Trailblazer Guide Books

Trailblazer guidebooks provide practical information on specific routes… in less accessible parts of the world.
 - Wanderlust

Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai ‘Ngà je  Ngài’, the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.
Ernest Hemingway in the preamble to The Snows of Kilimanjaro

On the 26 October 2007 Gérard Bavato of France stood at the Marangu gates on the south-eastern slopes of Africa’s greatest mountain, Kilimanjaro. We can imagine the scene that day, for it’s one that’s repeated there every day of the year. There would be the noisy, excitable hubbub as porters, guides and rangers packed, weighed, re-packed and re-weighed all the equipment; the quiet murmur of anticipation from Gérard’s fellow trekkers as they stood on the threshold of the greatest walk of their lives; maybe there was even a troop of blue monkeys crashing through the canopy, or the scarlet flash of a turaco’s underwing as it glided from tree to tree, surveying the commotion below.
    Monsieur Bavato’s main goal that day was no different from the ambitions of his fellow trekkers: he wanted to reach the summit. Unlike them, however, Gérard planned to forego many of the features that make a walk up Kili so special. Not for him the joys of strolling lazily through the mountain’s four main eco-zones, pausing occasionally to admire the views or examine the unique mountain flora. Nor did Gérard want to experience the blissful evenings spent scoffing popcorn, sharing stories and gazing at the stars with his fellow trekkers. Nor, for that matter, was M Bavato looking forward to savouring the wonderful esprit de corps that builds between a trekker and his or her crew as they progress, day by day, up the mountain slopes; a sense of camaraderie that grows with every step until, exhausted, they stand together at the highest point in Africa.
    It is these experiences that make climbing Kilimanjaro so unique and so special. Yet Gérard had chosen to eschew all of them because, for reasons best known to himself, he had decided to run up the mountain. Which is exactly what he did, completing the 36.5km from base to summit in an incredible 5 hours, 26 minutes and 40 seconds – on a trail that takes the average trekker anywhere from five to six days to complete!

A mountain for eccentrics

Barking mad though Gérard may be, in his defence it must be said that he isn’t exactly alone in taking an unorthodox approach to tackling Kilimanjaro. Take the Crane cousins from England, for example, who cycled up to the summit, surviving on Mars bars that they’d strapped to their handlebars. Or the anonymous Spaniard who, in the 1970s, drove up to the summit by motorbike. Or what about Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, who in 1994 reached the summit for charity while wearing an eight-foot rubber rhinoceros costume. Then there’s the (possibly apocryphal) story of the man who walked backwards the entire way in order to get into the Guinness Book of Records – only to find out, on his return to the bottom, that he had been beaten by somebody who had done exactly the same thing just a few days previously.
    And that’s just the ascent; for coming back down again the mountain has witnessed skiing, a method first practised by Walter Furtwangler way back in 1912; snowboarding, an activity pioneered on Kili by Stephen Koch in 1997; and even hang-gliding, for which there was something of a fad a few years ago.

Don’t be fooled
Cyclists to skiers, heroes to half-wits, bikers to boarders to backward walkers: it’s no wonder, given the sheer number of people who have climbed Kili over the past century, and the ways in which they’ve done so, that so many people believe that climbing Kili is a doddle. And you’d be forgiven for thinking the same.
    You’d be forgiven – but you’d also be wrong. Whilst these stories of successful expeditions tend to receive a lot of coverage, they also serve to obscure the tales of suffering and tragedy that often go with them. To give you just one example: for all the coverage of the Millennium celebrations, when over 7000 people stood on the slopes of Kilimanjaro during New Year’s week – with 1000 on New Year’s Eve alone – little mention was made of the fact that well over a third of all the people who took part in those festivities failed to reach the summit, or indeed get anywhere near it. Or that another 33 had to be rescued. Or that, in the space of those seven days, three people died.
    The reason why most of these attempts were unsuccessful is altitude sickness, brought about by a trekker climbing too fast and not allowing his or her body time to acclimatize to the rarified air. Because Gérard Bavato didn’t just set a record by climbing Kilimanjaro in under six hours; he also, unwittingly, set a bad example. For once, statistics give a reasonably accurate impression of just how difficult climbing Kili can be. According to the park authorities, almost one in four people who climb up Kilimanjaro fail to reach even the crater. They also admit to there being a couple of deaths per annum on Kilimanjaro; though independent observers put that figure nearer ten.
    There’s no doubt the joys of climbing Kili are manifold; unfortunately, so are the ways in which it can destroy you. Because the simple truth is that Kilimanjaro is a very big mountain and, like all big mountains, it’s very adept at killing off the unprepared, the unwary or just the plain unlucky. The fact that the Masai call the mountain the ‘House of God’ seems entirely appropriate, given the number of people who meet their Maker every year on Kili’s slopes.

At one stage we were taking a minute to complete thirty-five small paces. Altitude sickness had already hit the boys and two were weeping, pleading to pack up. All the instructors with the exception of Lubego and myself were in a bad way. They were becoming violently ill. It was becoming touch and go. The descent at one stage was like a battlefield. Men, including the porters, lying prone or bent up in agony. Tom and Swato though very ill themselves rallied the troops and helped manhandle the three unconscious boys to a lower altitude.
From the logbook of Geoffrey Salisbury, who led a group of blind African climbers up Kilimanjaro, as recorded in The Road to Kilimanjaro (1997).

In this edition
The main change we have made for this third edition is the addition of GPS waymarks for each of the routes up Kilimanjaro. Though these aren’t essential for your trek – the chances of you getting lost on the mountain are minimal given that you will be accompanied the whole way by a licensed guide – from the emails we receive I know that many people like to use their GPS receiver when trekking, and many would like to preprogram their machine with waymarks so they can plot their route. We have printed the waymarks at the back of this book (p352) and also published them on the website, from where you can download them (for free).

Other than the addition of waymarks, we have kept the book pretty much the same as the last edition in terms of style and structure. We have of course given everything a thorough update, including our guides to the cities and towns. We have also walked the routes again, both on Kilimanjaro and Meru, to satisfy ourselves that our descriptions of them are still accurate. And as with the last edition, we have once again called upon the services of Karen Valenti at KPAP (see pp46-49) to help us tackle the problem of porter mistreatment. We do, of course, also welcome updates from readers on any aspect of the book.

www.climbmountkilimanjaro.com – the website!
The website that was set up a couple of years ago to accompany this book is still going strong. Originally designed to keep our readers informed of the latest news and developments on the mountain, it now also hosts details of the climbs that we organize on Kilimanjaro.

So what exactly can you find on the site? Well, pay a visit to the site and you will see:
Updates on the book  From new restaurants in Moshi to route changes on Machame, if we discover something new or altered since the publication of the book, this is where you can find out all about it.
Links to weblogs  Compiling a weblog for your Kili climb? Then why not link it to our site so others can follow your progress?
Charity climbs  If you’re involved in a charity climb or trying to organize one, you’ll find space on the website for you to tell the world about your climb.
Links to Kili-based websites  Links to sites that we think are worth a look.
Kili news  Route alterations, park-fee increases and the tragedies and triumphs that occur on the mountain – we have the latest news.
The Kilimanjaro Hall of Fame  Celebrate your achievements with the world by posting your photos of yourself and your friends on the summit!