Jonathan at the Summit
Jonathan's Kilimanjaro Challenge
After completing his first charity trek in Peru last year and with a lot of support raising over £5,000 for Diabetes UK, Jonathan Percival signed up for another charity adventure by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in October 2010.
Being a Northampton boy who was actually born in the Barratt Maternity Home, he chose to raise funds for the ‘Northampton General Hospital Charitable Fund’ as he wanted to do something for a local charity rather than a multi-national organisation, and felt the smaller charities often get overlooked when large scale tragedies and natural disasters happen. With the help of Lorna Liggett from the NGH Charitable Fund, he identified a vital piece of equipment called a Resuscitaire that is required to help save the lives of many newborn babies born at the hospital who, when born need that little bit of extra support.
The Kilimanjaro Trek is a challenging trek at altitude climbing the highest freestanding mountain in the world which is also the highest mountain on the African continent at 5895m. Following the Machame route for four long days of trekking/climbing where the terrain changed from thick rainforest to moorland, a long and tiring climb over rock then to scree, following the mountaineering code of ‘walk high, sleep low’ to avoid altitude sickness by aiding our bodies acclimatization. After two hours sleep at the end of the fourth day trekking Jonathan and the team got up at 11pm ready for a 12 o’clock midnight start on their final summit climb, then after nine hours with pain and physical exhaustion in minus 15 degrees temperatures and only 50% oxygen they reached Uhuru Peak the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at 5895m above sea level. Once they had congratulated each other and had photographs taken at the famous sign it was time to start their descent, which actually took another 1½ days and he still have numb toes!