Outside the classroom, 17-year-old Cristobal Halffter embarks on an outdoor education and an adventure of a lifetime
A ray of sunlight shone on the horizon as I sat resting on the rocky earth of Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain and volcano in Africa. It was the sixth hour of the sixth and last day of our journey up the famed mount, and I was desperate. Our climb towards Uhuru Peak, its summit, began at midnight, which meant we had to hike in complete darkness for some time, making it difficult to see our progress, much less gauge how far (or close) we were to our destination.
The freezing temperatures didn’t help either. At the final base camp, the summit looked so near, but it was hard to breath in the cold, and we had to move very slowly to cope with the increasing altitude. We are still in awe remembering how our water bottles froze barely an hour from the start of our hike due to the chill.
Dawn could not have come at a more perfect time. Before that point, my patience had started to wear thin, and I was slowly losing all willpower to continue that final stretch towards the peak. The burst of morning light lifted my spirits just as it illuminated our path; after several hours of trekking in the shadows, there was nothing more gratifying than to see how far we’d come on our climb up “The Roof of Africa.”