We landed in Tanzania just after Christmas, on the 27th, and walked onto the mountain a few days later. Eight of us, camping every night, with porters and cooks. Three of the group I had never met before, friends of my friend Yoshi.
How do you acclimatise for Kilimanjaro?
My answer is one word: Aconcagua. In January 2025 I turned around there at 6,500 m, and I came off that mountain knowing what altitude actually does to you and, more usefully, what it costs to fight it.
So on Kilimanjaro I went a lot slower than felt necessary, from day one. I was a lot more cautious about going up. I ate when I did not want to. I protected sleep like it was the objective. By the time we reached high camp I was more acclimatised than I have ever been, and the summit push was, in a strange way, the enjoyable part, if you can say it that way... because for the first time I knew exactly what was coming.
The two who stopped
Yoshi did not make it past base camp. He developed high altitude pulmonary oedema, the serious one, fluid on the lungs, and stopping was not a choice, it was the only outcome that did not end badly. We went on without him, which is a strange, flat feeling after weeks of planning something together.
Nancy came about halfway up the summit push. She was struggling with the altitude, and she had left her heavy gloves behind, so her hands were going. She turned around. Both calls were correct, and I would rather write that sentence than the alternative.
Midnight to sunrise
We were up around eleven at night for a midnight start, which is how it is done: you climb the last 1,200 metres in the dark and arrive with the light. The sun came up as we hit the first of the high points on the crater rim, and from there it is a walk, in the loosest sense of the word, to the top.
Everyone else got there, each at our own pace, which is the only way that works. Six of eight on the summit of the highest mountain in Africa. The summit was awesome!
Why it mattered
It was the first time I had gone all the way to the top of something genuinely big, and it reset what I thought was available to me. The Matterhorn, eight months later, is a direct consequence. Not because Kilimanjaro is technical, it is not, but because it proved the slow, boring, well-managed version of me gets to the summit and the impatient one does not.
And it was truly a team week. The guides, the cooks, the porters, eight friends in a circle of tents at four in the afternoon with nothing to do but talk. We really lived some incredible moments. I would go back for that part ALONE.