I Poached the White Elephant (Cont.)

You Are Here:

Home >> I Poached the White Elephant (Cont.)

Today's Question
What should you do if you run into a cougar in the backcountry? answer

What is the number one backcountry skill people should learn? answer

Today's Question
What are the five best environmental movies of all time? answer

What are the greenest colleges? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine November 2002

Page:

I Poached the White Elephant (Cont.)

SIR EDMUND DIDN'T ASK EXACTLY HOW Eric intended to skiboard down Kili. And neither did Eric.

Better not to ask. We were just two days in, anyway, and I had to concentrate on traversing the 11,000-foot contour of Kilimanjaro's north side to Kikelewa. As scrubby heather gave way to grassland, we were afforded a new view of Uhuru Peak, and I saw that Providence had dealt me yet another wild card. The crown of snow pictured in my decades-old postcard was now little more than a sweatband of ice. (I'd later learn that 82 percent of Kilimanjaro's glaciers have disappeared since 1912—33 percent of them in just the last two decades.)

The third day, we ascended to 14,000-foot Mawenzi Tarn, a mucky natural sump nestled against the jagged brown peak of Mawenzi itself. Dozens of white-necked ravens surfed the air currents above, while we hunkered down in the main tent to dodge the chilling wind. Like members of any multinational expedition in need of something to distract them from the suffering ahead, and lacking Jim Beam, we traded riddles. Heinrich's went like this: A beautiful woman is in a tall tree. She won't come down. Her father, the king, gives you a goat, some grass, a dog, and some meat. If you get her down, she's yours. What do you do?

I had reservations about the premise of the riddle. What does it mean that she's mine? And why did I have to trick the princess out of the tree? I guessed fruitlessly until Heinrich revealed the answer: You give the dog the grass and the goat the meat. She will think you are stupid and come down to scold you.

The porters chuckled and I did, too. The cultural bridge had been spanned; our team was coming together. I began to feel the esprit de corps necessary for arduous undertakings. But the next morning, as we crossed the desolate saddle from Mawenzi to Kibo Hut, Uhuru remained as bare as my bottom, and no one was laughing.

Sir Edmund drew a large arrow in the gravel, pointed toward the summit.

"This way, Eric," he said, deadpan. I could see the skiboard route I'd selected. The glacier extended from the summit like an unwelcoming middle finger, some 100 feet thick and frighteningly steep.

When I didn't laugh, Sir Edmund continued. "In monsoon, there can be snow all over the mountain. Even down here. But last three winters, nothing."

Still no laugh. "It is low season," he said. "Not many people at Kibo. We will go to summit first and you can ski other side."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "Now this way, Eric."

"Not many people" was relative to the 250 maximum capacity of Kibo Hut, a ranger station and stone bunkhouse (the "lodge") equipped with seven latrines at 15,400 feet. When we reached the hut at noon, two classes of Tanzanian middle-school students were leaving en masse, six rangers were milling around, and a couple dozen porters were sunning themselves in sweaters, jackets, and wool hats.

I was eager to meet my fellow mountaineers right away, but Sir Edmund had commandeered an empty corner bunk room, so first I dropped my bags inside. Through the window I could see the latrines and, nearby, a few people waiting on boulders. I must admit I was somewhat disappointed. There were five fit Belgians, a couple of Israelis, and Paul, a chubby thirty something who owned a fence company in Australia and was currently on walkabout. I went out and introduced myself, and they rambled on about their headaches, their vomiting, their diarrhea. None of them had a grand mission, like me. I desperately wanted to tell them about my impending first descent and the skiboards hidden inside my pack, but I could hardly get a word in between everyone's trips to the can.

Finally I asked Paul how he'd found his way to Kili. "I was in South Africa for a wedding," he said. "I flipped through the book and said, 'Oh, that looks like a good one.' I didn't know how bloody high it was!"

I could hear the old voice again in my head, still talking in third person but now with leaden gravity. "Eric does not take this as a good omen," it said.

Page: