Santa Fe teen who is 'up for adventures' scales Kilimanjaro

Aug. 16—Hayden Moseley knew he had entered another world when he woke up above the clouds.

"It was like being on a floating island in the sky," the 17-year-old Santa Fe High School student said of awakening on the slopes of the highest mountain in Africa.

Moseley hiked 19,000-foot Mount Kilimanjaro, one of the Seven Summits — so named because they are the highest mountains on each of the seven continents — with about a dozen other young people from around the country in late July and early August.

The trip was part of an Overland Summers youth experience. The Massachusetts-based group has provided such team building experiences for about 40 years.

The excursion included a community internship program at a nearby orphanage, where Moseley and the other teens served as mentors to children who had suffered the loss of parents — and in some cases, far worse calamities.

Moseley was almost nonchalant about the mountaineering experience as he recalled the adventure over coffee at a downtown cafe. "It was something I just did," he said. "I don't feel the need to get acknowledgement for it."

And yet the 17-year-old said he's been aching for an adventure like this for years and missed out on planned mountain hikes in Norway and Peru because of restrictions and cancellations brought on by the pandemic.

He's been swimming since he was a baby — "So I've been told," he said — and playing basketball and hiking for years. He also acted in a number of musical theater shows for Pandemonium Productions in Santa Fe. Last summer, he spent three weeks hiking and kayaking in Alaska.

Regardless of whether he'll acknowledge it, Moseley seems to push himself to do things he hasn't tried before — including setting up physical challenges, then knocking them out of the way.

"As a young man, he's been up for adventures," said Jim Leonard, the former head of Santa Fe Prep, where Moseley went to school for several years before switching over to Santa Fe High. "He's just kind of an intrepid kid in terms of his curiosity about the world."

Moseley also is curious about others and seems driven to do something to help. His career goal is to become a psychiatrist specializing in mental health issues.

When he related a near-death experience based on a mishap on a ropes course years ago, in which a loosened vest nearly strangled him during a jump, he did so with a matter-of-fact tone that suggests such unexpected challenges are part of life.

"It sounds cliché, but I saw a light and heard my dead grandfather's voice," he said of that moment where he thought it was over. "It makes me wonder."

He said he chose to tackle because "I want to see what I'm able to do — or not."

To prepare for the trek, he backpacked along the slopes in and around Ski Santa Fe.

The actual hike up the mountain took five days along the Rongai Route, one of several options for those wanting to reach Kilimanjaro's summit. The group traveled between three and seven kilometers a day. The guides operating the trek required the teens to give up their cellphones for the duration of the hike — something Moseley said he valued because "they just want you living in the moment."

He became enchanted with the everlasting flowers, as they are called, that speak to the hardy spirit hikers need to embrace as they move up Kilimanjaro.

It was late winter there, with temperatures hovering in the 40s. While there was some rain, there was no snow, Moseley said.

Sleeping in what he called a "sea of clouds," he used his camera to take as many photos as he could. But in reviewing them, he discovered they do not capture the full essence of the sights and sounds of the mountain, nor the joy the ensemble felt when they hit the top on Aug. 2.

"We were all ecstatic," Moseley said. Rather than enjoy even a moment of silence, everyone kept talking about the views surrounding the elevated finish line.

"I was happy," he said. "A lot of us were lightheaded."

They took a separate route down, one that took less than two days.

His days working with children in the Living Water Children's Centre in the village of Arusha in Tanzania have only reinforced his career goal of helping others.

The children, he said "swarmed the bus" as the teens stepped off of it and "grabbed our hand and asked if they could be friends with us." They also related stories of being emotionally torn apart by familial separation, death and physical and sexual abuse, he said.

In return, he said, the older teens "showed them that they are loved."

Moseley's mother, Mary Jane Parks, said while she was nervous for her son's well-being on the journey, "you just have to let him go and do things and enjoy the adventure and the collegiality of meeting new people, bonding with them. These are experiences you don't have all the time. It's something to be cherished."

Moseley said he's got his eyes on tackling another mountain soon — the Matterhorn in the Alps. In the interim he has to complete his last year of high school and apply to college.

The experience did boost his confidence, he said.

"I proved something to myself ... now I have the capability of doing anything I set my mind on," he said.