Chaeli conquers Kili in her wheelchair

A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS: Michaela Mycroft and her fellow climbers, who helped carry her in her wheelchair, at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro SLEEP deprivation, tears and anxiety on a sheer rock face were conquered by Michaela Mycroft on her arduous journey to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Mycroft, better known as Chaeli, this week became the first female quadriplegic to climb Africa’s highest peak, in a custom-built wheelchair — with help from seven climbers.

The Capetonian was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when she was 11 months old.

“Kilimanjaro is no joke, it’s a very mental mountain and you have to be mentally strong for it,” an emotional Mycroft told the Sunday Times in an exclusive phone interview on Friday night from her hotel room in Tanzania.

“There were so many different emotions we went through on the mountain, really good ones and really hard ones. We decided that it was okay to have emotional moments. We called them ‘mountain moments’, where sometimes you need to cry just because you need to.”

During the interview she broke down in tears as she began to realise the magnitude of her achievement.

She is a double world champion in wheelchair dancing and has completed the Cape Town Cycle Tour twice.

“We encountered a few problems we didn’t think of,” she said. “Like the wheelchair is made of steel and would get too cold to hold on to, and that’s an issue when people are carrying you up the mountain.

“We had to deal with freezing cold temperatures, hiking in the dark through snow and with very little sleep. I was awake for 42 hours at one stage.

“There were incredibly frightening moments where we had to go up a horizontal [rock] face and it was very scary. There was another group that passed us and they believed we wouldn’t make it.”

But there were happier moments. Mycroft celebrated her 21st birthday on the second day of the climb.

“Obviously getting to the summit was an amazing moment because that was the entire goal and is something I will remember forever.”

The expedition was part of an initiative to raise funds for the Chaeli Campaign, a nonprofit organisation started when Mycroft was nine.

The goal was to raise R1-million for the Chaeli Campaign’s Inclusive Education Programme and the Chaeli Cottage Inclusive Preschool and Enrichment Centre.

Mycroft’s mother, Zelda, CEO of the Chaeli Campaign, said its main purpose was to teach inclusion. “It’s not normal for anyone with a disability to be sidelined.”

Andre van Kets, of Discover Africa, the campaign’s official partner for the climb, said team preparation for the ascent began six months ago. It included altitude training to prepare for the summit at more than 5 000m above sea level.

It’s a very mental mountain and you have to be mentally strong