Keys hotel : July 2016

Kilimanjaro is the highest free standing mountain in the world, at 5895 meters or 19,341 feet altitude one of the Earth’s highest volcanoes. Not technically difficult but altitude & weather make it challenging, after having massive heart failure I found it to be the perfect place to test oneself.

Our first view of Kilimanjaro, The roof of Africa

Several years ago a man attacked me because of the uniform I was wearing, I was a Massachusetts State Trooper. At 6’2’’ hyped up on street drugs he came at me faster than I could react, we fought hand to hand because I chose not to shoot him, my gun being the only weapon I had on me that day. When my radio was broken the squelch button must have gone off because my dispatch called to see if I was ok. When I didn’t respond, Trooper Kelly, a fellow former U.S. Marine said he got a gut feeling & headed in my last known direction only to find me unconscious & still clinging to this man’s neck in some desperate wrestling move I was attempting before going out as he was slamming my head against the concrete building adjacent. Trooper Kelly saved me that day.

My self as a young state trooper

It was a long recovery but I worked several more years as a police officer before a mysterious anxiety overcame me. We thought it was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD but it turned out that the head injury caused sleep apnea which then in turn caused heart failure, 30% of my heart became nonviable. 1/3. With an ejection fraction of 15 I was given roughly 5 years to live O& told I would never climb to altitude again.

All my life I have climbed mountains, my wife Serenity & I have travelled from Alaska to Bolivia climbing walls of rock & ice, putting up new routes & setting a Guinness Book World Record luge sledding down. (1998 book page 277) sea kayaking and SCUBA diving. Now I had a difficult time just carrying my groceries up the stairs to my home. http://www.expeditionoutreach.org/

So after a long talk with my wife regarding of what is the true value in life, we agreed, only love, our love & the love of what we enjoy most, thus was born our 5 year series of WildHeart Expeditions starting with an expedition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Serenity & I years before after crossing the Andres to the Amazon Jungle of Bolivia

My full time job was now cardiac rehab & training took precedence over everything else. With support from Summit Oxygen, an 02 company for climbers & a friend in North Conway N.H. Rick Wilcox, the first New Englander to climb Mount Everest I was ready to lead an expedition. The team I put together consisted of 4 men who also had heart issues though accomplished athletes it seemed to affect them less. I connected with The Keys Hotel, one of the finest possible outfitters in Tanzania to support our expedition & equipment sponsors got on board.

http://www.ime-usa.com/ htthttp://www.keys-hotel-tours.com

So was born, The 2015 WildHeart-No Limits International Kilimanjaro Expedition.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1398114007116751/

My wife Serenity, a heavy metal musician Matt Shanahan, future mountain guide Andre Mattos, Doctor Joshua Hirsch, a Chiropractor from Jaffrey N.H. who offered high altitude back treatments, his son Christian, a naval cadet & friend Arno Mayer made up the New England part of our team. Ken Bell a successful business man from California who has the goal of reaching the world’s seven highest peaks & our contingent from the Swiss Alps Tracie & Philippe May whose impressive athletic resumes made me wonder if I were up to the task of being their team leader.

Team Wild Heart and our massive support of porters guides & cooks from the Keys Hotel

Tracie Sachs-May – Also a Guinness Book World Record holder & 5 time World Cup Champion speed skiing. 4 time pro World Champion & more, & her husband Philippe May - 13 time Swiss Champion Speed Skiing. Former World Cup Champion and Pro World Campion Speed Skiing. Fastest speed 250.000 km/h or 156 mph. One of 5 men to ever ski over 250 who just finished The RAAM: Race Across America and took 3rd place in the mixed category; 6 days 20 hours 39 minutes on a road bike just a few months prior to leaving.

Tracie & Phillippe May

From my KLM plane seat where we sat for 20 hours I saw both The French Alps & the Sahara Desert, arriving late in Tanzania and exhausted we settled in to our rooms at the Keys Hotel which was more like a Caribbean resort than a stopping off point for the massive struggle ahead.

The French Alps & Sahara Desert from my airplane seat

Before we left we connected with Michael Aronson from ReRun Shoes http://www.rerunshoes.com/ who donated four expedition sized duffel bags of children’s shoes for us to carry to an orphanage in Africa. We all spent our first day together at the Tuleeni Orphanage run by Mama Faraji P.O. Box 8562 Moshi-Tanzania East Africa e-mail tuleenichildren@yahoo.com as part of our WildHeart ReRun Mission, we each carried shoes & shirts & hygiene products in our packs. As a retired cop & former U.S. Marine in Desert Storm I am no stranger to suffering, but the orphanage still took me off guard, they receive no government support & rely on gifts from climbers.

The WildHeart ReRun Mission

The next day we travelled to The Machame Gate 5,718 feet altitude & after some administration & flirting with the English girls on expedition who all sounded like Hermione from the Harry Potter series we were off, the first day is a trek through the Jungle to Camp 1 at 9,927 feet. We had a staff of over 60 porters, guides, cooks & assistant cooks. Our cook prepared special medicine for everyone with coughs from the volcanic soil that got in our lungs they called Duka La Dawa, hot water with Ginger & Garlic, which tasted much like vinegar to me but it worked like magic.

The crowded but warm Machame Camp 1

Day 2 Dehydration & Hypothermia! We all left for the Shira Plateau for Shira camp at 12,355 feet. Each day the only difficulty was the constant packing & repacking, unpacking & taking of both blood samples to determine my INR, (to adjust my dose of Coumadin, a blood thinner) & taking my blood pressures & the teams oxygen saturations for our study of heart failure at altitude.

Pushing on Serenity & I were our usual hour behind when it began to rain, the higher we went the colder it became & Serene made one small mistake that cascaded. In the rush to get on the trail behind our team she simply forgot to mix her electrolyte drink, a dietary staple and ‘bonked’ or rather started dehydrating in the heat, so when the temp dropped suddenly as we ascended and the rain came in hypothermia set in. By the time we rolled into Shira Camp Serene couldn’t use her fingers to sign her name at the hut & was shivering uncontrollably. She didn’t seem to recognize me or at least was not able to answer my questions. I got her in a sleeping bag & dressed in warm clothes & I started her on some oxygen & rehydrating with BRL’s Trifuel .

http://brlsports.com/trifuel-energy-and-recovery-drink/

Images of our Shira Camp 2

Day 3: Serenity felt better but we decided to spend an extra day at the Shira Camp, Matt stayed with us as his asthma was kicking in & the decision was made to split the team in two. I have done this before on expeditions so I knew it wasn’t as hopeless as it may have felt for some, yet I noticed that I was hearing less & less from my designated Midland handheld Radio Team Leaders. We did receive information that the team reached Lava Tower 14,950 feet altitude & Ken & Philippe even climbed to the top of it.

Day 4 The Tower: The bulk of the team pushed on down to Barranco Camp (13,066) to rest Matt, Serenity & I, now the rear party made our push for Lava Tower. Each step was a monumental effort in forcing air in & out of my lungs, sounding like a machine I chugged along until my Heart Rate Monitor reached higher than 130, the set limit for my heart rate before resting. To avoid dropping to my feet I would yell out, 130! In time my porters knew this meant a 2-3 minute stop, leaning on my Leki Trekking Poles until my heart rate returned with what runners call a recover on the fly. All my heart rate numbers had to be adjusted to meet my condition, what is aerobic for some could mean unconsciousness for me, & what is considered a rate that is lightly fat burning is my deep aerobic zone. It’s a science but one I had not mastered before leaving for Kilimanjaro. With each new step I learned something new about myself.

We eventually reached Lava Tower, a cold & desolate place, we were the only ones there & we had given our team the only cook tent, but we kept the toilet tent so it was a fair arrangement. Eating outside & taking blood samples with mud soaked hands under a vast Milky Way of stars was as challenging as it was magnificent. My blood pressure was nearing 200. Serenity threatened to pull the plug on my participation in the expedition if I couldn’t get it lower with blood pressure medication. We upped my dose of blood pressure pills and stopped the blood thinners as my INR was also dangerously high. By morning it came down.

Lava Tower Camp

Day 5 Recuperation: Serenity, Matt & I descended to Barranco Camp, beneath the great wall separating us from high camp & the summit. Meeting up with the team was energizing & I hit Doctor Josh up for a Chiropractic healing. http://jaffreychiropractic.com/

Doctor Joshua Hirsch Chiropractor at altitude!

Day 6 The Barranco Wall: Not really technical but the fourth class rock climbing was about the most fun I have had in a long time. I love hanging by my fingers looking down at a valley thousands of feet below. The clouds beneath us only clear sky above & Mount Meru in plain sight, we reached the top of the Barranco Wall easily & with one more valley to cross, we reached Karanga Camp.

Matt Shanahan & I rest for a moment

Day 7 High Camp, 15,239 feet. Crossing one valley after another we made the final steep ascent to Barafu Camp. Upon reaching our tent Serenity looked at me & told me flat out, “I rolled an ankle & it’s pretty bad”. I asked, when the hell did you do that & she said about an hour after I started the climb. She knew I would have scrapped my summit shot, that I was not there for myself, that the summit would mean so much less without her, so she lied, she held in the pain & hid herself from my view, I was so busy counting my breaths & pushing the thinning air in & out of my lungs I never noticed her pain, in 28 years of marriage her feelings never went so unnoticed. We talked about the need for me to go on, even if I had to go alone as I couldn’t hope to keep pace with my team, they were all strong & with only minor differences in pace they pretty much stayed together. We were all now high on the slopes of Kilimanjaro!

Day 8 Summit Push: Most of the Brafu Camp expedition teams left at midnight for a chance to see the sunrise from the summit. A plan that didn’t work for the majority of climbers. The main body of our expedition left together for the summit between three and four AM. I didn’t even try to fall in line behind them or any other team, if I were going to do this, I had to get deeply into my head, then out of it completely. A guide had to accompany me by the ‘rules’ of the mountain & a high altitude porter carried some extra oxygen.

I watched the sunrise near Mount Mweka and the dazzling illumination of the clouds below me. It was not until 16,400 feet that I turned on my oxygen, I tried to go as long as possible to strengthen my lungs but in truth, I breath oxygen at sea level! It wasn’t magic but it made all the difference. It takes a lot of effort to commit yourself to the heavy breathing of it, and at 4 liters per minute I found my new rhythm. My pace got a bit faster than before but now at higher & higher altitudes and it wasn’t long before I met Kilimanjaro’s first victim.

Summit Fever: Lying flat on the ground with no guide or porters anywhere near was Raj, of Indian descent living in the UK & with a weak pulse, he was starving for oxygen. What could I do but rip off my mask & offer him mine? Shortly he was revived & we spoke about breathing & I thought it was his intent to decent, when I finally got my mask back on I cleared the fog out of my glacier glasses only to see him use this temporary energy to sprint up another 40 yards before dropping again. This scenario played itself over again with people from several other expeditions before reaching the high ridge known as Stella Point. On the flat ground the bodies were strewn about the ground, littered even, all young climbers whose first big mountain was Kilimanjaro, all half-awake & struggling to breathe. The common mistake was to spend less on a discounted guided trip & try to reach the summit in a few short days, this nearly always had consequences.

I made a resolve not to rest for more than a moment at Stella Point & keep pushing on, I couldn’t bare the thought of me lying on the ground in this crowd of zombies playing out a scene of the Walking Dead.

http://www.summitoxygen.com/

My guide seemed happy that I wanted to push on from Stella Point, a place of happy disillusionment, flat enough to imagine you reached the top, but still forty five minutes away in thin air. What I didn’t know yet was that my team was waiting for me on the summit, they had been there approximately an hour, but the weather was holding & they cheered me on with a final upward push I reached the highest point in Africa. Uhuru peak!

Team Summit Shot with our expedition banner

We honor the gift of life through risk, my teammates inspired me, for in their presence I could do no less. We took all the usual summit photos & Ken hugged me & asked me, “What drives you man”? It was a question I still ponder, was it I had something to prove? Did I reduce Kilimanjaro with supplemental oxygen for ego gratification? I kept telling myself that I was doing it for all the Cardiac Athletes out there but did I play fair? Does it even count & then the big one, I’m now at 19,341 feet and I’m low on oxygen because I had been giving it all out to strangers. Hanging out without my oxygen on the summit made me feel the altitude even more I suspect, we all started the descent and Matt asked me how high are we, all I could muster up in response is ‘too high, way too high’ as my pace quickened letting my heavy body drag me down across the volcanic dust. http://ironheartfoundation.org/

The IronHeart Foundation

Pains is Truly Weakness Leaving Our Bodies!

The Four Cardiac Athletes On Top

Mountain Madness: Serenity & I are no strangers to mountain rescue or emergency medical care, so our instincts kicked in on the descent when we saw a half dozen porters carrying a man down in a wheel barrel. This victim’s eyes were rolled into his head and we could not find a pulse at first, then, it was faint at its best when we gave him oxygen. He was breathing, but just barely.

Mr. Dawson & I after we got Josh into the ambulance

I surrendered all my oxygen and Serenity and I forced water into him with this odd jaw lift - head tilt method we sort of made up as we went, it was many hours of worry until we saww him to the ambulance drop off point & safe at lower altitude. We finally made what is called an ambulance drop off & so it goes on Kilimanjaro.

The Roof of Africa

On Safari: No Kilimanjaro expedition is complete without a photo safari in the Serengeti. One of the coolest things that can happen to anyone while on expedition is to Not-Die, Perhaps the most danger we were in was when my courageous wife Serenity, in the tradition of many explorers who came before her she wanted to interact with the wildlife and she petted a wild African monkey! They connected nearly immediately but this bond was only temporary as Serene got bit, Being of sound mind I followed by further petting this same monkey only she seemed to like me.

Mweka, the Monkey & Me

When we got home Serenity & I went to the Infectious disease control unit of our hospital to find out if we had in fact survived our Kilimanjaro expedition or if we were just waiting to die some horrible death from the monkey bite, which had drew blood, the doctor started his speech by saying "now I don't want to alarm you but this monkey, The Macaque has been known to carry disease which first causes massive brain tissue damage and loss of most bodily functions and soon after a painful death, now he says, you really shouldn't panic, we both looked at him like, yea, what is there not to panic about? He then said, the monkey that bit you Serenity is not a Macaque and is totally harmless.

The meaning of Extreme is a 'relative thing' I have come to appreciate all those out there struggling with health issues, physical, mental and emotional, an extreme sport for some could be simply getting their groceries. I have always found extreme sports to be in the variety of spiritual experience more than sport & like all spiritual experiences your fears must be faced. After the assault on my life I suffer from anxiety, (sometimes severe), agoraphobia & panic attacks that make it even harder to breath. I found that I was able to hold it together to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain and understand that I am the first to do so with such a condition. not the type of record that will get in any books though it was monumental for me.

Each night I had to reconnect with my breath using meditation, and a yoga called pranayama along with a style of breath-work called Butekyo Breathing which worked powerfully. http://www.buteykoclinic.com/

Stay strong for one more day I would tell myself. I was supposed to die this year according to my first cardiologists prediction but instead of that, I climbed, I'm not a very talented or educated man, & I have more than my share of health issues, but I just decided to do it and if I can do this, than I would say there is no limit to what you can do, life gives us plenty of ‘mountainous’ obstacles that seem to prevent us from finding happiness and peace and I would never reduce someone’s pain but I found it help to get really present with how you are feeling. Pain has a difficult time when you breathe into it powerfully, in the end my success was all about focusing on my breath with every ounce of strength I had and after that, concentrating even harder on my next breath.

Respectfully, Michael Coyne: Expedition Outreach