Nahant man scales mountain tops

NAHANT – Nahant resident Michael Stempek is one of fewer than 700 people who have climbed all 115 mountain peaks located in the Northeast but for his biggest climb to date he had to head southeast, to Mt. Kilimanjaro.”It’s all my son’s fault,” said Stempek, speaking to a group of roughly 30 who turned out on an appropriately snowy morning to the Nahant Village Church’s monthly Men’s Group breakfast.Stempek, chief of Internal Medicine for Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, grew up in New York and hiked his first Adirondack peak at the urging of a college botany professor.By 1994 he had hiked the 40 high peaks in The Adirondacks, decided he was done and got rid of his hiking gear, he said.”Then my son, who is 30, said, ?dad, let’s do some hiking’ ? that’s how I got back into it,” he said.Stempek hiked the 48 peaks in the White Mountains, and ranges in Vermont and Maine that make up the 115 Northeast peaks before setting his sites on Kilimanjaro.Located in Tanzania on the Kenyan border, Mt. Kilimanjaro is the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, rising 19,340 feet through the clouds. It is also considered one of the most accessible mountains because hikers can do it on foot without ropes or harnesses.”Anyone can do this, anyone,” Stempek said.Anyone can do it – with help.Individuals can’t climb Kilimanjaro at random, Stempek explained. Trips must be booked through tour companies and the climb includes an entourage of support staff. He said they had 13 in all including a guide, an assistant guide, porters, who carry the load, a cook, an assistant cook and “a latrine guy.””In order to be successful you have to go slow or you get altitude sickness,” Stempek said. “So we went about 2,000 feet the first day.”Kilimanjaro, which is actually a volcano, is made up of three peaks, Shira, Mawenzi and Kibo. The plan was to take a side trip to Mawenzi in order to give themselves an extra day or two to acclimate to the altitude change then head for Kibo, the highest peak, Stempek said.It wasn’t until they hit 10,000 feet above sea level that Stempek, who is 60, ran into trouble.”When I got to 10,000 feet I threw up a couple of times,” he said. “The altitude got to me.”After altering his diet and adhering to the adage “climb high and sleep low,” he felt better but he was concerned.”Psychologically I’m going to do this but I don’t know if my body will let me,” he said.While they were the only climbers in their party they weren’t the only ones on the trail. Stempek said they passed a man in a wheelchair at around 13,000 feet, they crossed paths several times with a film crew and another party of Norwegian climbers. He joked that some nights the campgrounds looked more like a Boy Scout jamboree.They also passed in and out of a rain forest, scrubland, and some beautiful and unique flora, he said. At 16,000 feet they hit snow and sleet.”This is now summit day,” he said. “And it’s horrible ? I’m pretty nauseated at this point and I don’t even want to eat.”The group set out at midnight with a goal to hit the summit by sunrise but after five tough hours of climbing in the dark Stempek said he hit the wall at 18,000. The pace at this point was glacier slow but Stempek said he couldn’t keep up. It was also 20 degrees with a 30 mile per hour wind blowing.”Then you see the big sign, congratulations – but that’s not the top,” he said. “That’s congratulations, you made it to the rim.”It’s two more hours to get to the top but many climbers never make it that far, he said. He admits it was tempting to quit because it’s hard but he also said the adventure is pretty spectacular.He threw up two more times before getting it together and following what he called a well-worn path up the rest of the summit where he finally saw the sign he’d been waiting for.”There’s the congratulations, you made it to the summit sign ? 19,340 feet,” he said.It was 8:30 a.m. on day four, he was spent and he still had to go down.After coming off the mountain, Stempek said they