Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on the Machame Route
Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is the highest freestanding mountain in the world at 19,341′, and I’ve wanted to climb it for three years.
During the 2016 Maymester, I studied abroad in Tanzania and left a huge piece of my heart there. During our days in Arusha, I got used to looking for Kilimanjaro peeking through the clouds on clear days. I loved the way my friends in Tanzania talked about the mountain, calling it Kili, like it was a friend who might decide to make an appearance and join us today.
When I came home from Tanzania that year, my travel was very long and the time zones had me all confused. I was exhausted, and I fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon pretty soon after my mom picked me up in Indiana. While I was dozing in and out, my face resting on the car window, I saw a snow-capped peak, and in my sleep-deprived state, I felt a little rush of happiness that Kili was out today, and then reality hit me like a ton of bricks: that was not Kilimanjaro. It wasn’t even a mountain. It was just a cloud, and I was 8,000 miles away in Indiana. Two things happened right then: first, I started to cry, and then I decided that I would go back to Tanzania and climb Mount Kilimanjaro someday.
I didn’t think I would get the chance to do it so soon, in 2019, but when I found out that I was going to have the chance to go back to Tanzania and that a few of my friends were interested in climbing too, I knew this was our chance. I spent a full year training, hiking and running, even flying out to Colorado to climb a fourteener and see how my body would handle the altitude.
I’ll give you a spoiler alert and say that we made it: all the way up to the top. Seven days of hiking, about fifty-five miles total. Kilimanjaro is the highest point in Africa and one of the world’s Seven Summits. It’s an ancient volcano with snow caps and glaciers feeding rivers and sustaining life all down the mountainsides. It’s an icon. It was incredible, and it was brutal, and I’ve never felt so strong in my life.
We climbed up the Machame Route thanks to our team from Wildlife Experience TZ, although our route was a little unconventional because we doubled up on mileage on day 4 to summit a day early. We were blessed with absolutely flawless weather; it didn’t rain or snow on us a single day, although the weeks before and after our hike the summit was pounded with 200″ of snow (yes, you read that correctly). Everything went right, and I’m so happy that we did it.
Here are some of my favorite pics (they’re almost all iPhone photos), split up by days, along with parts of my journal entries.
DAY ONE
Machame Gate (5,718′) to Machame Camp (9,927′)
Approx. 10 miles
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- And so it begins! Day one, we started from the Machame gate and began our hike. Everything was really green and lush and misty.
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- There’s a waterfall back in those trees.
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- Our guides are Steven, Deo, and David. Steven, our head guide, got his license in 1994 and has summited 300 times. David, our assistant guide, has summited 100 times.
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- The five of us + Tiger ready to go!
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- We saw some monkeys at the gate as we headed up the path into the foggy forest.
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- Day one photo of me: temperature was in the sixties or so. I tried to get a photo of myself each day in each different climate zone.
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- I don’t think I’ve ever been as hungry as I was for this lunch. Our guides have us drink at least 3 liters of water a day to stay hydrated, and that’s just before dinner. Lunch was a burger, chicken, samosa, muffin, mango juice, pancake, and banana. We climbed during Ramadan, a monthlong Muslim holiday. Traditionally, during Ramadan, Muslim people fast during the day. We were concerned about our guides and porters, just because this climb would not be physically possible without lots of regular meals. Our guides and porters do eat during the day, in fact, because they told us God doesn’t have a problem with the mountain. 🙂
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- Not going to lie, day one was harder than I expected. I knew I was going to be climbing a mountain, but I’ve never spent so much time just walking uphill. Every turn we took was just more uphill and more. It’s one thing to think about climbing a mountain and another to spend seven hours straight walking uphill and gaining close to a mile of elevation. I was seriously wondering what I had gotten myself into! It was physically painful, which just told me this was all going to be difficult.
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- They call this an elephant trunk flower because of its curve.
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- Made it to our camp for the night! Dinner at our camp was hot chocolate, cucumber soup, vegetables, fried fish, and a banana. It was all delicious, and it’s amazing that our porters prepare all this on the mountain. I was stuffed. Our camp seemed busy, but according to our team, this is nothing compared to busy season. There were about 30 hikers, but in mid-June onward, there will be 100 or more. I could tell the air was getting thinner because I felt like I couldn’t breathe while I was sleeping on my stomach.
DAY TWO
Machame Camp (9,927′) to Shira Cave Camp (12,500′)
Approx. 6 miles
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- We woke up with our first view of the summit. “That’s it?” I said as soon as I walked out of my tent. I meant it in awe, but my friends all laughed because it was so early my voice didn’t really have any tone, and I sounded like I was disappointed. Oops!
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- These white-necked ravens hung around our camps almost every day. Their sound honestly sounds like a person trying to make a bird noise and doing a bad job.
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- That’s Mount Meru in the distance! Believe it or not, it’s almost a full mile shorter than Mount Kilimanjaro, but still huge in its own right.
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- Already, I thought that I should have done more squats and lunges and stairs in my training.
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- When we stopped at this scenic view, I slipped on the rocks and screwed up my knee and ankle, which made me nervous that I had already screwed up my chances of summiting, but it was all okay.
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- All I know about this guy is that his name is Greg. We kept passing Greg’s group and then they’d pass us, making jokes about us being Boilermakers! I wanted to share this photo with him, but we didn’t see his group again after this day.
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- Sarabeth and I got on a kick of taking a photo of her drinking her water everyday. #hydrated
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- Another lovely flower!
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- My get up for day 2: not much different weather wise, just foggy.
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- When we stopped for a drink break, Deo pulled these cupcakes out of nowhere for us and I was THRILLED.
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- These plants close up at night.
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- Made it to camp 2: Shira Cave! After this, we dropped off our things and kept hiking upwards with our guides for a bit to help us better adjust to the elevation before coming back down to camp for dinner and to sleep.
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- The most scenic bathroom.
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- Kilimanjaro peak from our camp.
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- Each camp had a reception cabin for campers to check in.
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- That’s a helipad! Our guides told us they call stretchers “Kilimanjaro taxis,” and if anyone gets seriously injured on the mountain, they have to be taken to a helipad and then the emergency road, from which it is a 3 hour drive to Moshi. Kilimanjaro isn’t a particularly dangerous mountain, but serious altitude sickness absolutely happens and has taken some lives.
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- No sleeping in caves!
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- As we hiked, I noticed some interesting rock that looks like shale and sounds like broken glass to walk on.
DAY THREE
Shira Cave Camp (12,500′) to Lava Tower Camp (15,230′) for lunch, then to Barranco Camp (13,110′)
Approx. 9 miles
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- I woke up a little cold because I knocked off my hat overnight, but was okay otherwise! A little nauseous and didn’t have much appetite. I kept telling myself over and over again that I can do this, telling my body I’ll take care of you if you take care of me. I had to say it again and again because I had to believe it, visualize it. If I kept imagining failure (which it was hard not to), I just might fail. I could tell the air was even thinner still because I was out of breath just from walking to the bathroom.
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- Deo and David, two of our guides.
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- That’s where we’re going! Terrain was a lot more barren from today onwards.
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- Get up for day 3: A little chillier, but not bad.
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- Kilimanjaro peak with the Lava Tower on the right.
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- The walls of this bathroom really were leaning that far sideways. I felt like I was in a fun house.
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- The Lava Tower, 300′ of lava rock.
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- High altitude has a big impact on your appetite, and this was the last meal I felt hungry for on the mountain.
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- Kilimanjaro’s beautiful clear rivers sustain a ton of life all down the mountain.
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- We saw some very cool trees called giant groundsel or senecio, which are in the sunflower family and only grow in east Africa at high altitude. You can tell how old they are by counting the branches and multiplying by 3 years.
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- So much fog.
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- Made it to Barranco Camp! Each day, we all looked a little less prepared to have our picture taken.
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- For dinner, we had vegetable soup, pasta with onions, vegetable sauce, and oranges. Over dinner, Steven said that we would change our plans to summit Kili a day early (so starting our summit attempt at midnight tomorrow, in about 30 hours). None of us are sick from the altitude, although we’ve seen many who are, and Steven said he was confident in our ability going up, and this would give us more time to go down. I immediately felt sick. I’d been looking forward to this for a year, but here summit day was staring me in the face earlier than I expected and it was stressful. Plus, from our camp we stare directly at this: the Barrano Wall, an 843′ wall of stone we have to get up tomorrow without ropes. My anxiety was through the roof.
DAY FOUR
Barranco Camp (13,110′) to Karanga Camp (13,106′) to Barafu Camp (15,341′)
Approx. 8 miles
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- This was the first day we really felt cold while sleeping. I woke up with a pulse of about 90, nervous about climbing the Barranco Wall and also knowing that our summit hike was rapidly approaching tonight at midnight.
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- Heading up the Barranco Wall. Not going to lie, this was the most terrifying part of the whole hike for me. It’s a lot of narrow, steep rock we’re climbing up with no ropes, including a part known as the Kissing Stone, where the ledge is so narrow you have to kiss a rock to squeeze past it. I was so terrified I remember nothing from the wall except for the Kissing Stone, when our guide David held onto my arm and just said “Don’t panic,” and helped me squeeze on past. Thank you, David!
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- Mount Meru
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- The last few steps of climbing up the Barranco Wall. Everyone said that the Barranco Wall was their favorite part, but I was so nervous I can’t remember hardly any of it.
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- Those colored dots way down there are the tents at our campsite from the top of the wall.
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- Closer to the summit!
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- The clouds rolled in SO fast.
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- There’s a lot of really interesting rock on the mountain, since most of it was formed by lava.
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- Today’s hike was actually two days’ hikes, and felt really long.
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- More interesting rock.
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- Finally wearing different clothes, still not that cold, worse at smiling for pictures.
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- Yep, that’s part of the trail we walked.
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- We made it to Barafu camp! This is the camp that we will summit from starting at midnight tonight.
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- Relics from past climbers.
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- Our motto thanks to our guide, David.
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- We’re all tired. I cried at dinner for literally no reason.
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- Now time for bed straight after dinner, preparing to wake up at 11:55 p.m. to start our summit attempt at midnight.
DAY FIVE (Summit Day)
Barafu Camp (15,341′) to Uhuru Peak (19,341′), back to Barafu Camp and then to High Camp (12,959′)
Approx. 11 miles
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- First picture from summit day after 7 hours of hiking in the dark, looking at other hikers’ headlamps snaking up the mountain like stars: the sunrise. Summit day was hands down the hardest thing I have ever done. I was already sore from yesterday, so popped an ibuprofen before we started climbing, but shortly thereafter popped two more. It was so hard to move my legs. There were so many times I felt like they were going to collapse and I only barely caught myself on my hiking poles. Nausea came periodically, especially when I tried to eat anything. I subsisted on ginger chews and energy goos, which was not nearly enough as I should have been having to sustain myself. I tried to eat jerky and just had to spit it out because I couldn’t swallow it. At one point my vision started to get all weird and I truly thought I was going to black out, at which point David told me something along the lines of to not slow down, which was probably him trying to motivate me but all I could think was that he was going to need to motivate himself to carry me down the mountain on a stretcher when I blacked out. I was not certain it was physically possible for me to make it. I truly expected my legs to give out and just stop working. I just kept looking up at the mountain, a dark shadow extending into the dark sky.
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- The view from Stella Point: our first stop on the crater rim before heading around to Uhuru Peak, the highest point. As soon as we made it up to Stella Point, after 7 hours of hiking in the dark straight up almost a mile, looking at that golden sunrise, our guides served tea and I couldn’t stop crying because that was the moment I knew that we were actually going to make it to the summit. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t have words.
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- Stella Point
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- One of Kilimanjaro’s famous glaciers. Our guide, Steven, told us that twenty years ago when he first became a guide, these glaciers reached all the way down to our day 2 camp. Now they’re so much smaller and only really seen on summit day. They’re disappearing quickly, and I couldn’t stop crying (again) over the idea that if my kids climb this mountain someday, there probably won’t be any more glaciers. The glaciers won’t be able to feed the streams and rivers down the mountain, and it’ll become so much less hospitable for all the life it has now.
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- Looking down into the crater, with Mawenzi (another of the Kilimanjaro volcano’s shorter cones) in the background.
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- WE MADE IT! None of us can remember how to smile. Blame the altitude or being cold and exhausted. At this point my water bottles were freezing. I don’t have words to describe the feeling of seeing the infamous sign and knowing that this was it.
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- Mount Meru
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- The crater
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- All the other climbers and guides are SO nice. Everyone was just congratulating each other and cheering others on.
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- I don’t remember taking this selfie.
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- Heading back around the crater rim to go down. We can only stay at the top for about fifteen minutes because of the altitude and thin air. That’s Mawenzi in the background.
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- The way down was also rough on our bodies. We got back to Barafu camp and immediately napped. We got up for lunch, at which point we were stumbling like zombies. We were running on about 6 hours of sleep in the last 30 hours and had hiked around 20 miles in that time. We then took another nap, and then got our things all together to move to the next camp, High Camp.
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- Made it to High Camp for the night – we were all too tired to stand. I was hitting low blood sugar territory, which was my own fault for not eating nearly enough. It’s hard for me to eat when I’m stressed, so I had really put myself in a bad spot. I tried to stuff down a lot of snacks. It was hard to pinpoint what exactly on my body hurt.
DAY SIX
High Camp (12,959′) to Mweka Camp (10,065′)
Approx. 3 miles
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- Check out that cloud on the side of the peak. Can’t believe we were there 24 hours ago. Day six and seven were both low mileage, quick hike days, so we spent a lot of time around the campsite. We played a lot of cards: Euchre and Egyptian ratscrew. It was nice to spend time just relaxing with our last days on the mountainside. We tried to take some short walks throughout the day, knowing that all our soreness was going to catch up to us.
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- All of our incredible guides and porters – these guys ROCK! We were blessed to have a fantastic team.
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- The fog is back.
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- Hey, that’s me.
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- Made it to Mweka Camp. Tomorrow, we’ll head to Mweka Gate and our days on Kilimanjaro will officially be done. We’re all suddenly capable of smiling nicely again.
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- This variation of checkers was really fun, and we enjoyed playing with our guides. (I even won a game, but it was probably luck)
DAY SEVEN
Mweka Camp (10,065′) to Mweka Gate (5,380′)
Approx. 6 miles
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- We are down! Made it to the gate.
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- Significantly dirtier and smellier than we were on day 1.
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- We stopped in Moshi for some excellent celebratory barbecue lamb and chicken on our way back to Arusha, and Kilimanjaro beers were a necessity.
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- The most delicious fries and fried plantains.
And that was our seven days on Kilimanjaro! I have so many more pictures to share from the other parts of my trip to Tanzania, and I’ll add links to them here once those are up too.
