A True Story of Life, Death, and Decisions on Kilimanjaro

[Names have been changed to protect privacy]

I rarely share this story. After seven years, I feel it's time.

What happened that night on Kilimanjaro penetrated the deepest layers of my being, forever altering my understanding of human nature.

A LinkedIn post can only scratch the surface - it would take a book to fully convey the experience, its impact and the profound lessons about decision-making and more global humanity that I learned along the way. But here's an attempt to share the essence.

It was 2017, a few weeks before the launch of LinPack at the Tableau Conference in Las Vegas.

I was part of a group of five attempting to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. On 28 September, at midnight, at 4,673 meters (15,330 ft) in Barafu Camp, as we prepared for our final ascent, one of our group, Thomas, collapsed. In pitch darkness, lit only by our headlamps, I found myself with our young guide, James, making life and death decisions.

After checking his vital signs, the gravity of the situation hit me with full force. At this altitude, in the pitch black of a Tanzanian night, we were completely isolated. No rescue teams, no emergency services - we were literally the furthest one could be from any medical help.

For 90 minutes, James and I performed CPR in the biting cold of that endless night. Each compression cracked ribs beneath my hands - a sound that still haunts me today. As exhaustion set in and the altitude took its toll, devastating questions began to surface: How long should we continue? At this altitude, under these brutal conditions, the physical toll of our rescue efforts was becoming dangerous. The lack of oxygen was already clouding our minds and weakening our bodies. When I checked my own oxygen saturation, the reading was alarmingly low - the kind of numbers you might see in someone having a heart attack. The grim reality hit me: in trying to save one life, we were risking becoming casualties ourselves. If we pushed too far, this mountain could claim more victims tonight.

I had to face a cascade of impossible decisions - choices no one should have to make alone. With no possibility of helicopter rescue at this altitude, every decision carried crushing weight: When do we accept that resuscitation is futile? How do we get a body down 3,000 meters (9,845 ft) in the mountains? How do I protect our porters, already spitting blood from altitude sickness, from pushing themselves too far? How do I handle the devastating conversation with his family waiting at home? And somewhere in the back of my mind, a question I couldn't yet face: How could I ever return to my everyday life after a night like this?

But there was another shock that night that struck me just as deeply as the death itself. While James and I grappled with this emergency, our three remaining group members made an unfathomable choice. They decided to continue their ascent, abandoning us to handle the situation alone. Their justification still echoes in my mind: 'There's nothing more we can do for him, so we might as well reach the summit.' The ultimate betrayal came later, when they claimed they had reached the summit 'in his memory' - while his body was still warm at the base of their footsteps. This casual abandonment of basic human dignity revealed a darkness in human nature I had never imagined possible.

There's nothing more we can do for him

The descent became a surreal, grueling marathon of nine interminable hours. James, myself and a few porters carried Thomas down the mountain by hand. Nine hours of pushing yourself to the limits of your physical and mental abilities. Once we reached the first road, it was off to the hospital. What followed was an unending maze of administrative tasks: dealing with the consulate, insurance companies, and more. In total, four days without sleep—four days etched into my memory forever.

Seven years later, this experience shapes how I evaluate people and situations. When I meet someone new, I automatically wonder: would they have stayed to help, or continued to the summit? It's become my measure of character.

Would you have stayed to help, or continued to the summit?

A year later, when I trained as a first-aider, I learned something revealing: emergency response teams work in groups specifically to distribute the mental and emotional burden of critical situations. Multiple rescuers share the weight of life-and-death decisions. That night on Kilimanjaro, the weight of responsibility fell entirely on me. In moments of truth, true character emerges - I knew my place was there, making the hard decisions that needed to be made. I wished we could have faced it together as a true group.

The technical aspects of decision-making can be taught in any business school. But it's in moments of crisis, when faced with impossible choices, that we truly learn who we are and what we stand for.

Only in moments of crisis, when faced with impossible choices, you truly learn who you are, what you stand for

If there's one lesson I carry from that night, it's this: when faced with a choice between personal achievement and human dignity, there is no choice at all.

#TrueStory #Ethics #Leadership #HumanNature