Kilimanjaro National Park Travel Forum

Call me crazy...this is my attempt to climb Mt. Kili. Any ideas where I should being looking or preparing?
Has anybody had experience with Marangu Hotel as a guide?

I looked into this several months ago. There are licensed guides and many guide companies with excellent reputations as well as ones with bad reputations. I decided against doing the climb as it did not seem to be worth the 5 days of slow, boring climbing. Due to the altitude, you walk for 2 hours (about 5 miles) in the morning, lunch for several hours, then another 2 hours in the afternoon and then stop. Then several more days of that before you get up at 2 in the morning to summit with the dawn.

The above post is hardly representative of the climb up Kili. You dont lunch for several hours although you do go slowly, but this is necessary to acclimatise to the altitude. The alternative to this is to race up and keel over on the summit with accute mountain sickness.

It really depends what you are after. If you are a competent mountaineer then its not for you as this is not a technical ascent. If you are fit and looking for a challenge then go for it as this is an excellent trekking peak. Dont underestimate it though, of 16 people in our team last year only four of us got to the top.

Check out the tips on my page, or email me if you need anything else.

Dave

It is absolutely necessary to acclimatize which is the reason it takes so long. Dave, the big question is whether or not it is worth it, escpecially for a solo trekker who can not share the guide, and some of the porters and cooks. This is where I started getting a run-around earlier this year when I was determining if I should do it or not. Any input is helpful as I am still considering it. Karl

I did Kili by the Machame route in 2003 with the Marangu Hotel and I recommend them most highly. They have been guiding folks up Kili since the 1930s and their success rate is 70-80% versus the typical 30%. They even gave me extra gear and diamox to improve my comfort and chance of making it to the summit.

As for acclimatization, it is not absolutely necessary. I have climbed the volcanoes near Mexico City that are ~17,000, ~18,000 and ~19,000 ft in one day hikes from their high altitude huts that you can drive up to. Lots of folks do it that way. Of course I felt like dog dodo at the the top, and I was taking seven breaths for every step. It seems like every mountain area has it own lore about how much acclimatization is needed. I hear that in Nepal they think that the Kili approach is too fast. I noticed on Kili that I only had to breath two breaths every step near the top on the steepest section, due to 5 days of approach acclimatization. And I felt much better than on the Mexican volcanoes.

On Kili, the approach walk is very beautiful, and a little more difficult that has been described. The guides tell you "pole, pole", swahili for "slow, slow" because you need to save yourself for the final day where you get up at midnight so you can reach the summit at dawn when there is the best chance for good visibility, and then you descend until about noon, almost all the way to the park entrance. If you wear yourself out on the approach before the final day, you will not have strength for this final 12 hour ascent/descent. The guides say that teen agers and marathon runners have the lowest probability of making it to the summit because they do not conserve their energy on the approach.

I considered the Kili descent to be much much more difficult/painful than the ascent! I recommend training for Kili by running down something like a ski slope every day for a month. Especially if you can find a slope covered with large rocks that you have to jump on and off.

Have a great trip!