a smile, a grunt, and then more laughter. They guided that gurney down pitches that would be genuinely difficult just to hike. I remember looking down at some of the drops they were wheeling me over, drops in excess of 45 degrees, and marveling. They maneuvered me over ledges, around 90-degree turns, past trees and other trekkers, through everything the mountain threw at us.
And here is the thing I keep coming back to: I was never once afraid. I had almost no anxiety or concern for my safety because seven days with this crew had taught me something in my bones: they hold every client's safety at the very front of their minds, always. Even as they themselves stumbled, tripped, and sometimes went down entirely on that brutal descent, the first words out of their mouths every single time were, “Are you okay?” They were falling, and they were asking if I was okay. Amazing, selfless, kind-hearted human beings.
There was another sight from down there that I haven't been able to shake. As they wheeled me down, I watched rescue helicopters flying up toward the camps at and above base camp, going to collect other climbers whose trips had ended the way mine nearly had. I had never been injured before, never once in my 53-years, and seeing those helicopters hit me hard. It drove home how fortunate we are, every day, simply to be healthy and able to chase things like this. Because all it takes is one misstep. One ignored symptom of altitude sickness. One moment of bad luck. The mountain gives you the summit, but it never lets you forget how quickly it can all change, and how much you depend on the people around you when it does.
Once I let go of feeling sorry for myself, something opened up. I started to see the beauty of the rainforest from a vantage point almost no one gets, flat on my back, looking straight up through the canopy. It looks like a completely different world from down there. Their words of encouragement along the way soothed me and kept my mind at ease the whole way down.
I have worked out my entire life. I've always considered myself to be a strong individual. But I have never, ever been as strong as these men who brought me down that mountain, using their own legs and backs as brakes against the grade. The man at the front, holding the handles, would have been run over if he had ever fallen. Thank God he never did.
I need to name the men who got me off Kilimanjaro, because they deserve to be named. Six of them were our own Peak Planet crew. The seventh, Agapiti Ayo, was a porter from another outfitter entirely, a stranger who saw a fellow team in trouble and simply stepped in to help get me down. That, too, tells you something about the people of this mountain.
Meshack Matiko · Gibson Mabiri · Juma Lenga · Meshack Isango · Baraka Edwin · Innocent Kaaya · and Agapiti Ayo
I wish I knew the tribe each of them came from. I don't. But what I do know is this: they are among the hardest-working, most positive, most genuinely kind people I have ever encountered in my life. These men lifted me thousands of times with their hands and used their own legs and backs as brakes against the grade, and I later learned that not one of them carries any kind of health insurance. They risked everything they had to get me down safely anyway. Peak Planet does an extraordinary job of assembling a crew that will keep you moving forward, no matter what the mountain does to you. And on Kilimanjaro, when things go wrong, even a stranger from another team will step in to carry you home. I am living proof of both.
Day 8 — Safari, and a Soft Landing
After everything the mountain had given us and taken out of us, Peak Planet gave us one last gift: a day to simply take it all in.
We were picked up at Stella Maris promptly at 7 a.m. on Saturday, August 15, 2026 and drove a few hours to Tarangire National Park for a safari. Our driver, Sam, turned out to be as impressive in his own right as our guides had been on the mountain, deeply educated and endlessly knowledgeable about every animal, tree, and plant in the park. The whole way from Moshi, he answered every question we threw at him, a wealth of information and clearly a man who loved what he did.
And the animals. We saw more than I ever expected: eland and impala, zebra and giraffe, wildebeest and elephant, a pride of lion, an African rock python, ostrich, baboons, and warthog, on and on. Sam couldn't control what the wildlife did, of course, but he knew exactly where to drive to give us the best chance at all of it, and he delivered.
We spent our final night at Researchers Rest, a cozy, quiet lodge with several friendly travelers from around the world, the perfect place to let the enormity of the week settle in. Even here, Peak Planet had thought of everything: because our flight didn't leave until late in the evening, they'd arranged a late checkout at 5:30 p.m. so we'd have somewhere comfortable to rest until it was time to go.
That, more than anything, is what I keep coming back to. Over eight days, not a single detail was overlooked. Every day was coordinated, every transition seamless, from the moment John picked us up at the airport to the moment we finally headed home. Whether we were summiting the roof of Africa in the freezing dark, being carried down a mountain on a one-wheeled gurney, or watching elephants move across the plain, we were, at every moment, in extraordinarily capable and caring hands.
Coming Home
I'm writing this from home now, my calf healing, the mountain already feeling like something I dreamed. But the more distance I get from those eight days, the clearer one thing becomes: I have never, in my life, been cared for by a team like this one.
Think about the math for a moment. Seven of us climbed that mountain. Thirty-one people got us up and down it, twenty-five porters, two chefs, and four guides. Thirty-one human beings whose entire purpose, for eight days, was to carry seven people's dream to the summit and bring them home safely. I am still blown away by it.
And they did not overlook a single detail. Not one. The drivers were always a few minutes early. The equipment was flawless. The meals, cooked fresh at altitude, were better than food I've paid good money for at sea level. When we shopped, they made sure no one took advantage of us. When I fell, they got me down the mountain on a single-wheeled gurney, guiding it over rock falls, drops, and roots, using their own hands, legs, and backs as the brakes, and asking if I was okay even as they stumbled. From the lodge staff at Stella Maris to the guides on the summit to the porters on the trail, every person treated us with a warmth and professionalism I did not know to expect.
The guides at Peak Planet asked me what they could have done better. I have thought about it, honestly and hard. And I cannot name one thing. Not one.
Before leaving Barafu for the summit, in the dark at 11 p.m., Meshack Matiko, our head guide, told us something I'll carry for the rest of my life. “If you're ever doubting your ability to make it to the top,” he said, “remember: pain is only temporary. Pride is forever.”
He was right about the pain. It is temporary. My calf will heal in time. The exhaustion is long gone. But the pride, in what we did, and the gratitude, for the extraordinary people who made it possible, those really are forever.
To Meshack and every single member of our crew: thank you. You didn't just guide us up a mountain. You carried us and each of you have made an everlasting impression on our lives.
I recommend Peak Planet, and specifically our four guides, without a shred of reservation, to anyone who has ever looked at Kilimanjaro and dared to dream. Go. And go with the best guides on the mountain- Peak Planet #1.
