Kilimanjaro: The Plan

View Mt Kilimanjaro in a larger map

As E mentioned a few posts ago, on Thursday we’re heading to Tanzania to climb Kilmanjaro. Most people have heard of the mountain, but if you were like us, you don’t know much beyond it being in Africa.

Mt. Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano rising out of the plans of northeastern Tanzania. It reaches 19,340 feet (5,895 m), making it the tallest mountain in Africa, and owing to it being so close to the equator, it is the second closest point on earth to the sun, after Chimborazo in the Andes (think about it…). It is also the tallest “free-standing” mountain in the world, as it’s not part of a range. In Colorado, for instance, there are fifty-some 14,000+ foot peaks, but because they’re part of a range, the base of the mountain is often eight or nine thousand feet, making the vertical change five or six thousand feet. However, the land surrounding Kilimanjaro is only one or two thousand feet above sea level, making the vertical 18,000ish feet.

We leave from Mombasa at about 7 am on Thursday morning (in reality, we’ll probably leave closer to nine owing to pole pole Kenyan time), and then travel southwest though some of the dry grasslands, including Tsavo East and West National Parks. They are by far the largest parks in Kenya, and their claim to fame is the “Man-eaters of Tsavo”, a pride of loins who developed a taste for Indian railroad laborers as the colonists were building the railroad from Mombasa to Nairobi in the late 1800s. They’re purported to have killed over 130 people. The Ghost and the Darkness with Val Kilmer is based on said man-eaters. Hopefully we’ll pass through the parks with minimal man-eating, and see a few elephants along the bumpy and dusty way. We’ll cross into Tanzania via a town called Taveta, where we’ll be extorted for a visa. Citizens of every country in the world can enter Tanzania for $50 USD or less, but for Americans, it’s $100. Sweet. From there, we’ll drive a few more hours to Moshi, where we’ll grab a few last minute supplies, meet our guide, and rest up at a hotel in town for the night. The bus ride should take somewhere between six and eleven hours, depending on who you ask. On Friday morning, the climb begins!

We’re climbing from the north side of the mountain, near the Kenyan border, via a route called Rongai. Since we’re going during the “short rainy” season, we choose this route, as the north side (leeward, look at me using sailing terms) of the mountain gets less rain. It’s also the least traveled route, so we’ll be alone for more of the climb. Lastly, it’s the only route where you don’t backtrack on your climb and the only route where you camp in tents the entire time (vs. huts on the other routes). Afterwards, we’ll descend down the south side of the mountain (on the Machame route), stay a night in Arusha (the second-largest city in Tanzania), and then take the bus ride back arriving in Mombasa on Friday, November 12th. Check out the google map. See below for a map of the route, as well as the altitudes at various campsites.





While you can summit Kilimanjaro in as few as 4 or 5 days, your chance of summiting increases for each extra day you spend on the mountain. Additional days lessen the shock of the altitude so we’ve opted to take an extra day and make our trip 7 days (our route always takes at least 6). This means, barring setbacks, that we’ll begin the summit hike at midnight on Tuesday for a dawn summit on Wednesday morning.

E and I have really been looking forward to this trip. People have been asking us all week if we’ve been training, and we kind of have by running, swimming, etc, but really nothing climbing-specific. We were talking last night and we remarked how neither of us was very nervous, and we wonder if we should be a little bit. I have a feeling that it’s either going to be totally fine and the whole thing about the difficulty is overblown, or it’s going to be incredibly painful. Obviously hoping for the former, but we’ll try to push through the latter. Unless one is woefully out of shape, the actual hiking shouldn’t be a problem, but it is impossible to know how the body is going to respond to the altitude. We’ve slept at 10,000 feet and skied at 13,000 feet (Breckenridge), but 19,000 feet is a lot higher. Since we’re at sea level right now and won’t have a ton of time to acclimatize, there’s a chance that the altitude could be a problem, but we’re just going to take it pole pole and, as coach Turner used to say, “drink the shit out of water”.

Please keep us in your prayers and look forward to lots of pictures and stories when we return.

Tutaonana baadaye, (See you later!)

M