Mount Kilimanjaro

First, a couple more announcements:

1. I once again blog for beer!  This time I am joined in my Iron Blogging by Kevin R. of the Free Dissociation blog.  Please check it out and let me know if he starts owing me beer!

2. A couple of people have pointed out that, while the "TAIL-us" pronunciation is more common, the other pronunciation of "TAL-us" is certainly also used.  Hurrah!  Here is some celebratory talus:

From K-FREE's flickr photostream

Now, onto the topic of the day: Mount Kilimanjaro.

Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the Seven Summits (the set containing the tallest peak on each continent), but it is one of the easier of the Seven Summits to climb.  Notably, in a sense you can "just walk up the mountain" without a bunch of technical gear and ice-climbing expertise.  Because of this, I had sort of been thinking about Kilimanjaro as just a long hike.  Turns out, I was underestimating it.

This and future Kilimanjaro images are from Fabio Bretto's flickr photostream

The first clue that I'd underestimated the mountain came when I looked up just how tall Kilimanjaro actually is: 19,341 feet.  That's pretty serious.  So, sure, you can "just hike up the mountain" but you'll get HAPE or HACE (high altitude pulmonary edema or cerebral edema) and possibly die.

Wikipedia actually says "All trekkers will suffer considerable discomfort, typically shortness of breath, hypothermia, and headaches."  Citation needed, but... that's a pretty strong statement.  Lesson 1: Kilimanjaro is tall.  Photos taken on summit expeditions remind me of photos taken out of airplane windows:

The way to climb Kilimanjaro is to take a week, possibly more, to acclimatize yourself.  In fact, Tanzania's regulations require that ascents take at least 5 days.  You spend many nights on the mountainside in little camps.

Apparently this mountain kills a lot of people -- not because of falling ice or white-out blizzards, but because people don't take the time to acclimatize themselves.  Again, the take-home message is that the mountain is very very tall!

One phrase you can apparently use to describe Mount Kilimanjaro, which I think is awesome, is "Afromontane sky island."  Afromontane means it's a mountain in Africa, and "sky island" refers to the fact that Mount Kilimanjaro rises up from largely-flat surroundings.  It has a prominence of 19,308 feet with respect to its surroundings, making it ranked 4th in the world for prominence.

I highly recommend you check out this panoramic image showing Kilimanjaro from a nearby African town called Moshi.  Zoom in, and consider how big Kilimanjaro looks compared to its surroundings.  Maybe you can start to get an idea for why this is one of the Seven Summits.

This is probably a bad time to say this, now that I've spent my blog post discussing the dangers of Mount Kilimanjaro, but there is some non-zero probability I'll attempt to climb this eventually.  My friend Yuki and her brother and father are planning to climb this mountain at some point, and I've asked that they keep me in the loop.  I'll make sure they (we?) take at least a week to climb.  And that no one dies.

I might do a series of blog posts on some of the Seven Summits.  I'm particularly interested in the Antarctic summit (Vinson Massif), the European summit (Mount Elbrus), and the North American summit (Denali, or Mt. McKinley).  Feel free to request that I focus on certain aspects of the mountains/the climbing experience.

Until next time!