Kilimanjaro Diary
This is an account of our ascent of Kilimanjaro in October 2000. We are Rob and Danielle Wilson, father and daughter, aged 50 and 21.
View from Shira Hut camp Our family are supporters of the charity CHICKS  - Country Holidays for Inner City Kids - and we were amongst those approached by them in 1999 with a view to raising a fairly large sum each (the target was £2,700 each), by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

It seems now that you have to do something unusual to raise money, and this challenge certainly qualified - Kili is the highest mountain in Africa, at 5895m, and is the highest free-standing mountain (as against part of a range) in the world. Since signing up for the challenge we found that actually the Kilimanjaro climb is becoming increasingly popular - will fund-raising have to find new challenges?

Anyway, here is our  story. We imagined that raising the funds would be quite easy - write off to a few local businesses who would surely be glad to be associated with our good cause. It didn't turn out like that - a lot of hard work was needed to get anywhere near the target. Meanwhile help and advice was coming in from Charity Challenge, the trip organisers.
 

The next step was training - we did a lot of hiking, particularly around the edges of the Cotswolds where there are good steep climbs. Our final training session was the 21 mile walk around the Five Valleys (Stroud), organised as a fund-raiser by the Meningitis Trust. This was tough going - but at least we had plenty of oxygen at this altitude!
Comments? email rob(at)rwilson.org.uk anti-spam note: please replace (at) with @