Reflections on the Mountain

What I’ll remember most about climbing North Africa’s highest mountain is feeling, more than I had in months, like part of a team. Mountains were not meant to be climbed alone. As I traded the stuffy environment of the compound where I live and work for fresh, cool, mountain air, I remembered that sharing life means more than a common unlocked apartment or common weekly meetings. We need to bear each other’s burdens.

So did a mule—need to bear our burdens, that is. We began our two-day ascent at 5,670 feet (1,728 meters). Shortly into our seven-hour voyage to the refuge at 10,428 feet (3,178 meters) on our first day of climbing, we realized that we could either hire a mule or be the mule. We chose wisely. By the end of the day, I hardly needed my GPS watch to tell me we had almost climbed a vertical mile.

We stayed the night at the refuge midway up the mountain and intended to begin the trek to the summit around 8am. What we failed to account for was that everyone else planned to get up at 4:30am. We stayed two nights at the refuge, and on both mornings everyone promptly sprang out of bed just as the first daylight struck the horizon. While we apparently missed the mountain-climbing memo about rising early, we nevertheless hit the trail at a little after 5am.

Regrettably, we did not hit the same trail that others apparently hit. We got off to a good start but somehow meandered off the regularly-trodden path. We had no guide, little light and no one directly in front of us to follow. Following us, however, was a straggler whom Mary, Abdul Muhib, and I invited into our company as we scrambled up the mountain. Our new travel companion had injured herself previously while climbing a different mountain, so her boyfriend joined the 4:30am crowd without her. Hiking straight up the mountain, we shouted down to her, “We’re guessing!” about the path, but she caught up with us anyway.

The thin air must have affected our judgment. Within an hour or two of climbing on rocks and gravel, we faced an unsettling question: How will we get down from here? My understanding of precisely what happened next is similar to the air as we continued to climb: thin. I looked across a small valley and found Abdul Muhib sitting on a boulder down the mountain and across the valley from us. He found a goat trail leading to the traditional path and had taken the trail over and down to it. He summoned us from across the valley. I continued to climb briefly, but soon realized that in order to get to the top of the mountain (which was yet hours away), I was going to have to slide, as safely as possible, from where I had climbed, down to the goat trail. That morning, I relocated parts of a mountain without even mustard-sized faith. Amazingly, after re-landscaping several swaths of the mountain, my jeans had no rips or tears—lots of dirt, but nothing that laundry was unable to handle.

After Mary, Victoria (our straggling friend) and I slid down from where we had climbed and met Abdul Muhib on the path, we climbed a little farther. At 9am or so, we were roughly halfway to the summit. Victoria decided to wait where she was for her boyfriend to return from the top, and Mary stayed with her. Victoria took a picture of the three of us, and then Abdul Muhib and I proceeded toward the summit, located at 13,713 feet (4,180 meters).




We met the 4:30am crew returning down the mountain on our way up. We found Victoria’s boyfriend and told him that she was doing well. He told us we had about two hours of climbing to reach the summit. We climbed slowly, which was both wise and necessary. The 350 miles I had run already in 2006 rarely seemed to be of any use to me. Training in godliness, however, has value for all things. It has been said that there are no atheists in foxholes. I don’t know about foxholes, but I certainly spent extra time talking with God on the scree-laden mountain. Between 12:30pm and 1pm, we finally experienced the view from the top.

Coming down the mountain was a much faster experience for Abdul Muhib and me, but a long, worrisome affair for Mary. She had read something that day by Oswald Chambers on suffering and had begun preparing herself to return home without her two friends. At the refuge, she asked various people what would happen if her friends did not return, and they basically shrugged her off. There were no vehicles in the area and limited cell phone reception. I arrived at the refuge around 4:30pm and was a bit surprised when Mary hugged me for about a minute. She was about to head up the mountain with a search party!











The next couple of days were relatively relaxing. On our return to town from the refuge, we spent one night in a village. From there, the paths were basically level and firm beneath our feet. The two-hour taxi ride back to the major city only took an hour. Alas, that story is for a different day.