Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro stands 19,341 feet above sea level at its highest point, Uhuru Peak, which sits atop Kibo, the highest of the three volcanic peaks that form Kilimanjaro. The mountain is located only three degrees south of the Equator, but is nevertheless capped with snow and glaciers, and is battered by high winds and ice storms even during the austral summer from January to March.
No one is exactly sure what "Kilimanjaro" means. People say the name has its roots in Bantu or Swahili, but native speakers of those languages debate the meaning. The Chagga people, Bantu speakers who have farmed Kilimanjaro's lower slopes for hundreds of years, regard it as a sacred place, and their mythology identifies Kilimanjaro's peak as God's throne. All agree that whatever "Kilimanjaro" means, the mountain is indeed a sacred place.
Kilimanjaro has not always been located in Tanzania. Until the late 19th Century, it was located in British East Africa -present day Kenya - very close to the border with German East Africa - present day Tanzania. Legend holds that the future German Kaizer, Wilhelm II, then a child, asked his grandmother, Queen Victoria of Great Britain, to redraw the border so as to place the mountain in German East Africa. The Queen agreed and, as a birthday present to her grandson, she ordered the border redrawn so as to pass north of the mountain, thereby placing it in German East Africa. Until 1961, when Tanzania gained its independence, Kilimanjaro's highest peak was named Kaizer Wilhelm Peak. The newly independent nation renamed it Uhuru Peak, meaning Freedom Peak.
On a previous visit to Tanzania, I had seen Kilimanjaro from a distance. Even from fifty miles away, it dominates the landscape and captures the attention of tourists, such as myself, as well as native people. On that first visit to Tanzania, I resolved to climb Kilimanjaro. Upon my return to the United States, I invited four friends to join me for the adventure. Mike Kilby and Doug Lemmon from Alexandria, Virginia, and George Kiroff and his son Christopher, from Australia, all agreed to give it a try. Mike, George, Doug, and I were all in our late sixties, but despite our advanced ages were pretty good athletes, and Christopher, 32, had competed in Iron Man Triathalons.
A "Kili climb" to Uhuru Peak does not require technical rock climbing skills. It is a demanding hike. The trail is often steep, rocky, sometimes dangerous, and at times so difficult to discern among the rocks that it is impossible to follow without an experienced guide. Climbers rarely die on Kilimanjaro, but occasionally they do, usually from pulmanory or cerebral edema. Short of death, altitude sickness may entail a host of other health problems requiring a climber to be evacuated from the mountain. There are those who simply become weary of the experience and want to get off the mountain. They occasionally feign sickness and demand to be evacuated by stretcher, which must be carried and attended by six or more porters. Their malingering is intended to defraud their travel insurers into reimbursing them for a portion of their considerable travel expenses. But malingerers usually find the stretcher so uncomfortable that they abandon their plan after a mile or two and end up walking down the mountain alongside their smirking porters, who have witnessed this scam before. According unverified on-line sources, about 60% of the climbers who attempt the climb "succeed." But those sources do not define the word "succeed." Professional guides estimate the percentage of climbers who actually reach Uhuru Peak is much less. What is certain is that physical and mental preparation, honest self-appraisal, and sheer determination are essential for a successful climb to Uhuru Peak.
The five of us and our guide, Olariv Edward, who goes by "Ola," started our hike up Kilimanjaro's Lemosho Route on January 1, 2023. Uhuru Peak, our objective, was 29 miles away and 2.2 miles higher than our starting point. Ola, born into the Serengeti's Maasai tribe, was fluent in his tribal language of Maa, and also Swahili. He was comfortable and conversational with English, and he spoke a little French. Although we were only at about 7,000 feet in altitude at the start, Ola immediately started coaching us for the high altitude hiking we would face in two or three days. Walking pace, he explained, is essential for proper high altitude acclimation. The Swahili phrase, "pole pole," meaning "slowly slowly," would be our motto until we reached the summit. So we started our hike walking at a pace of not quite two miles per hour, and we never exceeded that speed until after we reached the summit and started down the mountain seven days later.
When we started up the mountain, our crew of thirty porters, assistant guides, camp manager, and cook were still getting organized at the starting point. Amid all the equipment, chaos, and shouting, it seemed that it would be many hours before they would arrive at the first camp. I was worried that we might beat them there despite that we were progressing up the trail very "pole pole." But about two hours after we started, our crew came speeding up the trail, each one loaded down with at least 100 pounds of bulky gear, including tents, cots, sleeping bags, dining table, chairs, food, water, cooking equipment, medical supplies, personal gear for them and us, a portable bucket shower, and a portable chemical toilet and its privacy tent. They beat us to the camp site in enough time to set up the tents, all comfortably furnished with made-up cots and lamps. Our cook was cooking dinner and had prepared hot tea. The crew serenaded us with a Swahili song.
As we continued up Kilimanjaro's western slopes into thinning air and diminishing vegetation, I thought of Earnest Hemmingway's short story, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," which mentions "the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard" on Kilimanjaro's western summit, Kibo Peak. There is wildlife on Kilimanjaro, but I saw none on Kibo. Hemmingway might have gotten the idea about the leopard from Richard Reusch, a notable Kilimanjaro climber and East Africa scholar. A decade before Hemmingway's story was published, Reusch claimed to have found a leopard's carcass on Kibo at an altitude of 18,500 feet. At that altitude there is no vegetation and no wildlife, and the temperature is very cold. While Reusch was a serious minded scholar, it's unlikely that the leopard carcass he claims to have seen got up there by its own effort. I suspect Hemmingway's leopard was just a literary thing having no connection to reality.
The Lemosho Route traverses along the Great Barranco Wall, a lava cliff, for a mile or two as it circles around Kibo Peak before approaching Uhuru. There was little danger of a mortal fall from the cliff, but the traverse on a narrow, rocky trail was dangerous. A fall would be only about twenty feet but could easily break a bone or knock a climber silly if he bumped his head. In any event, a fall would likely require the climber to be evacuated from the mountain, which would be a painful and expensive way to end the trip. But we made it to our next camp, Karanga, with no injuries.
On the early afternoon of January 6, the sixth day of our hike, we pitched our tents at Barafu Camp, our base camp, at 15,800 feet. The camp's name confused me. My recently published map of Kilimanjaro did not show Barafu Camp. Instead, it showed a camp in the same location designated as Kosovo Camp. I asked Ola about the inconsistency. He responded, very politely, "Don't call it Kosovo Camp. Kosovo is a European name. You should call it Barafu Camp, by its Swahili name." Good enough.
We had lunch while Ola explained our schedule for the next 24 hours. We would have a final equipment inspection after lunch, go to sleep at about two o'clock in the afternoon, get up at 11:00 PM, and at midnight start the three-mile hike for a 3,500-foot ascent to the top of Uhuru Peak, the highest point on the African continent. Our plan was to reach the summit in time to see the sunrise at 6:00 AM. Then we would begin our descent down the mountain.
The distance to the summit didn't seem so far. But a 3,500-foot ascent over that same distance meant that the trail would be very steep. In addition, we would do this hike in the dark with headlamps on a rocky trail in thin air. And, in order to avoid altitude sickness, we would proceed very pole pole.
It was cold when we started at midnight and the temperature quickly dropped to below freezing. I carried a few liters of water in a hydro pack, but the water tube froze within an hour, so I had nothing to drink. Ola had spare bottles filled with hot water that he kept wrapped in wool socks. He shared that with me. When we reached Uhuru Peak, the temperature was 16 degrees Fahrenheit. It was dark, the wind was howling, and a thick cloud enveloped us and reduced visibility to about 100 feet. We found the Kilimanjaro Park Authority's sign marking the summit. As we sat down in front it so Ola could take our picture, the sun rose behind us and lit the cloud solid white.
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More photographs follow:
Mike Kilby makes his way toward Kibo Peak, still a few days away. Shrubs are the most common flora at this altitude of about 10,000 feet.
Chris Kiroff, on the left, and Doug Lemmon, take a break on the trail. The absence of any flora indicates they are in alpine desert, at 15,000 to 16,000 feet.
Mount Meru can be seen in the distance, jutting up above the clouds. Meru reaches 15,000 feet above sea level, and is about 43 miles away in this photograph. Ola is in the foreground.
Chris Kiroff, after having recovered from a serious bout of altitude sickness, ready to push on to the summit.
Porters carrying equipment and food up Lemosho Route to our first camp. At this point, we are at the beginning of the climb, still in the forest region, at about 7,000 feet.
These plants, dendrosenecios kilimanjari, are located near the Great Barranco lava wall.
When we reached our first camp, our porters greeted us with a song.
Our travel agent for this trip was Pearl Jurist-Schoen of Extraordinary Journeys www.extraordinaryjourneys.com
Pearl's e-mail is pearl@ejafrica.com