It's 8:55 a.m. on Oct. 12 and freezing cold. Melinda Kelly doesn't have much time.

She reaches into her backpack and finds her cell phone. She punches out a message to John Pasley in Charleston. "Mt. Killi Success!!!"

"He's the only one I text messaged from the top," said Kelly about her personal trainer who spent a year preparing her for the climb up Mount Kilimanjaro.

The tallest mountain in Africa is 19,341 feet high, "and I know every inch of it," said Kelly.

The 45-year-old Dunbar woman is a nurse in the cardio-cath lab at CAMC. Her recent three-week vacation to Tanzania was the fifth trip she has taken to Africa since 2001.

"I love Africa. I am fascinated by it," she said.

Her first trip was a safari to Kenya, a few weeks after 9-11. In 2006, she visited Rwanda and Uganda to trek for gorillas and to see the tree-climbing lions. The next year, she rafted the Zambezi River and bungee jumped at Victoria Falls on a tour of Zambia, Botswana and Namibia. Last year, she visited South Africa and Swaziland.

Kelly mainly travels with the same small group of friends she met through Adventures for Singles, an Atlanta travel agency that caters to people who don't have someone to travel with.

Before meeting up with five of her friends this year, Kelly first climbed Mount Meru with a guide and porter. She wanted to acclimate herself to the altitude for the Kilimanjaro ascent. At nearly 15,000 feet, Mount Meru was steeper and more treacherous than Kilimanjaro, but didn't require any technical skills.

Kelly then met her friends on Oct. 7 at the Springlands Hotel near Moshi. The next day they were merged with a larger group, so 31 in all started on the four-and-a-half-day hike led by guides and accompanied by porters who carried luggage and other gear.

The group took the Marangu Route, the only route that provides sleeping huts with bunks along the way. Latrines served as restrooms. "It was pretty primitive," Kelly said. 

On summit day, they arose at midnight after four hours of sleep and began the final leg. "When we're going up and had to stop for someone ahead of us, I would rest my head on my poles and go to sleep. The guide would shake me and say 'No sleep, no sleep.'"

They reached the summit at 8:50 a.m. -- or at least 12 of them did, including Kelly and four of her friends. The others were overcome with fatigue, altitude sickness and injury.

"We were there for about 30 minutes. The altitude was making us lightheaded. And it was so cold that the water froze in my camel pack in my backpack," Kelly said.

It's 8:55 a.m. on Oct. 12 and freezing cold. Melinda Kelly doesn't have much time.

She reaches into her backpack and finds her cell phone. She punches out a message to John Pasley in Charleston. "Mt. Killi Success!!!"

"He's the only one I text messaged from the top," said Kelly about her personal trainer who spent a year preparing her for the climb up Mount Kilimanjaro.

The tallest mountain in Africa is 19,341 feet high, "and I know every inch of it," said Kelly.

The 45-year-old Dunbar woman is a nurse in the cardio-cath lab at CAMC. Her recent three-week vacation to Tanzania was the fifth trip she has taken to Africa since 2001.

"I love Africa. I am fascinated by it," she said.

Her first trip was a safari to Kenya, a few weeks after 9-11. In 2006, she visited Rwanda and Uganda to trek for gorillas and to see the tree-climbing lions. The next year, she rafted the Zambezi River and bungee jumped at Victoria Falls on a tour of Zambia, Botswana and Namibia. Last year, she visited South Africa and Swaziland.

Kelly mainly travels with the same small group of friends she met through Adventures for Singles, an Atlanta travel agency that caters to people who don't have someone to travel with.

Before meeting up with five of her friends this year, Kelly first climbed Mount Meru with a guide and porter. She wanted to acclimate herself to the altitude for the Kilimanjaro ascent. At nearly 15,000 feet, Mount Meru was steeper and more treacherous than Kilimanjaro, but didn't require any technical skills.

Kelly then met her friends on Oct. 7 at the Springlands Hotel near Moshi. The next day they were merged with a larger group, so 31 in all started on the four-and-a-half-day hike led by guides and accompanied by porters who carried luggage and other gear.

The group took the Marangu Route, the only route that provides sleeping huts with bunks along the way. Latrines served as restrooms. "It was pretty primitive," Kelly said. 

On summit day, they arose at midnight after four hours of sleep and began the final leg. "When we're going up and had to stop for someone ahead of us, I would rest my head on my poles and go to sleep. The guide would shake me and say 'No sleep, no sleep.'"

They reached the summit at 8:50 a.m. -- or at least 12 of them did, including Kelly and four of her friends. The others were overcome with fatigue, altitude sickness and injury.

"We were there for about 30 minutes. The altitude was making us lightheaded. And it was so cold that the water froze in my camel pack in my backpack," Kelly said.

And then came the hard part. They descended 3,800 feet to Kibo hut, where they took a 45-minute rest and then hiked another five hours before stopping for lunch. Afterward they covered a few more miles before reaching Horombo hut at 12,200 feet.

Was the brief visit to the top of the mountain worth all the effort and expense? "It was," Kelly said, "but I never, ever intend to climb it again. It was so painful."

She ranks the climb to Mount Kilimanjaro and the following four-day safari into the Ngorongoro Crater as her second best African trip.

Gorilla trekking in national parks in Uganda and Rwanda is No. 1. On that trip, she got to watch adolescent gorillas romp with each other, mothers groom their babies and a silverback sleep.

"I forget to take pictures," she said. "I get so excited that my camera's shaking or I am too busy watching."

She has a blurry photo of the adolescent gorilla that snatched another's camera bag, touching her hand in the theft. Their guide motioned her away. Tourists are supposed to stay at least 20 feet from the gorillas. There's a concern that gorillas will catch diseases from humans. Also, a familiarity with humans may leave the animals even more vulnerable to poachers. 

Kelly said on that trip, the group stayed in two different lodges to observe different gorilla families. Native trackers would find where the gorillas were spending the night. The next morning, Kelly said, the group would hike to where the gorillas had been and then start the search for the apes.

The hikes were hot and humid, and the trackers would sometimes have to use their machetes to cut a path. Kelly said her small group came upon the gorillas within a few hours, whereas another party hiked all day to catch up with another fast-moving gorilla family. 

In addition to the guides, the group was accompanied by several AK 47-toting guards because at the time there was still a lot fighting in nearby Congo.

Her new goal is to travel to the Congo, now closed to tourists. Kelly wants to go because she said it's the only place that has bonobos -- miniature chimpanzees.    

   She is returning to South Africa next year with a group of 10 to help on a research project of a veterinarian. 

With between five and six weeks of personal leave, Kelly tries to take a major trip every year and to fit in a couple of skiing vacations out West.

"I don't have any kids -- by choice. Traveling is how I like to spend my money and my time," she said. "I travel to escape the mundane. I don't think about any problems that I have here."

 Reach Rosalie Earle at ea...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5115.