“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“It started a couple years ago when we read My Year with Eleanor,” Sue Rusch remembers. The author overcame her fears by following the First Lady’s fearless example. Her tale inspired Sue and her older sister Joan Turner with its account of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro … so much so that, about this time last year, they set out on their own unlikely quest: to conquer Africa’s highest mountain.
The two non-camping Midwestern women – accustomed to life near sea level and inner-spring mattresses — returned from Tanzania two weeks ago. The sisters didn’t get to see the sunrise from Kilimanjaro’s peak – turned back just before reaching the top by a serious bout with altitude sickness. But they came close enough to prove their point, Sue says: “You can do so much more than you think you’re capable of.”
The travel bug bit Sue big-time decades ago. In the course of 34 years as proprietor of The Stabo Scandinavian Imports at West Acres, the Moorhead woman has become deeply familiar with the ins and outs of northern Europe. She has visited with Ecuador, Thailand, Brazil and Argentina with her husband Wayne Nelson, globe-trotting sister Joan and Joan’s husband Dave. But until this winter, the sisters had beencontent with tamer adventures closer to the ground.
This winter, though, they raised their sights much higher.
“Deciding to hike Kilimanjaro isn’t something you do lightly,” Sue says. “We’re not campers, and we’d never done anything like it when we started toying with the idea two years ago.”
The tour operator they chose, Africa Travel Resources, warned them it wouldn’t be easy. “It’s not a walk in the park,” she says, smiling. They weighed his advice, then talked to two other Fargo-Moorhead folks who had already made the climb. They gathered advice on getting and tips to make the trek easier. (“They told us to bring snacks,” Sue notes. “Joan brought dried fruit and nuts. I brought Snickers.”
Physical conditioning was a major issue. Both women – Sue, who is 58, and Joan, 63 – are avid runners who have participated in the New York Marathon and a dozen others all over the country. But functioning at extremely high altitudes requires more training. In Las Vegas (elevation 2,001 feet), Joan hiked the surrounding hills. Here in Moorhead, Sue worked around her hours in her store, Sue turned to the stairstepper at the gym, climbing steeply pitched steps in heavy hiking boots while wearing a 15-pound backpack loaded with cans of dog food and Campbell’s soup.
Joan and Sue, who grew up in New Salem, N.D., signed papers for their big adventure last June. They checked off the option for supplemental oxygen at the 19,341-foot summit. “We figured we’d need all the help we could get,” she says.
They took other steps to master the mountain. That meant climbing not one, but two, starter mountains last summer – 9,400-foot Brian Head, the highest in Utah, and 14,000-foot Mount Bierstadt in Colorado. They planned to cap off their training with their husbands on a 9,600-foot jaunt up Machu Picchu, but were thwarted when Hurricane Matthew caused their flight to Peru to be cancelled.
They rendezvoused in Philadelphia in mid-February, boarding Qatar Airways for the 14-hour flight to Kilimanjaro International Airport with one layover in Doha, Qatar. “The flights went fast,” she reports. “On the way out, you’re so excited about the climb. On the way home, you sleep.”
Arriving on Feb. 19, they joined a party of 10 hikers, most from Australia, including a honeymooning couple. “Let’s just say we were not the youngest spring chickens,” Sue laughs. Most were in their 30s and 40s. They were accompanied by six guides and 42 porters, who carried everything from tents and equipment to cooking gear, dishes and enough food to carry 58 people through the next five days.
They hiked up 9,000 feet to the first base camp that day. “We are not campers,” Sue asserts. “So there were two old ladies in our third time in a tent. We were there just ahead of the rainy season, and the weather turned bad – chilly, rainy, sleet, hail. The staff woke us up every morning with a basin of warm water and coffee or tea, and that kept us going.”
But altitude sickness foreshortened their hike. Six hours or so from their goal, just before the last leg of the climb, Joan was floored by severe altitude sickness. “We were surprised. When we climbed in Utah and Colorado, I was the one who got headache, nausea, the whole works,” Sue says. Instead of getting up at midnight Wednesday for the final climb – witnessing the sunrise from the mountaintop — they braved the four-hour hike down to the previous base camp, then boarded a rudimentary bus that also gathered 14 other sick climbers.
Back at ground level, Joan rapidly recovered without further medical care. They spent their last week on hiking and motorized safaris into the gorgeous Tanzanian wild. “We saw all the ‘big five’ — giraffes, leopards, lions, rhinoceroses and wildebeest. “It was wonderful, but anticlimactic,” she reflects. “We were still on a high from the hike.”
What lessons did Sue and her sister take home from Kilimanjaro? “I wish I’d done this 20 years sooner,” she volunteers. Back then, though, they were just taking up running, a passion she continues to pursue three times a week with her FSR group – Faster, Stronger Runners. She plans to take part in the Fargo Marathon, as she has almost every year since its beginning. “I keep getting slower and slower,” she confides, “but that’s fine. You just keep going.”
Her other take-away from their adventure? “The people – there are wonderful people everywhere you go,” Sue observes. “We fell in love with Africa, but the lovely, delightful people were the real high point of our trip.”
