Over the weekend, along with plenty of other households, the DA team sat down to watch Aitch: Don't Be Afraid. We knew this trip. We ran this trip. We still weren't quite ready for how emotional and cinematic it would feel to watch it back.
Of course, one of our favourite parts was our local team introducing themselves. Watching that was a genuinely lovely moment. These are people we've worked alongside for twenty-plus years; we've even funded some of them in becoming mountain guides, and there they were, on Netflix! If nothing else comes of this documentary for us, that alone made it worth it. They are the backbone of any Kilimanjaro climb, and they deserved the praise that Aitch's team heaped on them.
What struck us most wasn't the mountain, though she looked incredibly beautiful; it was the people on it. Everyone climbing had their own reason for being there: personal, for the charity, often both, often layered in ways the film takes real care to unpack. That's true of almost every group we take up Kilimanjaro. Watching it told back with this much honesty, on this scale, was something else.
Tommy's story stayed with us in particular - he's on the younger end of the scale of our average Kili climber, and hearing more about the power of the experience and what he will take into his future as a result of stepping out of his comfort zone meant the world.
We'd be lying if we said we weren't a little starstruck watching one of our own leaders on screen. Vic's pre-summit briefing is straight-talking, honest, and exactly the version of him we know.
We think it also showed the care we take in the decision to send someone back down the mountain. This is always taken incredibly seriously, and it was good to see that reflected honestly on screen, rather than glossed over for the sake of a tidier story.
(For the record: Vic remains one of our favourite Yorkshiremen, on or off camera.)
A few others we won't forget in a hurry:
Watching this back, one thing struck us more than the fundraising total, more than the celebrity names, more than the summit itself: how proud we feel of everyone who takes that step out of their comfort zone — famous or not, filmed or not. That's the part of this job we never get tired of. It is an absolute pleasure to be a small part of your stories.
Aitch and his team's story is the one on screen. But it's one version of a story that plays out on nearly every trip we run. We're glad this one got told properly. And we're already looking forward to meeting the next group who decide they're capable of more than they think!
Want to know what a typical day on Kilimanjaro actually looks like - the altitude, the kit, the food, the bits the cameras don't have time for? We're covering all of that in the coming weeks.
Read the story of how this trip came together →
Check out Zara's Premiere blog →