Preparations
- Select a route. We chose the 8-day Lemosho route in order to avoid altitude sickness and optimize for summit success rate.
- Shape up. For true mountaineers, Kilimanjaro isn’t a difficult climb, as it doesn’t require much specialized training, technique, or gear. For a “person of average fitness,” the climb is doable, but certainly not easy.
- Altitude. The main challenge – aside from the sheer determination needed to keep your body moving through a cold and snowy summit night – is the altitude. Kilimanjaro’s summit is 19,341 feet high, or about two thirds as high as Everest. Up top there’s only about half as much oxygen as there would be at sea level. Take medicine (Diamox) to help with acclimatization, but otherwise all you(r guide) can do is climb slowly and control your elevation carefully so your body can naturally adjust to the lower oxygen content.
- Contrasting climates. Over the course of a week, you’ll progress past farms and forests, up through heather & moorland, across highland desert, and into arctic conditions. And then you’ll come all the way back down.
- Meditation. Altitude trekking for the unacclimatized is slow, plodding, and ultimately meditative. Bring mental spaces you’d like to mull over.
Humble pie
- Tempo. The speed record for a summit and return is 8 hours. (Compare that with 8 days.)
- Competence. A group of 6 climbers warrants 23 staff – 1 head guide, 2 assistant guides, 2 cooks, and the rest porters, who carry everything that isn’t in your daypack: your bags, the sleeping tents, a mess tent + table + chairs, food + cooking gas + equipment, a toilet. The staff travel at least twice as quickly while carrying at least twice as much. (We asked one of our guides if there was any training or physical exam to be a porter, and he laughed. “They are African,” he told us. It seems that most folks there grow up carrying heavy loads on their heads, developing that kind of physical stamina as part of the natural course of life.)
- Energy. A couple of the porters are “summit porters” who go with you and the guides to the summit, so that there are enough people to carry down any emergency evacuees. When your energy starts to fade, they sing and clap the energy back into you.
Learning
- Endurance. You can keep going much further than you think you can.
- Community. Trustworthy guides and caring compatriots share their strength.
Thank you to my mom for making this climb with me.