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SALT LAKE CITY — Trevor Chapman estimates he was 45 minutes from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro when he nearly passed out.
The Draper father of five was suffering from apparent pulmonary and cerebral edema, which is excess fluid in the brain and lungs, and can be fatal. Weak and barely able to move, Chapman knew he was close to the top and didn't want to fall short, especially if he had to leave his 10-year-old son, Jace, behind.
“My thought was I’m going to keep it in. Whatever I’m feeling is a temporary illness,” Chapman said, surrounded by his wife and children at Salt Lake International Airport, who greeted him and Jace there with a warm embrace Wednesday afternoon.
The two, despite the adversity, championed the famous mountain. Their faces were chapped and sunburned from the fierce conditions, but they grinned as they recalled the trip, including the tense moment on the day they planned to reach the summit.
The trip itself is a yearly father and son venture to celebrate Jace’s birthday. When Jace turned 6, they traveled to the Andes. When he turned 9 last year, they went to Mont Blanc in the Alps. This time, they planned to climb one of the seven summits, a nickname for the tallest mountains on each continent.
When they reached Tanzania, the locals affectionately dubbed Jace “Simba,” which is Swahili for lion. At 10, he’s one of the youngest to climb the mountain. The youngest was 7 years old.
Climbing around 10 to 15 miles per day, they slowly made their way to the top faster than most groups. However, four days into the trek, Chapman began to feel odd.
The group went to bed earlier than usual that night because they planned to wake up at midnight and continue toward the summit in the morning. When Chapman opened his eyes on the fifth day, he knew something was seriously wrong. As the other group members geared up for the day, he felt powerless.
“Something just kept — I just couldn’t keep up,” he said. He had come so far and knew he was close to the top, and in that moment his biggest concern wasn’t reaching the summit. The group reached a caldera and stopped when it was clear to the rest of the group Chapman was ill.
“At that time, I was pretty much not there,” Chapman said.
Jace remembers the day more vividly. He recalls his dad struggling up the mountain, taking one step for every three steps the others took, wheezing along the way.
Earlier in the trip, a man had given Jace a cross necklace to give him comfort on the trip. A woman then instructed him to grab onto the cross and pray for strength in times of need. As his father became increasingly sick, Jace did just that.
“I actually needed to use it because when my dad was getting weaker, I’d say ‘please let him take six steps’ and when he took those six steps, I’d say ‘thank you so much for letting him take six steps. Now please let him take six more,” Jace said, pulling the cross from underneath his sweater to display. “It just went on and on and on like that.”
As they rested at the caldera, Chapman told Jace to summit without him and that thought broke him. It broke Jace, too. Jace was given the choice to climb to the summit with one of the group’s guides, Baraka or Gabriel. The other guide would remain with Chapman.
Jace refused to choose between the guides.
“If my dad’s not summiting, I’m not summiting,” Jace said, recalling what he told the guides. “And (Baraka) was like, ‘Oh.’”
That’s when both guides picked Chapman up and carried him on their shoulders the rest of the way, so he could join his son at the top of the mountain.
“That’s what I want my kids to realize. There are no quantum leaps, there are no shortcuts. One step at a time and eventually you’ll make it to the top." — Trevor Chapman
“I just gained a lot of tremendous respect and love (for the guides) because they knew I wanted to make it,” Chapman said of that moment. “It would have been far easier once we had made it to the caldera, 45 minutes from the top, seeing I couldn’t breathe, to open up my chest, give me (medical aid) and carry me down. Instead, they threw me on their shoulders and walked me to the top. That respect and love is what really hit me the most.”
With the help of the guides, the group reached the summit. The father and son duo took photos and enjoyed the view, soaking in a moment Jace says he will never forget.
“It’s a great feeling and it is something that I can look back on for my entire life and say that I summited the tallest peak in Africa,” he said.
They returned to the base safely and there were no signs Chapman was ever sick as he plucked two of his daughters from the ground at the airport.
He looks back at the trip as an example for himself and for his children to press forward through any adversity thrown at them.
“That’s what I want my kids to realize. There are no quantum leaps, there are no shortcuts. One step at a time and eventually you’ll make it to the top,” he says about hiking up the mountain and how it relates to other obstacles.
He isn’t sure what the next adventure will be but he grins when he’s asked, considering the endless possibilities out there to share with his children next year.
