Tracking your Friends and Family as They Climb Kilimanjaro
The vast majority of our climbers have loved ones back home who are concerned about their safety and happiness while away in Africa. For family and friends of a climber it can be worrying to imagine them struggling against altitude, the elements, and objective risks associated with climbing a mountain, and to have no information or updates about how they are faring. It is with these concerns in mind that we have developed a system of live-time reporting - complete with photos - sent directly from the mountain.
To follow your friend or loved oneโs progress on Kilimanjaro, please visit our Live Climb Reports and navigate to the โClimber Reportsโ page.
Choosing to Climb with Team Kilimanjaro
We understand that a very significant factor in the decision of many adventurers to climb Kilimanjaro with us is that we control everything directly ourselves, not relying on any middlemen or local tour operators to dilute the integrity of sometimes very sensitive and specific information as it passes down through the chain of command.
Consequently, our climbers expect near-perfect communication between management and our staff on the ground on Kilimanjaro, and swift and ready access to information pertaining to all aspects to their booking.
While we believe that the nature of Team Kilimanjaroโs operational structure affords us a very great advantage in this sense, we would however, like to caution climbers that they should please understand the limitations of the hardware that we use on Kilimanjaro, and - more significantly - the limitations of the cellular network provider to supply consistent signal across the mountain.
With such concerns in mind, we would suggest that while climbers may rightly expect TK to enjoy the highest standards of communication realistically available, we regret that such are the objective limitations that lie outside our control, that climbers should certainly not base their decision to climb with us on the assumption that we will unfailingly be capable of providing photographs of their climb sent in live-time direct from the mountain on every day of their climb.
Limitations of Data Availability on Cellular Networks on Kilimanjaro
Indeed, prospective climbers should please appreciate that while we have a very transparent blog site that ought to provide clear evidence of what our teams are able to achieve in terms of live reporting from the mountain from Kilimanjaro, nonetheless, the following factors may disappoint climbers that expect faultless and comprehensive photo reports:
- There are several areas on the mountain which enjoy cellular coverage for voice calls but which lack adequate data packet saturation, necessary to send images of an average size of 50KB from Kilimanjaro. This means that on certain days on certain routes (particularly days 1 and 2 on TK Lemosho), it is entirely impossible to provide live photo reports.
- Even in zones where we ordinarily enjoy adequate voice and data signal coverage, from time to time we encounter periods of as long as three consecutive days, in which cellular coverage is simply absent. We understand this to be attributable either to maintenance, system upgrades, hardware failure or damage, or power supply issues.
- From time to time our guides may commit human errors, such as allowing their phone to become damaged or wet. Where such (rare) events occur, our guides will usually use the phone of one of their fellow team members to send SMS reports or will attempt to liaise with other iPhone-equipped TK groups on the mountain. This is often not possible, however
In short, we would ask climbers to please appreciate the fact that we aim to achieve an ongoing high standard of communication and reporting amongst our teams, and we believe that the service we provide in this regard is second to none that is elsewhere available.
That said, we ask climbers to understand that the provision of such services is not to be understood to be an โinclusiveโ component of the service we provide or in any way a contractual obligation on our parts.
We hope therefore that friends and family will enjoy tracking their loved ones on Kilimanjaro, but assert unequivocally, that this facility should not be depended on and that this service should be expected to be intermittent and subject to many uncontrollable limitations, including those already described.
When considering an ascent of Kilimanjaro we frequently receive enquiries about what climbers should expect in terms of temperatures and precipitation. While this information is of course useful, it tells only a very small part of the story in terms of informing a climber how they should prepare.
Our climbers will already know that in many respects our organisation and procedures are unique from all other Kilimanjaro tour operators. When booking a climb with Team Kilimanjaro climbers are choosing to bypass agents and middlemen, enabling both the climbers, and our coordinators alike, to ensure that all information relating to the climbing groupโs needs, preferences and special aspirations, is received and retained by the very people who will be responsible for you when youโre on the mountain.
The vast majority of our climbers have loved ones back home who are concerned about their safety and happiness while away in Africa. For family and friends of a climber it can be worrying to imagine them struggling against altitude, the elements, and objective risks associated with climbing a mountain, and to have no information or updates about how they are faring. It is with these concerns in mind that we have developed a system of live-time reporting - complete with photos - sent directly from the mountain.