Student climbs Africa with family
John “LJ” Barry has been to the top of Africa. Literally.
The junior business major peaked Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain on the African continent, with his father, brother and sister over Christmas Break.
“We always travel during Christmas; we’re never home,” said John Barry III, LJ’s father. “We go to different countries and celebrate Christmas elsewhere.”
The Barrys hike together a lot, but never have they done something like Kilimanjaro. The peak is about 3.5 miles high, and the climb goes from warm, dry plains to a wet tropical forest to the peak of the volcanic mountain, which is below freezing and permanently icy.
“It’s amazing how you get from 80 to 90 percent humidity and heat to freezing cold,” the younger John said. “By the time I got to the top, I was wearing everything that I had and still cold.”
The Barry family didn’t travel alone. They were accompanied by a team of six Frenchmen, two family friends, a guide, his assistants and 32 porters. The laws in Tanzania require visitors to hire a guide and porters; the Barrys joined with the French to share the costs, although porters make only $25 a week.
The porters carried everything from tents and chairs to propane tanks on their heads.
“We would show them how to wear backpacks, but they would take them off and stick them back on their heads,” the elder John said. “They were amazing.”
Some of the things they carried, such as silver trays they served coffee on and polished each day, seemed unnecessary to the hikers and made the father of the Barry family feel like Sir Edmund Hillary.
“I thought, ‘Why would you need all this junk going up a mountain?'” he said. “But who are we to go against tradition, so we just went with it.”
LJ said, “It’s amazing all the stuff they carried. I wouldn’t have done all of that. We had over 30 porters just for our group.”
The Barrys carried one day’s worth of supplies — food, water and clothing, on their backs, and the porters carried the rest.
“Our daypacks didn’t weigh much, probably just a little heavier than you carry to school,” the younger John said.
But the climb was anything but easy.
“It was a real grunt,” the elder John said. “It was probably the most difficult thing our family has collectively done.”
But it was worth the effort because they reached the top just as the sun was rising over Africa, and they may have broken a record while they were at it.
The guides and porters told them Cassidy Barry, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, was the youngest girl to make it to the top unassisted.
In a country lacking even birth certificates, climbing records are kept by word of mouth among the guides.
In fact, the Barrys had trouble finding a way up the mountain because many of the guides thought Cassidy would have to turn around.
“A lot of people didn’t think she could make it,” her father said. “It was difficult to find a guide to take us up, because they didn’t want to take a 15-year-old girl with them.
“I was impressed with my kids. It was a much bigger mountain than I was expecting. We passed some teams of experienced hikers that quit, and my kids made it.”
The Barry family had decided beforehand that if one member had to turn around, the whole family would turn around. But they braved the headaches that got worse with each step up and made it to the top.
“It looks like the moon,” LJ said of the top. “It has all these craters and rocks and snow.”
But the Barrys couldn’t stay at the peak for more than an hour because the lack of oxygen gave them terrible headaches, and the rising sun increased the danger of an avalanche. So they taught a porter how to take pictures and posed with an American flag that 18-year-old Andrew had carried the whole way.
“All the excitement was getting to the top, and once I got there, I didn’t want to go down,” the younger John said. “I just wanted to get in an airplane and fly down.”
Cassidy said, “I was excited to get to the top because then we got to go down. I had altitude sickness, which is a stomachache, and I was dizzy. I thought I was going to throw up.”
The family made good time down to 10,000 feet, about half as high as the peak, where their heads started to feel a little better and those in the camp were celebrating New Year’s Eve.
They had a few sips of champagne but left their own party for some sleep. They had been climbing 20 hours with only a one-hour nap.
The family trained by running and going to the gym as much as they could. They have traveled all over the world: Belize, England, France, Austria and Holland, but Arusha, Tanzania, the city they stayed in before hiking, was the poorest place they’ve been, the elder John said.
“I’ve never been to a country like that,” he said. “Arusha’s a hardcore, third-world city complete with muddy streets that are choked with street peddlers, beggars and thieves.”
LJ said, “I really didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t heard much about Tanzania. But it was the poorest place I’d ever been.
“You’d be driving along in the bus, and little kids would ask you for stuff. I gave about 50 cents to one kid, and the other kids beat him up for it. I didn’t give them money after that.”
The Barrys plan to hike the highest mountain in South America, Mount Akhungata, which is 22,500 feet above sea level, next season.
“We’re going to have the same problems with altitude and oxygen as we did on Kilimanjaro,” the elder John said. “It’s not a matter of if you get a headache, it’s how bad the headache will be.”
–kcartwright@cc.usu.edu