Everything you need to plan a climb, in the order you’ll need it: routes, timing, fitness, kit and costs.
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Our own routes, groups of eight at most, and a 97.6% summit success rate, explained with evidence rather than adjectives.
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Every climb we run, with prices from, and the scheduled departures you can join.
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Seven support series from Superlite to VIP, and what each one includes.
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Up and down in a day or two if you are already acclimatised, or acclimatise first: permits, plans, maps and a price calculator.
Plan a speed climb
Training, health requirements, visas, vaccinations, insurance and flights: what to sort out, and when.
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Height, peaks, temperatures, route lengths, wildlife and records, all checked against our own data.
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Every route on one map, from our own GPS tracks, with distances, crowding and acclimatisation compared side by side.
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Steep and direct from the south, leaving little time to acclimatise. 46.3 km round trip.
More about Umbwe
The busiest camping route, climbing from the southern rainforest onto the Shira Plateau before traversing beneath the Southern Icefields. 56.7 km round trip.
More about Machame
The quietest start, from the western forest onto the Shira Plateau. The standard route joins Machame beyond Shira 2; TK Lemosho, our own variation, takes the quiet northern circuit and summits from School Hut. 64.7 or 66.4 km round trip.
More about Lemosho
Starts high on the Shira Plateau, reached by vehicle: only for climbers already acclimatised, for example after Mount Meru. Seven or eight days, or joined to TK Lemosho.
More about Shira
The hut route, and the only one that comes down the way it goes up. It has the lowest success rate of the main routes. 66.9 km round trip.
More about Marangu
From the north, near the Kenyan border. The Rongai most companies run crosses the Saddle to Kibo Hut; TK Rongai, our own, climbs over the Mawenzi ridge and summits from School Hut. 68.0 or 72.2 km round trip.
More about Rongai
4,566 m, above Arusha: the best acclimatisation before Kilimanjaro. Three or four days, sleeping in huts.
More about Mount Meru
Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest mountain: 5,895 m (19,340 ft) at Uhuru Peak, standing entirely within Tanzania, about 3° south of the equator. It is also the world’s highest free-standing mountain, rising 5,118 m from its base.
You’ll have seen most of these figures quoted elsewhere. The difference here is that every one is checked against our own records, our route tracks and our expeditions since 2004, and where a “fact” is less certain than it is usually made to sound, we say so.
Kilimanjaro is a volcano with three peaks. From west to east they are Shira, a broad high plateau crossed by the Lemosho and Machame routes; Kibo, the central and highest peak, whose crater rim carries Uhuru Peak, Gilman’s Point and Stella Point; and Mawenzi, a jagged mass of rock pinnacles some 750 m lower than Kibo, which trekkers pass but do not climb.
Between Kibo and Mawenzi lies the Saddle, a high, open alpine desert that the Marangu and Rongai routes cross on the way to Kibo Hut.
Most of the world’s highest mountains are peaks within a range, so they rise from ground that is already high. Kilimanjaro rises on its own from the surrounding plains. We measured how far: the lowest point we could fix on its base lies at 777 m, just outside Himo, a rise of 5,118 m to the summit.
Measured from our own GPS tracks. Each distance is the full round trip, gate to gate, including the descent.
Our shortest and steepest track. The Western Breach has a history of rockfall; we led the investigation into the fatal rockfall of January 2006.
Umbwe Gate → Barranco → Lava Tower → Arrow Glacier → the crater → Uhuru Peak
More about Umbwe via Western BreachSteep and direct from the south, leaving little time to acclimatise.
Umbwe Gate → Umbwe Camp → Barranco → Barafu → Uhuru Peak
More about UmbweThe busiest camping route, climbing from the southern rainforest onto the Shira Plateau before traversing beneath the Southern Icefields.
Machame Gate → Machame Camp → Shira → Barranco → Barafu → Uhuru Peak
More about MachameStarts in the west and crosses the whole Shira Plateau before joining the Machame route at Barranco.
Lemosho Gate → Big Tree → Shira 2 → Barranco → Barafu → Uhuru Peak
More about LemoshoOur own version of Lemosho: around the quiet north of the mountain, reaching the summit from School Hut instead of Barafu.
Lemosho Gate → Big Tree → Shira 1 → Moir → Pofu → Third Cave → School Hut → Uhuru Peak
More about TK LemoshoThe hut route, and the only one that comes down the way it goes up. It has the lowest success rate of the main routes.
Marangu Gate → Mandara → Horombo → Kibo Hut → Uhuru Peak
More about MaranguThe Rongai most companies run: from the north, via Mawenzi Tarn and across the Saddle to Kibo Hut.
Rongai Gate → Simba → Second Cave → Kikelewa → Mawenzi Tarn → Kibo Hut → Uhuru Peak
More about RongaiOur own Rongai: an acclimatisation climb to Mawenzi Tarn and back, then west to Third Cave and the summit from School Hut.
Rongai Gate → Simba → Second Cave → Kikelewa → Mawenzi Tarn and back → Third Cave → School Hut → Uhuru Peak
More about TK Rongai
Entirely within Tanzania, close to the Kenyan border. Fly into JRO, not ARK.
Kilimanjaro sits entirely within Tanzania, close to the Kenyan border, about 3° south of the equator. The towns on its doorstep are Moshi and Arusha.
The closest airport is Kilimanjaro International (JRO), 47 km from central Arusha. Booking sites sometimes label JRO as “Arusha”, but Arusha has its own small airport, ARK, and arriving at the wrong one is an easy and expensive mistake. Getting here
Usually around −6 °C (21 °F), and nearer −10 °C (14 °F) with windchill.
On Uhuru Peak it is usually around −6 °C (21 °F). With windchill it often feels like −10 °C (14 °F), and summit night is the coldest part of any climb because you start in the dark.
Yes, at any time of year above about 4,600 m, mostly in the two wet seasons.
Snow can fall at any time of year from around 4,600 m upwards. In spite of being so close to the equator, the temperature above 5,000 m stays below freezing nearly all the time, so precipitation up there falls as snow.
Most of it falls in the wet seasons, April to May and November to early December. We recommend the drier months of January to February and June to October. Best time to climb
Around half of what you breathe at sea level. You don’t need bottled oxygen.
Around 48–52% of the oxygen available at sea level. Air pressure falls with altitude, so each breath at the top carries roughly half the oxygen it would at the coast.
You do not need supplementary oxygen; that generally becomes necessary only on mountains above about 7,000 m. We carry it anyway, for emergencies and to support a safe descent for anyone with severe altitude illness. Altitude explained
Yes. Nothing is technical; altitude is the challenge, and the route manages it.
You need no experience of altitude, or even of trekking. Nothing on the standard routes is technical or vertical: there are a couple of metres of scrambling at one point on the Umbwe Route, and that is all. What makes it hard is altitude, and that is managed by the route and the pace rather than by skill.
You must climb with a licensed guide through a Tanzanian-registered operator. Porters, on the other hand, are not legally required, although most climbers use them. How difficult is it?
Monkeys, hyrax and buffalo are common; leopard and serval are rare. Sixteen notable birds.
Commonly seen: blue monkey, colobus monkey, tree hyrax, bushbaby, bush pig, small-spotted genet, buffalo, mole rat, and several mice, including the four-striped grass mouse, harsh-furred mouse and climbing mouse.
Rarely seen: olive baboon, civet, leopard, mongoose, serval, aardvark and honey badger.
Birds: lammergeier, augur buzzard, crowned eagle, white-necked raven, scarlet-tufted malachite sunbird, Hartlaub’s turaco, silvery-cheeked hornbill, trogon, speckled mousebird, tropical boubou, Rüppell’s robin-chat, montane white-eye, common stonechat, alpine chat, common bulbul and streaky seedeater.
Probably “white mountain”, from Swahili and Chagga, though nobody is sure.
Nobody is really sure, including people who live on the mountain. The most reasonable guess combines Swahili and Chagga: kilima means hill or mountain, and the Chagga word for white is very close to njaro, so an earlier form of the language may have rendered “white mountain” as kilima njaro.
Some nine thousand searches a month get it wrong. “Kilamanjaro” leads at 28%.
The usual answer is simpler than the evidence. Here is what was written down at the time, and what was remembered later.
The first recorded ascent was made by the German geographer Hans Meyer and the Austrian mountaineer Ludwig Purtscheller, who reached the summit on 6 October 1889. They are widely credited as having been guided by a young Chagga man, Yohani Kinyala Lauwo, later known as Mzee Lauwo, who is said to have died in 1996 aged around 125. A descendant of his, Abel Lauwo, still guides on the mountain today.
Much of Lauwo’s story rests on his own testimony, recorded late in his life. Critics point out that Meyer’s own record names a helper from Pangani, Mwini Amani, as a key member of the party, and some question whether Lauwo was there at all. Even the date varies between sources: 5, 6 and 9 October all appear in print.
6 October 1889 is the date most sources credit, and Lauwo’s role is the account Tanzania itself honours. But a page of facts should say which parts were written down at the time and which were remembered later, and this is one place where the two differ.
Some people in Marangu, of course, will tell you it was first climbed by a son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Nearly all speed records start at a park gate, already roughly a quarter of the way up the mountain.
Rebecca Nchereri, one of Team Kilimanjaro’s founders, on 21 May 2005, from Marangu Gate.
About RebeccaBran Rees-Evans, aged 5 years 136 days, on 26 November 2012. Two weeks earlier, the youngest on Mount Meru (4,566 m).
Karl Egloff, 4 hours 56 minutes, on 13 August 2014.
John Rees-Evans, from 777 m near Himo to Uhuru Peak on 7 July 2026: 117 km and 5,118 m of ascent.
The full storyWe designed TK Lemosho and TK Rongai for acclimatisation, not speed: both go round the quiet north of the mountain and reach the summit from School Hut, away from the crowded Barafu and Kibo Hut approaches. The shape of a route matters more than its length.
See the route geometry