48 Fun Facts About Kilimanjaro

Mount Kilimanjaro is in which country?

Kilimanjaro stands in northern Tanzania, close to the Kenyan border and roughly three degrees south of the equator; Tanzania itself was formed in 1964 by the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

How high is Kilimanjaro's summit above sea level?

Kilimanjaro's official height is 5,895 m, a figure from a British survey of 1952; GPS surveys in 1999 and 2008 measured the summit about three metres lower, but the official number was kept.

Kilimanjaro holds which world record among mountains?

Kilimanjaro is the highest free-standing mountain on Earth: it belongs to no range and rises about 4,900 m from the surrounding plains, giving it the fourth-greatest topographic prominence of any peak.

Kilimanjaro is what kind of geological feature?

A dormant volcano: fumaroles in its summit crater vent gas and geologists consider a future eruption possible, whereas an extinct volcano is not expected to erupt again.

Kilimanjaro is made up of how many distinct volcanic cones?

The highest is followed by Mawenzi at 5,149 m and Shira, the oldest and lowest, at 4,005 m.

Which of Kilimanjaro's cones carries the summit?

Kibo, the central and youngest cone, carries the summit; its last eruptive activity, well over a hundred thousand years ago, shaped the crater and the inner Reusch Crater with its Ash Pit.

What is the name of Kilimanjaro's highest point?

German colonists had originally called the summit Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze.

What does 'Uhuru' mean in Swahili?

Uhuru is Swahili for 'freedom': the summit became Uhuru Peak in 1964, the year Tanganyika and Zanzibar united as Tanzania, three years after Tanganyika's independence.

Before independence, the summit of Kilimanjaro was named after which ruler?

The name Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze was bestowed at the first ascent in 1889, during German rule in East Africa.

Which German missionary is credited as the first European to report Kilimanjaro's existence, in 1848?

Johannes Rebmann sighted the snow-capped summit on 11 May 1848; his guide called the white cap simply 'cold', and the Rebmann Glacier on Kibo carries his name.

Who made the first ascent of Kilimanjaro's summit in 1889?

Hans Meyer, a German geographer from Leipzig, reached the summit on 6 October 1889 with the alpinist Ludwig Purtscheller, on his third attempt at the mountain.

What nationality was Ludwig Purtscheller, Meyer's partner on the 1889 first ascent?

Ludwig Purtscheller was Austrian, an Innsbruck-born Salzburg schoolteacher and leading alpinist; with Meyer he was the first to confirm that the summit cone holds a crater.

What stopped Meyer's planned 1888 attempt on Kilimanjaro?

He and cartographer Oscar Baumann were seized during the Abushiri Revolt against German rule.

Guide Yohani Kinyala Lauwo was honoured as a first-ascent survivor at which anniversary of the climb?

Its 100th: Lauwo was feted at the 1989 centenary celebrations of the first ascent as a surviving member of Meyer's party, and died in 1996, 107 years after the climb.

Who was the first woman to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro, in 1927?

Sheila MacDonald reached the summit in 1927, the first woman recorded to do so; Gertrude Benham had got only as far as the crater rim, alone, in 1909 after her porters fled.

Which leader abolished the Chagga kingdoms, long established on Kilimanjaro's southern and eastern slopes, in 1963?

Julius Nyerere ended the kingdoms in 1963; the Chagga call the two peaks Kipoo and Kimawenze but have no single name for the mountain itself.

What does the Chagga name for the summit cone, Kipoo, mean?

Kipoo means 'spotted', after the dark rock that shows through the snow on the summit cone; the name Kibo is a corruption of it.

One theory says 'Kilimanjaro' comes from a Chagga phrase mistaken for a name; what did it mean?

'Unclimbable': on this theory Europeans mistook a Kichagga phrase, kilemanjaare or kilemajyaro, built on kileme, 'that which defeats', for the mountain's name; Krapf instead glossed it as 'mountain of greatness'.

Kilimanjaro National Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which year?

UNESCO listed Kilimanjaro National Park as a World Heritage Site in 1987; the park itself was created in 1973 to cover the mountain above the tree line, and it was named a natural wonder of Africa in 2013.

Kilimanjaro is one of the Seven Summits; who first climbed all of them, in 1985?

Richard 'Dick' Bass, a Texas oilman, completed the Seven Summits with Everest on 30 April 1985; his list used Kosciuszko for Australia, while the rival Messner list swaps in Puncak Jaya.

How many official trekking routes lead up and down Kilimanjaro?

They include Lemosho, Machame, Shira and Umbwe, with Mweka used only for descent.

Which Kilimanjaro route is nicknamed the 'Coca-Cola' route?

Marangu, nicknamed the Coca-Cola route for the soft drinks once sold along it, is the only route where trekkers sleep in shared huts rather than tents, and the most-trodden line on the mountain.

Why does the 'Coca-Cola' route have the lowest summit success rate despite being the easiest walk?

Its short profile allows little acclimatisation: the standard five-day itinerary climbs fast, so many trekkers add a sixth day at Horombo Hut to adapt before the pre-dawn summit push.

Which Kilimanjaro route is described as the easiest of the camping routes?

Rongai, the one route that approaches from the north near the Kenyan border, has the gentlest gradient of the camping routes; Machame and Umbwe are steeper and Lemosho longer.

Which town is the capital of Tanzania's Kilimanjaro Region?

Moshi, at about 900 m on the mountain's southern foot, is the capital of Kilimanjaro Region and the usual base for climbers heading to the Marangu and Machame gates.

What poses the most serious risk to trekkers on Kilimanjaro?

Altitude sickness: the mountain's huge prominence means trekkers gain height very fast for a walk-up peak.

Roughly what share of Kilimanjaro's ice cover disappeared between 1912 and 2011?

A 2013 estimate said most of the ice would be gone within a few decades.

Scientists in 2013 projected that no ice body would remain on Kilimanjaro after which year?

Ice cores from the Northern Ice Field suggest a basal age of about 11,700 years, though a 2011 analysis argued for only 800 years.

The Furtwängler Glacier near the summit is named after a man who did what in 1912?

Walter Furtwängler climbed with Ziegfried Koenig; the Credner and Rebmann glaciers are the mountain's other well-known ice bodies.

How many times had Reusch climbed Kilimanjaro when the summit's Reusch Crater was named for him in 1954?

25: Richard Reusch, a Lutheran missionary based at Marangu, had just made his 25th ascent when the inner crater was named for him in 1954; he climbed the mountain about 65 times in all.

Kilimanjaro's Western Breach and Great Barranco were formed about 100,000 years ago by what?

A collapse of Kibo's crater rim about 100,000 years ago carved the Western Breach and the Great Barranco; the breach later became a steep, rockfall-prone climbing route reached from the Lemosho side.

Dendrosenecio kilimanjari, a plant endemic to the mountain, is a tree-sized species of what?

Groundsel: Dendrosenecio kilimanjari is a giant groundsel of the daisy family that grows as a branching tree several metres tall in the moorland zone above about 3,600 m.

Which two large animals on Kilimanjaro's lower slopes are noted as potentially hazardous to trekkers?

Elephants and Cape buffaloes: both roam the forest belt and are the animals trekkers are warned about; zebras, leopards and hyenas have been seen only sporadically on the Shira Plateau.

Which crop grows in the 'Chagga home gardens' between 1,000 and 1,800 metres on the mountain?

Coffee: arabica grown under banana shade in the multi-storey 'Chagga home gardens', fed by irrigation furrows; the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union, founded in 1933, marketed the crop.

Under the Köppen system, Kilimanjaro's summit is classified as which type?

Ice cap (Köppen EF): every month's mean temperature at the summit is below freezing, around -7 °C, and its 250 to 500 mm of annual precipitation falls mainly as snow and graupel that soon ablates.

Kilimanjaro rises from which great geological feature?

The East African Rift: Kilimanjaro is one of the great volcanoes raised along the rift system, with activity beginning roughly 2.5 million years ago at the Shira centre, the oldest of its cones.

Which ancient geographer recorded sailors' reports of a 'moon mountain' that may refer to Kilimanjaro?

Ptolemy, the 2nd-century Alexandrian geographer, recorded sailors' reports of a 'moon mountain' and a spring lake of the Nile; a 1519 Spanish text later called the peak 'the Ethiopian Mount Olympus'.

The Battle of Kilimanjaro, fought near Longido, belonged to which war?

World War I: on 3 November 1914 British Empire troops attacking from Kenya were repulsed by German colonial forces at Longido, on the mountain's north-western side in German East Africa.

Kilimanjaro's highest cone is described as more than how many kilometres wide at the Saddle Plateau?

Its caldera holds an Inner Cone, which in turn holds the Reusch Crater and the Ash Pit.

Who wrote the 1936 short story 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro'?

Ernest Hemingway's story first appeared in Esquire in August 1936; it follows Harry, a writer on safari who looks back over his life as he lies dying.

In 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro', what is killing the writer Harry?

He scratched his knee photographing waterbuck and failed to apply iodine in time.

Hemingway's story opens by noting that the mountain's western summit is called what in Masai?

'The House of God': the epigraph says the western summit is called 'Ngaje Ngai' in Masai, then mentions the dried, frozen carcass of a leopard near it that nobody has explained.

Who played Harry in the 1952 film The Snows of Kilimanjaro?

Gregory Peck played Harry opposite Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner in Henry King's 1952 Technicolor film for 20th Century-Fox.

Hemingway mockingly renamed the 1952 film what, saying the hyena gave the best performance?

'The Snows of Zanuck': Hemingway's jab at producer Darryl F. Zanuck, whose studio invented a whole character, Cynthia Green, for Ava Gardner and gave the story a happy ending.

The Chagga are speakers of which language family?

Bantu: the Chagga speak Kichagga, a cluster of Bantu dialects, and settled Kilimanjaro's southern slopes after migrating to the mountain several centuries ago; their chiefs were titled Mangi.

Kilimanjaro National Park covers roughly what area?

1,688 sq km: created in 1973 and opened in 1977, the park covers the mountain above the tree line and, since 2005, the montane forest belt; its headquarters are at Marangu, about 44 km from Moshi.

The first Europeans to attempt to reach Kilimanjaro, Rebmann and Krapf, were based in which coastal city?

Mombasa: the two Church Missionary Society men worked from Rabai, a mission station just inland from Mombasa, and Rebmann's diary records tales of 'a vast mountain of gold and silver' guarded by evil spirits.

In 1871 missionary Charles New became the first European to reach what on Kilimanjaro?

The equatorial snows: New climbed to slightly above 4,000 m in 1871, the first European to touch snow on the mountain; Count Sámuel Teleki later reached about 5,300 m on Kibo in 1887.