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Hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro Place: Tanzania, Tanzania Tags: high altitude, kilimanjaro, hike, trail, climbing |
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If you're into hiking, this is as good as it gets. Kilimanjaro is the highest peak in Africa. While Kili does have some technical climbing available, to get to the summit is just a very very hard hike.
The peaks altitude is 19,500 ft and because of the rapid gain in altitude you will experience some altitude sickness symptoms. We were in a party of 30 people and only two got it so bad they had to use oxygen. Mostly it's just a nasty headache.
It's a 5 day hike and most of the time is spent hiking in a spiral or zigzag pattern up the mountain to aclimatize to the altitude. The terrain is incredibly varied. The base is rain forest which transitions into trees and grass as you ascent. That then changes into low grass and eventually alpine desert.
The summit is snow and ice, although this sattelite photo of the summit is quite scary because it seems the ice has receded quite a lot since I hiked up in 1999. Greenhouse effect?
Coming back down is a blast because you're on an oxygen high. It takes about 24 hours and my friend Bruno and I did most of it running.
I put the marker on the rim of the crater because that's where the summit is. I'm not sure on which side though. Also, I believe you can camp in the floor of the crater.
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Wow, didn't know that. I got a tiny bit of pulmonary edema (sp?) while up there but it went away immediatelly as I came down. One of the guys in our small group started acting wierd - he basically wanted to build a hut up there and camp out for the rest of his life - so we persuaded him that's a bad idea and we all went down. Probably a bit of cerebral edema.
Posted by: mark | Fri Sep 29 @ 10:52 AM
Did you know that on average 2 people die climbing Kili every month from altitude sickness. Apparently a large number of guides try and rush their groups up the mountain with the consequences. So make sure your find a decent guide.
Posted by: nmaunder | Fri Sep 29 @ 8:55 AM