Day 8: Climb to Summit Uhuru Peak

MOUNTAIN ROUTE OVERVIEW

Summit is an 11 to 16 hour day. Climbers go to sleep after an early dinner the night before and are woken up around midnight to being their summit attempt. After a light snack, they ascent into darkness, cold, and wind. Temperatures usually range from -4° to 5° fahrenheit. This is where climbers feel the altitude, so they’ll carry as little as possible, hike slowly, and take many rests to ease the symptoms. They’ll make their way up a trail that is flanked by the Ratzel and Rebman Glaciers. After climbing for around six hours, they’ll reach the edge of Kilimanjaro’s crater between Stella and Hans Meyer Points. They’re just an hour from the summit when they get here! After a hot cup of tea and rest, they’ll begin climbing on a rocky and icy trail to the summit, Uhuru Peak, at 19,344 feet which is the highest point on the continent of Africa. Once they reach the summit, they’ll spend a few minutes making sure they touch the sign, celebrating with the group, and taking pictures before descending to Kosovo Camp. Once they reach camp, they’ll eat lunch and take a short nap before continuing their descent to Mweka Camp. Once they arrive at camp, they’ll have dinner and go to bed early after a 13 to 19 hour day of hiking!

MOUNTAIN ROUTE STATS

ASCENT

Starting elevation 16,000 feet

Ending elevation 19,344 feet

Elevation gain 3,344 feet

Distance hiked 4.5 miles

Average hiking time 8 to 10 hours

DESCENT

Starting elevation 19,344 feet

Ending elevation 10,200 feet

Elevation loss 9,144 feet

Distance hiked 8 miles

Average hiking time 7 to 9 hours

Well folks, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Summit Night. The best and most exhausting day of our lives! We woke up at 11:30PM, ate a light breakfast and were off by 12:30AM for our final hike up to the summit. I was so happy to see everyone was excited rather than nervous because we knew we were in such good hands with John Simon, Samson, Ahi, and Pendaeli. 

We strapped on our headlamps and began the ~4,000ft ascent. The weather was clear, cold—but not too cold/we had just the right gear on— and not windy, so it was pretty ideal for a summit night. Going up the switchbacks while rest-stepping up, there was a trail of lights from the other summit-ers below us. This went on for about 6.5 hours—John Simon, Samson, Ahi, and Pendaeli kept us awake with their singing.

We only needed to stop twice for a break (stopping meant risking getting frigid), one of which was for hot tea—hibiscus tea has been a group favorite this trip! 

When we got up past Stella Point, the wind started whipping but then slowed as we neared Uhuru Peak. It snowed a couple weeks ago, so we trudged carefully through snow/ice for about 20 minutes while the sun started rising behind us. The view at the top was truly indescribable. It was a clear day, so the sun lit up the sky a bright orange that highlighted the horizon and the surrounding glaciers. As we reached Uhuru Peak, we celebrated with hugs and photos with the sign. We made it—19,341ft!! Mt. Kilimanjaro is such a special place, and I’m so glad we got to experience it together with this team. The fact that we made it in such great health (with some headaches here and there of course) and high spirits is truly a blessing. Because we got there in such good time, we beat the crowd that followed soon behind us, and we headed back down to get to lower elevation ASAP. 

The way back to Kosovo Camp was a fun one: we practically skied down a valley of huge rocks for about 2 hours. The rest of our team met us on the trail to grab our bags and were genuinely so happy for us. We had some more snacks and took a breath to absorb what we just did. Then, we took a 1.5 hour nap—seemingly the quickest 1.5 hours of our lives—had lunch, and continued our trek to more than halfway down the mountain on the Mweke Route, just as cold weather started to blow in (it snowed/sleeted that night…again, we’ve been so lucky with the weather!). We hiked down for about 6 hours to reach Mweke Camp in the rainforest. To put that into perspective, that totaled about 15 hours of hiking in one day. Needless to say, we are so exhausted here at Mweke Camp and are ready for bed and to finish our time on Kilimanjaro tomorrow!