By Colleen Thomas
From Tribune News Service
At 16, Tim Ballard had a crazy idea. The youngest of seven children, he wanted to do something big with his family. Really big.
“I thought, ‘How cool would it be to climb Kilimanjaro?’” recalled Ballard, who is now a college student in Utah.
Big was the right word. The massive Mount Kilimanjaro rises 19,341 feet above sea level, straddling the border of Tanzania and Kenya. Each year it attracts thousands of adventurers hoping to stand on Africa’s highest point.
“As far as the world’s large mountains go, it’s not the most difficult to climb,” Ballard remembers reasoning with his parents at their home in River Falls, Wisconsin (elevation 1,024 feet)….