qFifteen students from St. Xavier High School are poised to take the field trip of a lifetime June 2-18: an expedition to Mt. Kilimanjaro in East Africa.

“The Xpedition” will take the students on a hike of several days to the summit in northeast Tanzania, where they will see for themselves the shrinking glaciers on Africa’s highest peak. They will be accompanied by 75 sherpas or porters who will help to transport their gear — including five high definition video cameras to document the experience.

The trip is one component of Michael O’Toole’s plan to make information about global climate change accessible to young people. O’Toole, a science teacher and swim coach at St. X, and his students have spent a year-and-a-half developing an extensive kid-friendly Web site about the issue. They hope the expedition will help draw people to the site and get them interested in changing the course of climate change.

O’Toole, a 1993 St. X graduate, said during an interview recently that Mt. Kilimanjaro is a “calling card for climate change” where glaciers are expected to disappear completely within the next 10 to 15 years or so. When that happens, Ernest Hemingway’s description of the mountain in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” will become the stuff of folklore.

While the adventure may sound risky to some, O’Toole said the mountain doesn’t present a dangerous climb, but rather a “guided nature walk at altitude.” The group will spend five days at elevations above 14,500 feet.

After the expedition, O’Toole’s students will be available to visit schools around the Archdiocese of Louisville to share their experiences. They also want to point young people, teachers and parents to the Web site — www.xpeditiononline.com — to help them better understand climate change.

“ ‘The Xpedition’ is really just a hook to grab people to the Web site,” said O’Toole.

Once they get to the Web site, he wants young people to delve into one area in particular — the section labeled “How can I make a difference?” O’Toole believes kids are the key to bringing the earth’s climate back into balance.

“If you want to create change,” he said, “you do it through kids.”

Visitors to the site are greeted by Orbie, a little globular mascot O’Toole developed to guide kids through the 60-plus pages of information. He’s dubbed the “ecological guru.”

Orbie also provides lesson plans for teachers — covering a variety of age groups — and simple but informative explanations about climate change and links to a variety of organizations, government agencies and videos that focus on climate change.

The site also is replete with details about the expedition, members of the team — including photos, an itinerary and all the maps and facts a person could absorb about the area around Mt. Kilimanjaro.

O’Toole said he initially developed the site because he couldn’t find anything on the Web about climate change oriented to kids and teenagers. Some Web sites are too complex, he said, while others oversimplify the complex issues that contribute to earth’s changing weather patterns. Also, he said, there are sites that politicize the issue. He wants no part of that.

When the adventurers return, they plan to upload to the site videos, photos and commentary from the adventure.

“We’ve created the site so people can view the trip through their (the travelers’) eyes,” said O’Toole. People will see “their interpretation of the trip.”

The St. X students will be accompanied by two professors from the University of Louisville, a second St. X faculty member and several members of the students’ families, including two physicians. In all, more than two dozen people plan to make the trip.

The U of L faculty includes Dr. Keith Mountain, chair of the geography and geosciences department in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Inka Weissbecker, assistant professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences. She studies the effects disasters and trauma can have on individuals and families.

According to U of L’s Web site, Mountain travels a couple of times a year to various remote — and icy — places around the globe such as Mt. Kilimanjaro to take ice core samples. The samples tell geologists about an area’s climate patterns, similar to the way tree rings tell of a tree’s history in a given place.

Both Weissbecker and Mountain will have insights into the situation in Tanzania as the people there confront the reality that their major source of water — the mountain’s melting glaciers — will soon run dry.

O’Toole said the group also will meet with people who live in the area, particularly in the village of Moshi, where a Louisville priest, Father John Judie, has made connections. St. X will be taking soccer uniforms and other gear to kids in Moshi. They also will attend Mass at a local church.

These encounters, he said, “are the things we’re most excited about. I couldn’t justify taking these kids without introducing them to the culture” in Tanzania.

The trip is being funded in part by the travelers. The the expenses of the U of L professors and video equipment — including the high definition cameras, backpacks with solar battery packs to charge the cameras and two laptops — and are being provided by a grant from the U of L Center for Environmental Education and the Gheens Science Hall and Rauch Plntarium.

O’Toole said he is planning a similar trip to South or Central America next year.

Teachers or young people who want more information about this project can visit the Web site or contact O’Toole at otoolemike@saintxfac.com.