The Shira Route
Unless specifically requested by climbers who are already acclimatised to 4,000m from the ascent of Meru or another mountain, and wanting vehicle support to the Shira Plateau, we only use the Shira Route for mountain safety work as a fast way of reaching the summit or Western Breach when short on time. It is possible for an acclimatised member of our staff to leave Arusha early in the morning and be on the summit the same day by driving up to around 3,760m.
The route functions as a rescue track. If a sick climber is evacuated west of the Breach Wall he will usually walk or be carried on a stretcher to an ambulance that will have ascended to a point only 15 minutes below Shira Hut. From here it is only 1 hour and 15 minutes by vehicle to Londorossi Gate where a reasonably good main dirt road (except in wet weather when conditions can be treacherous) takes us to Arusha in around 2.5 hours.
If you drive the same road every day for long enough, something subtle happens. You stop trusting the map and start trusting experience. You learn where traffic always builds, where the road surface deteriorates after rain, where a slight change of timing saves you frustration. The route on paper never changes, but the way you move through it does.
Choosing the best route to climb Mount Kilimanjaro is critical to your safety, summit success, and enjoyment. At Team Kilimanjaro, we draw on decades of experience to recommend the two routes that consistently offer the best acclimatisation profiles, the safest summit bids, and the most spectacular wilderness experiences: TK Lemosho and TK Rongai.
Traditionally, the Rongai Routeβs premier advantage has been that it is the quietest route on the mountain, however one of the reasons that it is so quiet is that the likelihood of summiting on this route on the conventional six and seven day schedules is the second worst of all the six official routes because there are no topographical features that allow the βclimb high / sleep lowβ principle to be exploited, even if one incorporates a rest day that features a modest acclimatisation excursion (such as on Martina Navratilovaβs unsuccessful attempt). Typically, crew members that we speak to that work with operations that use this route report a failure rate of around half the climbing group.