Mt Kilimanjaro, the beginners guide to climbing it

Meyer is a good example of the determined characters who seek to conquer Kili. On his previous attempt, in 1888, the Abushiri War broke out, which was an Arab led revolt against German traders in East Africa, and he was captured and held prisoner. He was eventually freed after a ransom was paid, but went back the following year for another attempt. This time a successful one.

Part of Meyer’s secret was the establishment of camps, so that food could be left there by porters to sustain him, and his team, throughout the climb; this system of camps still exists today. You can also see a memorial to Hans Meyer at the Marangu Gate of Kilimanjaro National Park.
The Furtwängler Glacier on Kilimanjaro was named after Walter Furtwängler who was the fourth to reach the summit of in 1912. During the century that has passed since then, the glacier has retreated by 80 percent, which represents the new history of Kilimanjaro in the making, this time by climate change. Scientists believe that the iconic snow covered peaks of Kili may have disappeared between 2022 and 2033*.

Volcanic activity still affects Kilimanjaro too, although only one of the peaks, Kibo, the highest at 5,895m is dormant, the other two extinct. The last recorded volcanic activity was 200 years ago, which formed the symmetrical cone of the Reusch Crater and the ash pit, where you can still smell sulphur and where the hot earth prevents ice from forming. This crater was named in 1954 after Gustav Otto Richard Reusch, who climbed Kili 65 times and summitted 25 times.

To put these conquests into historical context, Tanzania was a German colony and part of German East Africa from the 1880s to 1919, when, under the League of Nations, it became a British mandate. Tanzania finally became independent in 1963. Independence also gave Kilimanjaro’s peak its new name: Uhuru, which means, aptly, ‘freedom’ in Swahili. And in terms of protecting this free and wild place, it was declared a game reserve during German colonial times and then, in 1921, was designated as a forest reserve. In 1973, the mountain above the tree line (about 2,700 metres) was reclassified as a national park, which expanded in 2005 to include all the montane forest surrounding it. The park is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The first map, based on aerial photography, was published in 1964 by the UK’s Directorate of Overseas Surveys, with tourist mapping published by Ordnance Survey in England in 1989.

* Source: Live Science