TO THE MOUNTAIN TOP

Mount Kilimanjaro sits exactly 19,341 feet in the air in Tanzania, East Africa. In simpler terms, that is 3.67 miles high. In some parts of the mountain, the air is extremely thin, and with it comes conditions not easy to sustain human life without the help of oxygen masks. But he wouldn’t be climbing with masks.

Now let’s face it, most of us probably don’t know many people — or anyone for that matter — who has made the journey to Tanzania to climb this monstrosity. Or at least, that is, until now.

Enter a name you will hear a lot in the coming year — Dylan Sullivan, of Kearny.

Sullivan is a 17-year-old rising senior at St. Peter’s Prep in downtown Jersey City. And before we get to his epic journey, perhaps you’ve already either read about him in The Observer or heard us speak of him in a multitude of episodes of The Observer Live!

That’s because before he was off to Africa, Sullivan completed his Eagle Scout Project last year and was honored by the Mayor and Council in North Arlington. He’s a full Son of the American Legion of Kearny. He attends Kearny Council meetings. He’s been to the Veterans Day celebration in town. He was on hand when a veteran who died without family was finally laid to rest. He is well involved in co-curriculars at Prep. And these are just a handful of things he’s already accomplished.

And, did we already mention, he’s only 17? Suppose we did, but it’s worth mentioning again.

And so to add to his already-impressive resume, Sullivan, with permission of his parents, left Kearny for John F. Kennedy Airport in late June where he took a flight to the Netherlands. From there, it was another flight, on Royal Dutch Airlines, following a layover, to Tanzania.

And then, the journey of a lifetime began.

 

How this journey came to be

It all started for Sullivan during his first year at Prep when he joined the school’s Adventure Club, which is connected to an organization called the Mountain Goat Movement, which says it hopes to “cultivate a spirit of adventure and an appreciation for the great outdoors within young people.”

It all came to Prep, Sullivan says, through former English teacher Greg Morrisey, who wanted to take kids from “the big cities” to the great outdoors. They’ve done other trips, smaller of course, but this one was the real deal.

“I wanted something that was going to take me out of my comfort zone,” Sullivan says.  “I’ve never been on a trip like that before.”

Sullivan says he and Morrisey grew close — and it was Morrisey who invited him on this journey.  One other Prep student, a sophomore, plus a Prep alumnus and a videographer were the five who went on the trip. It took 24 hours, in total, to get from JFK to the mountain.

“At first it was nerve wracking. When we were landing we were all trying to see the mountain but it was too dark,” he says

But that darkness didn’t last too long.

Once they were on the tarmac, “it just felt different.”

“The people there were just amazing,” Sullivan says. “We got acclimated to the African weather. Where we were, it could go from 100º to like 60º when the sun was gone. But we got packed and left the next morning.”

From the airport, the five journeyed to what Sullivan described as a compound/hotel. Along the way, there were people cooking food on open fires, all kinds of animals and more. After a one-day rest and recovery from jetlag, it was time to begin the nearly four-mile high climb.

Sullivan says there are four zones to the mountain: a rain forest zone, a desert, barren land and the arctic zone near the summit. The climb began from the forest zone with him and a bunch of other explorers and a bunch of monkeys, one of which took something from someone’s backpack.

“You don’t get much of that in Kearny,” Sullivan says.

Along with his group of five, three others from Tanzania were on the journey. They were guides and guards of sorts who know the terrain and the dangers.

At first, it seemed like the trek was too slow.

“But we needed to become climatized, because you can get sick very easily,” Sullivan says. “You’re slowly walking up the trail with these deep breaths, to make sure you have enough oxygen in yourself so you’re acclimated when you get to the higher levels when there’s not as much oxygen.”

Slow as it was, it was still an amazing, albeit long, day.

After a day of climbing, the five set up camp, feeling accomplished.

The quintet got up the next morning and it was misty and cloudy. Along the way, something unexpected happened.

“We were going across a certain area, probably about 11,000 or 12,000 feet up,” Sullivan says. “ … But at that point we were moving across a cliff and that cliff was very eroded and it was on sort of like an angle. The group of men (guides) were emphasizing how you have to be safe, very aware, when we were moving along this part of the cliff. They were almost holding our backs for most of it. It was scary because you look down at the cloud cover and there’s nothing but clouds beneath you.”

As this was happening, he was chatting to another in his group, mis-stepped and and nearly lost his footing and fell off the cliff.

“(The guide) grabbed a hold of my coat and just said ‘we have to pay attention, you almost slipped off.’ It was an interesting experience. This is real and we have to be more and more self-aware.”

Still safe, breathing became more of a challenge at this point. The entire group was feeling altitude sickness — it’s actually called AMS, or acute mountain sickness. At this point, everyone has to address the situation. And it led to what Sullivan described as “Death Wall,” like a rock-climbing wall you’d see in America, only it was 10 times larger and there were no spokes to grip.

That day, two in the group got very sick, with one accumulating fluid in his lungs. The other two stayed behind and ultimately had to be choppered off the mountain and back to safety. Had they not returned to the base, there’s no telling what might have happened to them.

Still, for Sullivan and the rest of the group carried on, but not before questioning whether they should just get on the helicopter and go back. But they were in day 3 of 5 — saw how far they’d gone — and there was no turning back.

They got to a point where Sullivan says he started to get very sick. It was so bad there’s a portion of the day he has no recollection of what happened. He hallucinated. He was struck by the awesomeness of the mountain. But “I was out of it.”

The group was basically at the top of the mountain, but just short of the sign that says you made it. The sickness grew worse and he vomited blood. And it was here he knew the trek was over. The group rested and the next day, rather than heading to the summit, it was time to head back.

“The porter in the group said ‘if you go any further, you will die,’” Sullivan recalls.

So very close. But come on, this is mission accomplished no matter how one looks at it.

Two days later, the remainder of the quintet made it back to the base. And fortunately, each and every person was OK for the flight back to America. Sullivan and his companions on the journey (there’s a Jesuit reference there) were given a medal of having climbed the mountain.

“It was just awesome,” he says.

So now what does one do, aged 17, to top this?

Sullivan says he has time to think that over but there’s definitely more in store, including applying to West Point, where he has the backing of U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-9. And then, there’s his senior year of high school.

“I’m ready,” he says.

Ready he is, indeed. And firmly prepared to face whatever challenges may come his way.