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Just
reaching his peak
An Ohio University sweatshirt draped over his shoulders and Nelsonville’s
Rocky boots on his feet, Geography Professor Hugh Bloemer watched
the sun rise from the summit of Africa’s famed Mount Kilimanjaro
on July 5, 1999. It was an unbelievable experience, especially at
30 degrees below zero, and one he would have again 14 months later.
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| Research
and personal reward has pushed Professor Hugh Bloemer to climb
Mount Kilimanjaro twice. |
“When
I first told my doctor I was going to do this, he said, ‘In
your dreams.’ I said I would send him a postcard.”
That postcard hangs in his doubting doc’s office.
Bloemer’s first trek was made partly in preparation for the
second, and both were tied to his research on the effects of ecotourism
on high mountain environments. A member of the faculty for 30 years,
Bloemer was scoping out Africa’s highest point — in northeast
Tanzania near the Kenyan border — as an optional field trip
for his colleagues in the High Mountain Remote Sensing Cartography
Group. Eight people attending the group’s September 2000 conference
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, took Bloemer up on his offer to lead the
way.
“I would not encourage anyone to try this next week or next
month,’’ says Bloemer, an asthma sufferer who was 59 when
he made the first trip. “It is not something that someone my
age should attempt without proper preparation.”
With the help of Tom Murray, coordinator of clinical exercise physiology,
and his wife, Debbie Murray, a dietician at Hocking College, Bloemer
trained for seven months for the 1999 journey. His regimen included
daily aerobics, exercise, racquetball and a carefully prescribed
diet.
An extinct volcano, Kilimanjaro rises to two snowcapped peaks, Kibo
at 19,340 feet above sea level and Mawenzi at 17,564 feet. Bloemer
made it to Kibo’s peak both times, creating a serpentine path
through volcanic ash — an experience the professor compared
to walking in soft, ankle-deep sand. Both trips took five days (three
and a half up and one and a half down) and dissected each of the
mountain’s climatic regions, from tropical rain forest to arctic
ice-cap conditions.
His first climbing partners, a couple in their twenties from Norway,
were members of the Norwegian military. They were accompanied by
two guides, five porters — each of whom carried about 60 pounds
on his head — and a cook, also all in their twenties. The next
year, the nine-member cartography group had 30 support personnel
and the luxury of reaching the summit in balmy temperatures of zero
to 10 degrees.
“We were interested in the impact of tourism on vegetation
and erosion in such areas and what if any positive impact ecotourism
has,” Bloemer says of the cartography group. “One of the
most negative aspects is the deforestation that has occurred. It’s
a fragile environment in the first place, and it may take 100 years
to rejuvenate what has been destroyed.”
Since Jan. 1, 2000, the Tanzanian government banned climbers’
use of wood from the sparsely forested mid- to upper sections of
the mountain for campfires. Porters now carry alternative fuels,
although the negligent use of kerosene and other fuels is posing
new environmental problems. On the plus side, the more than 15,000
people who attempt the journey up Kilimanjaro each year help the
region’s poor economy.
Chances are Bloemer won’t be among those climbers again, though.
He says he’s already hung up those Rocky boots, and he grabs
the OU sweatshirt for more leisurely pursuits.
— Richard Heck
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