We wake up at 5:00 a.m. on summit day, Thursday, August 30. We have a quick breakfast in the mess tent. It is cold and clear and a great day to try and reach the summit. Everyone is ready to go, except Marsha. She does not feel well and has developed some stomach problems (probably from the food or water). She takes some medicine and our guides suggest that she start climbing and see how it goes. She can always come down. We start up towards the summit. The ground is mostly loose rocks, small boulders, and lots of volcanic dust. There is not much of trail and we just wind our way mostly upward, very slowly. It is more difficult to breathe and several in the group have mild to moderate altitude headaches. Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) results from the decreased air pressure at altitude. The decreased air pressure allows excess fluid to accumulate in your body. This affects the eyes, brain, and lungs. The swelling and excess fluid on the brain leads to nasty, persistent headaches. It also can lead to the build up of fluid in the lungs, particularly after sleeping at high altitude. In rare cases, it can lead to a fatal pulmonary edema or cerebral edema. So on summit day our guides are watching everyone closely to see if they are exhibiting symptoms of AMS, headaches, confusion, and difficulty breathing. More than half the group starts taking dexamethesone tablets to combat a bad altitude headache (it is a steroid, Advil does not work). After about an hour Marsha is feeling worse and looks she might have to descend with one of the guides. But our head guide, Tobias, suggests that she try it just a little longer, to the next break point. He makes her drink lots of water with dehydration salts and then puts her at the head of our climbing line and makes everyone else walk behind her. We continue like this, very slowly, for several hours following her all the way to crater rim at about 19,000 feet. On the way up, we pass other climbers coming down that did not make it for one reason or another. As it turns out, our slow pace works well for everyone in the group. We all make to the crater rim about 11:00 a.m., where we stop for a longer break. The Kilimanjaro crater is huge and is covered in snow. We enter the crater on the south side and we can see the great northern glacier across the crater that covers the northern summit of Kilimanjaro. When Hans Meyer first reached the summit of Kilimanjaro in the late 1800’s, he found that the entire peak of Kili down to about 18,000 feet was covered with permanent ice, including the crater, which was filled with snow and ice. Today, the crater is ice free and only a few glaciers remain around the perimeter of the crater rim. The remaining glaciers are rapidly melting and are expected to be gone soon. It is a real treat to be able to see the Kilimanjaro glaciers. After the break, we start hiking along the western crater rim toward the Uhuru Peak, the highest point on Kilimanjaro. We reach the summit at about 12:30 p.m. after hiking another hour. It is a beautiful day, partly cloudy and not much wind. Cameron, Haley, and Travis lead the way to the summit and are the first in our group to get there. It is quite a feat for a thirteen year old to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro, much less three at the same time. Our guide company, Tusker, has been taking people up Kilimanjaro for 31 years and they have never had anyone reach the summit younger than 15 years old (they are so surprised that want copies of their passports to confirm their ages). According to the park rangers, only a very small number of kids under 15 even make an attempt to reach the summit each year, and many do not make it. Cameron, Haley, and Travis are some of the youngest climbers to ever reach the summit of Kilimanjaro, and most certainly the youngest triplets ever to do so. After about an hour on the summit, we start descending. It is much faster going down. It only takes us about 3 hours to climb down to the Kosovo camp. Everyone is exhausted, but very pleased that they reached the summit.