See all Posts in the Wanderlust – A Travel Blog Series
Every continent has its iconic mountain. Asia has Mt. Everest in the Himalayas. North America has Denali in Alaska. South America has Aconcagua in Argentina. Europe has Mont Blanc in the Alps.
All are beautiful, but few offer the romance and mystery of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa.
Part of Kilimanjaro’s allure comes from its exotic location in a remote area of Tanzania, along the border with Kenya. A bigger part comes from its solitary majesty, rising 16,100 feet above the African plains.
But perhaps the greatest attraction of Kilimanjaro is that you don’t need to be a trained mountaineer to climb to the top. While challenging due to the altitude (19,341 feet above sea level), climbing Kilimanjaro is non-technical. If you are reasonably fit, porters and guides can get you to the top without needing ropes or specialized climbing gear.
My ascent to the highest point in Africa started at a fire pit with a beer in hand at a neighborhood block party in Chaska. A neighbor and friend talked about wanting to climb Kilimanjaro with his teenage son.
That struck me as a fabulous idea, so I asked him to wait a moment while I sought executive approval. My spouse said yes, so we decided then and there to make the trip the following summer. The idea of a climbing adventure, plus quality father/son time with boys at a difficult age, sealed the deal for both of us.
We contracted with a company that provided guides and handled the logistics of the climb. Their advice was to get in shape. While the climb is not technical, it is also not easy. You want to be the best version of you when you start.
In my case, that meant losing 20 pounds. I started biking every morning, which morphed into elliptical training at the Chaska Community Center once it started to snow. That habit has stayed with me since then.
Getting to Tanzania was straightforward. We flew from Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Arusha, Tanzania, rested overnight in Arusha, and then drove to the entrance of Mt. Kilimanjaro National Park. The park’s boundaries are everything over 6,000 feet above sea level.
We were quite a presence on the mountain. There were 13 climbers, one experienced guide, and 53 porters. Each climber carried 30 pounds of personal gear, and the porters carried their own gear, food, water, tents and everything else we needed for the climb.
There are seven routes to the top, varying in length, difficulty and starting points. We selected the longer, seven-day Machame route because it offered more gradual acclimatization to the altitude.
Our guide’s policy was to “climb high” and “sleep low.” That first day, we climbed to 10,000 feet and then back down to 9,000 feet, where we made camp for the night. The rest of the climb followed a similar pattern.
The Furtwangler Glacier atop Kilimanjaro is a clue that it will be cold. At lower elevations, it is also wet. It reminded me a lot of winter camping with the Boy Scouts, plus the added difficulty of high altitudes.
The porters have a saying, “Poli, Poli” which in Swahili means “Slowly, Slowly.” They also taught us a climbing technique called the “rest step.” This contributed to a slow but sustainable pace.
Our porters took great pride in their excellent physical condition. Any porters who got off to a late start after breaking camp could be seen moving up the mountain in a brisk trot, committed to arriving at the next stop well ahead of their climbers. Our in-shape, soccer-playing, teenage sons were generally right behind them.
High camp on the Machame route is 15,300 feet. I recall waking up out of breath at that elevation. The assault on the summit starts from there at midnight. This is what we trained for. The final 4,000 feet of elevation was eight hours of Poli Poli climbing with headlamps on rocks and ice in the dark.
Reaching the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro was exhilarating, but brief. We took pictures, clapped each other on the backs, and started back down less than 30 minutes after our arrival. This is because climbing down is even more difficult and exhausting than climbing up. It takes all day, and you don’t want to be still climbing down at night. By 6 p.m., we had returned to 10,000 feet, where we made camp and nursed our aching muscles.
Our group stayed in Africa another week to go on safari in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. The African safari experience is considerably easier than scaling mountains, and no less incredible. But even though it involves a fire pit and a beer, it is a story for another day.
(Dan Keyport is a CCLN board member and former Chaska business owner, now retired. His home base for international travel has been Chaska for over 30 years.)
