The team started their training on Saturday 7th October, trekking up Etna from the Nicolosi side, ending up at the restaurant found at the last cable car stop. The plan for the next day was to resume the climb from there up till the summit.
Sunday 8th October .......the adventure began around 9am when the team set off towards the summit. The weather was cloudy, the permeating smell of sulphur hit combined with an unaccustomed altitude had an effect on the some of the team members, but a good slow steady pace saw the team reach the first rifugio in good time for a healthy lunch of nutritious snacks and warm drinks.
An hour or so later the team set off on the last leg of the upward journey, that of reaching the summit of Mount Etna. The weather by then was slowly deteriorating with low cloud and fog increasing slowly. Although initially visibility was acceptable about two hours later and a few metres below the summit the team decided to head down due to the increasingly deteriorating weather conditions.
Within minutes of starting our descent we were engulfed in a thick fog, making it impossible to see a few metres ahead of us. But then that is nature, it is unpredictable and a force not to be underestimated. We slowly started descending to lower altitudes and only decided to ask for help because it was the sensible thing to do. It was not a case of panic, despair or danger as many people thought or assumed.
Unfortunately people think that Mount Etna is a small area - possibly this perception is due to the amount of day tourists that go to Mount Etna by coach from Catania, see the summit from a couple of thousand metres below and therefore do not realise that with an area of 1,190 km²(460 square miles) its is actually larger than Malta.
The events that followed were eventually blown out of proportion by the media with stories describing 'real' facts such as us burning our clothes and passports to be warm etc etc. As if we would have done that - our clothes first of all were clothes that we bought for Kilimanjaro - apart from being expensive, they were doing their job that of keeping us warm. We were well equipped to sleep on the mountain if the necessity arose!
By 11pm the adventure came to an end with members of the Corpo Guardia Forestale Gran Parco dell' Etna guiding us down to the entrance of the park. We had been walking for over twelve hours, which made us look an even sorrier lot than we actually were!
Our mobile phones did not stop ringing, since our families got to hear the "Breaking News" around 8pm. The next day wasn't different either, with members of the press contacting us for a comment and wanting to know the whole story - whether some of them wanted to know the truth is a different story!
Landing back in Malta later on in the evening, we were greeted at the airport by members of the press, TV, Radio, print media all jostling to get a comment out of us. Some called it a publicity stunt, some called us crazy, some just laughed.
But did this adventure put us off our Challenge? No, we were even more determined to succeed. Was this adventure a publicity stunt? No, definitely not! Did this adventure help our cause? possibly, many people hadn't heard of the Kilimanjaro Challenge 3 before this event, did this adventure give us an ego boost? Not at all! - one year down the line I still get teased about it, but its fine, I can take a joke!
Copyright on photos on this post belongs to Ian Cremona.
Thanks Ian, it was great trekking with you in Sicily and Tanzania!!!
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