Ras Dashin: The Summit!

At 4:15am, the alarm sounded. I rolled over, and tried to punch it off. But the damage was done; I was awake and excited to start the day. The day! We had a quiet breakfast and left camp at 5:00am. The first hour and a half felt like slow going. It was hard to see progress in the dark. It was so cold that my lungs burned. I was tired in every possible way. And it seemed as though we had to stop every 10 minutes for a bathroom break. If nothing else, we Peace Corps volunteers are regular.

Little by little, we made it closer and closer to the top. The higher the elevation, the more often we (I) needed to stop for breaks. It was a funny mindset that day. As we hit late morning, I thought, surely we must be close. There was no need to ask Dajin how much further. I could simply look around and still see land masses much higher than me. “At least that much farther,” I told myself.

The further up when went, the stranger the surroundings. It was like walking on the moon. There was no noise. There were strange rock formations. It felt so foreign and alien. This bizarre atmosphere was aided by the lack of oxygen. While the summit is only 15,000 feet, we could really feel it. We all became extremely tired. On one break, Zach and Michael appeared to take a little nap. I kept seeing black birds fly through my peripheral vision. Then I realized it was just black spots, there were no birds around. Being at that elevation and knowing the struggle it took to get there made me amazed at one thing: people climb Mt. Everest. They climb almost double what I had done.  There is no way there is oxygen that high. I have heard stories of people on Everest having full, two-sided conversations with the dead bodies they pass. I get it. Your mind gets loopy. And the elevation I was at does not even compare to Everest. For the rest of my life, I will appreciate every documentary on Everest. It is the pinnacle of what the human body can achieve.  And in case you are wondering, I would rather cut off a toe than attempt it.

So what did it feel like to look up at the summit and know I would be there shortly? A little bit anticlimactic. Of all the sights, all the beauty through the previous days, we all stared at Ras Dashin and thought, “This is it? Really?” It was a ridge that looked like dozens of others we had passed.

This is not to say we did not appreciate it. It was an amazing feeling. Every step truly felt like progress with our goal so close.

The last 10 minutes were “scrambling”. I did not know this term. I think it means having to use your hands to climb. But it was not climbing in the sense we needed rope for safety. As some who climbed trees as a kid, this part was awesome. And going down was just a neat. We when got to the top, we cheered and enjoyed the moment. We spent about an hour on top of the mountain. We even ate some delicious pasta up there. Interesting, there were other ridges within view that almost looked like they were higher. Dajin assured us they were not higher, it is a common misconception.  
 

 

REPRESENT!

All that was left to do was retrace our steps and get back to camp. As we walked down and down, for about 5 hours, I became more and more impressed with myself for making it.  If I had to go back and do it all over again, I’m not sure I could. Through sheer stubbornness and will power, I pushed myself to go further than I thought possible. The sights going down were amazing, perhaps more than the summit itself.

As we arrived back at camp, all the staff and a few people who lived in the area sang congratulations to us. It was a pretty inspiring feeling that left me a little choked up. After walking for 12 hours, with blisters on my feet, every muscle sore, sunburned face and hands, dirt caked on more dirt, those people singing, “Welcome, Ras Dashin. Welcome, Ras Dashin” and handing us flowers was the perfect culmination of the experience.

We celebrated like any good group of Americans would: whiskey and s’mores! We sat around the campfire and even walked Dajin through his first s’more.

Eventually, the sensible ones went to bed (tomorrow would be a 3:30am wake up), leaving Joe, Michael, Zach, Yayu, and myself around the dying fire. We tried to have Yayu tell us stories, but he had drunk a fair share of t’ella while we were eating dinner.  Then, something interesting happened. Joe, Zach, and I all speak what I would call intermediate Amharic. Michael, being from a different region in Ethiopia, speaks Tigrinya. We asked Yayu if we really made it to the top because other ridges looked a little higher. He responded in Amharic. Joe, Zach, and myself all took the same meaning from it. There are three camps you have to stay at if you want to reach the summit of Ras Dashin in a day. We were not staying at one of the three. 

The Luttrulls would claim between our whiskey, his t’ella, and the language barrier, we misunderstood. But we all gathered the same meaning separately from each other. It became an ongoing joke that we didn’t really make it to the top. It all makes sense when you think about it. Everyone knows the tallest point in Ethiopia is Ras Dashin. And our guide made it very clear, we were climbing Ras Dajin, not Ras Dashin.  In actuality, I am pretty sure we made it to the top. But, honestly, I don’t think it matters. And it is a pretty hilarious thought, almost worth it, if we went through all of that and walked to the wrong ridge.