How to PREPARE for Kilimanjaro | TRAINING & what you NEED to KNOW!

A few months ago, Matt and I successfully summited Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa and one of the seven summits. Which, by the way, if you haven't seen those videos, we'll have links down below to both of them. You should go check them out because they're awesome. But for this video, we thought we would sit down and kind of talk through all the things that we learned before we climbed Kilimanjaro and our experiences on the mountain and what we learned there. So if you're thinking of doing your own Kilimanjaro trek, you'll be set. So Nadine mentioned it's one of the seven summits, which, if you're not aware, it's the seven peaks that are the tallest on their respective continents. Yeah, how would you say it? The tallest mountains on each continent. Everest is probably the one you're most familiar with. That's on the Asia continent, but Kilimanjaro is on the African continent. And out of the seven summits, Kilimanjaro is definitely the easiest one to climb for someone who's not an experienced mountaineer or climber or anything like that. An amateur climber. Aside from the altitude, which is the biggest factor for Kilimanjaro because it sits at 5,895 meters or 19,341 feet. Yeah, which is considered like extreme elevation. There's only half the amount of oxygen at that elevation that there is available at sea level. It's still not super easy. Like you have to be a reasonably fit and your hike, depending on which route you choose, might take anywhere between 5 to 11 days-ish and you might cover between like 60 to 100 kilometers over that time. So you're hiking quite a bit each day, but it's not really the physical aspect that gets most people. It's the altitude. So for the reasonings that an amateur hiker could do it, it is a very popular destination where tens of thousands of people climb it each year. So it does get pretty busy in the peak seasons. That being said, you're not allowed to climb it on your own. You do have to go with a tour provider and have legitimate guides who are certified to be guides on Kilimanjaro and all that type of stuff. Which is a good thing, honestly, because part of it's for safety and part of it's also just to bring employment to some of the locals because it literally employs thousands of porters. But we'll touch a bit more on the tour providers later on this video. So while it is the easiest of the seven summits, it's definitely not easy. You do need to have at least a base level of fitness because like we said, you're hiking for multiple days and multiple hours at a time, but you don't need to be super fit. You don't need to be like athletic fit to climb Kilimanjaro. The biggest thing is just being comfortable walking for multiple hours, days and days in a row, like for seven days straight kind of thing. Like most people are going to struggle with the altitude. That is the biggest thing for sure that people are gonna be struggling with because you actually hike really slowly up Kilimanjaro. Yeah, pole, pole. Very, very slow. Like I'm quite shocked at how slow. And part of the reason you go so slow is because you like, even if you're super fit and you can run up that distance in a shorter amount of time, they space it out longer because they want to give your body more time to acclimatize and get used to the altitude. There are all kinds of things in terms of altitude sickness. There's pulmonary edema, which is your lungs filling with fluid. There's cerebral edema, which is your brain filling with fluid. And where, and then there's just, those are the extreme symptoms. But like some people get severe headaches. Really bad headaches. You get like really dizzy and you're not thinking straight. And you're like acting like you're drunk. Yeah. Yeah, literally acting like you're drunk. All of those things are altitude sickness signs. And when you start getting those, you have to go down. They won't, the guides, a good guiding company, again, we'll touch on that later, will not let you continue anymore because you could, that's when you get into the danger zone. And that is why most people do not succeed climbing Kilimanjaro. But I think if you wanted to be comfortable physically climbing Kilimanjaro, as long as you're comfortable like running five kilometers at a reasonable pace without stopping and we're like walking 10 kilometers doing a 10k hike. Yeah. A couple days in a row kind of thing. I think you'd be fine. Yeah, so we hiked in the beginning of February and we booked our trip the beginning of November. It was like end of October, November. So we had a roughly three months to kind of train and we weren't that successful. We didn't get much done. No, I mean like it's not like we were huge hikers before. We've done hikes before. So we're at least a little bit fit to a degree. But we just did local hikes around our mountains as much as we could for November because after that it's all snowy in Canada. So we couldn't hike anymore. So we just did like a three-hour hike, a two-hour hike, or just short runs on a treadmill to just help work the cardio kind of thing. And then a lot of quads and for me I actually felt it was fine. Like physically my legs were fine. The biggest thing that I struggled with was actually my cardio. So I wish that I did a bit more cardio work. So that was the amount of training that we did going into it. Some people don't train at all. Some people train for a lot longer than that. If you've never done any kind of like big hiking or camping trip before, you might want to do some sort of hiking or camping. Yeah, like obviously we can't tell you how much you need to train before you climb Kilimanjaro. You have to kind of just know yourself and what you're capable of and another important consideration when you're planning to climb Kilimanjaro is when you are going to climb. What time of year? Because there are two distinct dry seasons which are the busiest times, obviously because they are the best times to climb. You don't want to climb in the wet season. It can get a lot of rain. It'll be miserable. And just from like our experience, it gets a very very muddy and gross. Like yeah. Yeah, and when you're on the mountain like once your stuff gets really wet, it's hard to dry back out again because you don't really get the hot temperatures when you're at that altitude. That's why most people climb in the dry season. You can still climb in the wet season, but not every tour provider offers it. I don't know how many do. Some will completely not. Some will. I'm sure if you look you could you could find somebody to take you up there in the wet season, but just I would avoid it. It's gonna be very wet if you do that. So December to mid-March is one of their most popular dry seasons. That's where we went in beginning of February and then there's the rainy season between April and May. That's usually the rainiest season. It's the big rainy season. Yeah, and then they have another dry season from June to September. I think August-September is supposed to be like the busiest time of year. So if you don't want crazy crowds on your hike, you might want to try to avoid those two months unless you want like the best chance at dry weather. Or that just might be the time of year that works for you. Exactly. So that's what happens, but those are your two seasons. So pick something kind of in between them and you should have hopefully good weather. Another popular option is a full moon summit. It's something a lot of tour providers offer. It's something that we actually ended up doing. We opted for the full moon summit, which means our summit night, which is our nighttime in the dark climb was during a full moon. The idea is that you get more light and you can see a bit more. You have to rely less on your headlamp. But honestly, I don't really know how much it helped. I don't either. It was still quite dark to the point where you needed a headlamp. And so I don't really know how much of it it was. It was pretty seeing the full moon, but I didn't even look up. I don't even think I looked up. I was just so focused on like each step in front of me. But a better, like a good headlamp will do you much better than the little bit of moonlight that you get. Yeah, for a full moon summit. It's also really busy on full moon summits too. For that reason. It's quite popular. Yeah. Now there's actually seven main routes to climb up Kilimanjaro and they all vary in length, in difficulty, in duration, in success rate, in natural beauty, and in price. And you might be tempted to take one of the shorter routes because it'll most likely be cheaper and get you to the summit sooner. But like we said earlier, acclimatization is a big thing and the more days you spend on the mountain, your chances of summiting go up like quite drastically. So there's a couple reasons why different routes cost different prices. The biggest thing is park fees. Park fees are ridiculously expensive. So the longer the route, the more park fees you need to pay for each day you're on the mountain, as well as you're paying for your porters and your food, etc. So obviously the longer routes are gonna be more expensive than the shorter routes. But there's pros and cons to each. Definitely. So the shortest route that you can take up the mountain is the Marangu route, which is a five-day trip, but there's a lot of cons. It used to be the most popular route, but it has actually a lower success rate than many of the other routes because it's a short period of time. It's only five days, typically, that the Marangu route is done. And it is the most established route and one of the oldest routes on the mountain and it does have huts built at each campsite, which is one of the pros. You're not sleeping in tents. And if it is raining, then at least you're in a hut and not a tent. Yeah, but because it's the shortest, you have the least amount of acclimatization and altitude sickness is gonna be the biggest factor of you not successfully summoning. Maybe you have experience with altitude before and you seem to react okay, then maybe you'd be fine on the Marangu route. Yeah, but it is kind of a risky chance to take if you've never been to altitude before and if you're not used to that sort of thing. Machame route is the most, probably the most popular route. I think it's the most popular route now. And it is the route that we chose. Mainly because it was the best for our dates and we really liked at the time. So we did a seven-day Machame, but you can do anywhere between a six to an eight-day Machame route. I think so, you can do an eight. Yeah, you can definitely do a six. You can definitely do a six. I think you can do an eight. But the nice thing about Machame route is that it kind of strikes a balance between not being so long and expensive and not being so short and having a lower success rate. And it's also still a very scenic route. And so it kind of strikes a good balance between. It also has a lot of acclimatization built in. Yes. So you hike high and then you sleep low. Which is why it has a high success rate. That appealed most to us even though we knew it was gonna be a very busy route. That is one of the cons of that route is because it has all these wonderful things about it. It's very popular and we can definitely attest to it being very, very popular. The mountain was very busy. Now another route that was our second choice was La Mocha route. And it's also a very, very popular route. It comes highly recommended and it's typically about an eight-day route. And it says a slightly different, but it's also supposed to be really scenic and really good with the acclimatization and with a high success rate. It starts further in the west and so the La Mocha and the Machame route meet up after the Lava Tower at Barranco Camp. Yeah, I think so. I think it's Barranco Camp. Just giving yourself another day or two on the mountain gives you even higher chance of success and it's supposed to be the most scenic route on the mountain, at least according to some people. The only reason we really picked the Machame route over the La Mocha was mainly because of the dates worked out better for us. Yeah, the dates worked out better for us. Yeah, both of those are really good, highly recommended. Another quieter route that's also highly recommended is the Northern Circuit route. Now this is typically a more expensive one because it's longer. It can be up to like 11 days. Yeah, 11 days, which is maybe even longer with some tour providers. Possibly. But it actually starts off the same as the La Mocha route and then I think around the Lava Tower it circles around the northern side of the crater. That means that it is the longest route on the mountain, which means it also has the highest summit success rate because you spend so much time acclimatizing, you have a much higher chance of making it up the mountain. So if making it up the mountain is your number one goal and you want to have all of your cards aligned, then Northern Circuit is gonna give you the best chance. Yeah, if you can afford to spend a little bit more money and also just have that extra time on the mountain, like a lot, almost two weeks or like 11-12 days on the mountain. Another recommended one would be the Rongai route, which is special in its own way. So it's usually what, eight days? Eight, nine days maybe. Yeah, and it's the only route that actually approaches Kilimanjaro from the north, which has less vegetation on that side, so it might be slightly less scenic. But the reason why it has less vegetation is because it gets significantly less rain than the southern slope of Kilimanjaro. So if you are hiking in like one of the shoulder seasons and it might be rainy, Rongai route would be a really good option. It's also way less crowded than the other routes. So if you want to be on your own and you don't want to be in the crowds, Rongai would be a really good option. Yeah, because Lemosho is still, I think, pretty busy as well. Lemosho is still quite busy. Yeah, same with Murangu and Machame. Those three are the busiest of the routes. So Rongai and Northern Circuit are really your routes if you just want to avoid crowds. And there are gonna be crowds. Yeah, regardless. There are gonna be crowds. You'll encounter people at the summit probably too anyway. 100%. It's a busy mountain, guys. It's a busy mountain. There are two other like established routes, which are Shira and Umbwe. Umbwe is just very steep. So it's quite a difficult route. They don't really recommend it if you haven't hiked up the mountain before. I think it's also a five day-ish route. So it's fast, it's steep. It's really difficult. Not recommended. Nope. And same thing with Shira. Shira's a bit outdated. It's kind of similar to the Lemosho route. But you start hiking at I think it's like three and a half thousand meters or something, which is already pretty high. It's already altitude. To start hiking at. Yeah. So it's also not super recommended. You know, just do the Lemosho if you want to start on the western side and have that scenery. So stick to those four. Those are your four best options. There's also the Western Breach route, which only some tour providers offer. And it's been closed several times in the past due to accidents and slope instability. It was closed when we were there. Like the Western Breach was closed when we were there. Yeah, so. It might be open now, but... Choosing the right tour provider for your Kilimanjaro hike is a very, very important, big decision that's going to affect literally your entire trip. So you want to do a lot of research and read a lot of reviews. Don't cheap out. Don't cheap out. And there's a couple of different reasons for this is because the cheaper tour providers tend to not have the best equipment, the best guides, the best food, or pay their people, the porters, the ones carrying your stuff up the mountain, a living wage. Yeah, so one of the things you really want to look out for is that your tour provider is K-PAP certified. And K-PAP is the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistant Project, I believe. It is a non-profit organization that advocates for fair wages and the proper ethical treatment of their porters. Yeah, so they set like a standard rate that the porters should get paid per day and to become K-PAP certified, the companies have to adhere to those standards. And it's not just the wage, it's also their conditions on the mountain, making sure they actually have a tent. Believe it or not, but some tour providers don't require that their porters even have tents. They sleep outside. And these people are like literally carrying your stuff up the mountain. And like we wouldn't have made it up there without our porters and without our crew. Like it is shocking the amount of work that the porters do. You want to make sure they're fairly compensated. It was important to us that they were compensated for their work, for sure. Yeah, so one of the ways that you can find a tour provider is you can go to the K-PAP website and you can actually see the list of all of the tour providers that are certified and then you can go from there. Like we said before, you can't hike Kilimanjaro on your own, you have to go with a group. But you have the option of doing a public group or a private group. Now with a public group, you can just join any open group that various tour providers have. And their group sizes range, there's a... Quite drastically. Yeah. Like our group was only seven people, but I've seen some groups that were 20 plus, which is crazy. Seven hikers, seven hikers. Yeah. But that didn't mean that was our whole group size because for seven hikers, we had one lead guide, two assistant guides, a cook... And 24 porters. 24 porters. So it was 28 people in our crew. For seven hikers. Now... So you can imagine the groups that are like 20 hikers that have 100 plus in their crew. It gets crazy, the amount of people. Yes. So you want to make sure you know the size of your group when you are selecting that. You can just email, you can ask your tour provider what their group sizes are, but seven was a really good size. It's nice to have the company of hike, like when you're sitting around eating dinners and lunches and snacks, it's nice to talk to somebody. It's nice to talk to people on the hike as well. So these are some of the benefits of joining an open group tour. And that's kind of why we chose to do an open group is we wanted to enjoy the experience with other people. And everybody on our group was so amazing and we were all so supportive of each other. If anybody needed something, like somebody else in the group might be able to help in some way and they would offer to help. So it's it definitely has benefits going with an open group. And we packed way too many, way too many hand warmers. Hiking Kilimanjaro is expensive. It's definitely not cheap. It's not cheap. Not only you got to get there, which is going to be an expensive plane ticket. If you don't have the equipment even like that, you could have a lot of equipment that you need to buy. They do offer equipment rentals in Moshi, Tanzania. If you have next to nothing and you don't plan on doing any hiking trips in the future or if you just need a couple items. Which is what we did. We rented hiking poles and we rented sleeping bags. So we didn't have to pack those with us. But of course, if you have your own, you can bring that as well. We're going to touch more on packing and what to pack for Kilimanjaro in our next video that comes out. So if you want to know about that, be sure to keep an eye out for that. Click that subscribe button. Hit that bell so you'll know. But it is expensive and it's an expensive mountain to climb. So a good tour provider might run you $2,000 per person, depending of course on the route that you take. It could go up from there. It might be a little bit cheaper than that for some routes, but anything less than that and you're getting into the tour providers that might have inferior equipment, food, and might not be K-PAP certified. We spent $2,700 per person to hike. And that was on the 7-Day Machame route. And that does not include the tips, which is something you need to account for as well. So there's the tour provider price. And then there is the tips that you pay on top to all of your amazing porters and the crew, which truly are amazing. They went above and beyond. So they're worth each of those tips and you want to make sure you tip them well and you tip them good. So you could also expect to spend between maybe like $200 to $400 in tips, again, depending on the route, because the tips are usually calculated per crew member per day on the hike. And honestly, that might sound like a lot of money in tips, but when you look at the breakdown, it's only like $5 to each porter per day on the mountain. It's not the fact that they're doing so much work. It's really not that much money when you think of it that way. Yeah, and so any good tour provider will give you a breakdown of how much you can expect to bring for tips and they'll let you know that before you even go up the mountain so you can take out cash, which you don't take up the mountain, by the way. You leave all of your cash in the hotel, any hotels you stay at before you go, which is important thing to note. You want to make sure you book a good hotel in Moshi before you go hike up the mountain because any of the good hotels, most of the typical hiking hotels will be able to store your luggage. Or your valuables and everything. Or your cash. They don't recommend bringing any cash up the mountain. But also a lot of tour providers will book your hotel on the night before your climb and the night after your climb as well. So you won't have to really worry about doing that. But we spent in total about what? It was like just over 3,000 US dollars per person for our 7-day Machame route hike. Yeah. And that was with a good tour provider. We went with Can Do Adventures. It wasn't like sponsored or anything. We just... but they were really good. Yeah, they were really good. We really enjoyed them. Really happy with their service, our guides, our cook, our porters. They were all amazing. Yeah, but obviously there are many other tour providers. So pick which ones you like and which suit you. Another important thing not to forget is vaccines and medications that you will need for your trip. So there are a couple standard ones that you need just for Tanzania in general. One being yellow fever. Yeah, this is one. I'm not sure if it's the same for all nations and nationalities, but it was mandatory for us and they can actually check to see if you have it. They did check. They checked when we went through the border in Kenya. Right. So that one's an important one. Malaria is another one that you're going to need. Highly, highly recommended. So because you start in the rainforest, as annoying as it is, you have to be on malaria pills. We were on malaria pills and they're not an enjoyable experience. Some people don't actually have much of a reaction to the pills, but we did have some digestive issues from the pills. Yeah, even though the actual mountain itself, you're in a higher elevation. Once you're out of the rainforest, there's no mosquitoes, but you are in the rainforest when you start and when you end. So you still need to be on malaria pills. And even in just like the town before your hike starts and afterwards, you could still be encountered by mosquitoes. And then the last big one. Now, there are a couple other ones that you might need, but that'll be specific to you. Of course, we always recommend talking to a travel doctor before at least six weeks before you go to make sure you have the proper shots and medications and they can help you with all of this. Yeah, obviously we're not doctors or anything like that. So talk to a professional that knows their stuff and they'll be able to tell you exactly what you need and what you don't need and what they recommend and all that stuff. But then when it comes to altitude-specific, Diamox is the typical name for it. There are other names, but altitude sickness pills. Yeah, I think it's typically sold under the brand name Diamox. Acetazolamide, I think is the name of the pill. We both took it and only one person in our group didn't take Diamox and he did have the most symptoms of altitude sickness. There's a lot of discussion around Diamox and all we have is our personal experience with it. Some people take it, some people don't take it, some think it helps them, some say it doesn't. Now, some of the side effects from Diamox and one of the reasons why people choose not to take it is because one, it makes you go pee. A lot. Yes. But my reasoning that like, that's not that big of a deal anyways because you're going to be drinking like 3-4 liters a day anyways. You're going to be peeing every half an hour anyways. Yeah, like you have to drink. They make you drink 3-4 liters of water a day. It's so important. What are the two big rules? Drink, keep hydrated, pull it, pull it. Which means slowly, slowly. Slowly, slowly. Yeah, drinking water helps boost the oxygen levels in your blood, which is really, really important. And if your blood level oxygen dips down too low, they'll actually send you down the mountain. So you want to be drinking water for sure. Yeah, and they're constantly monitoring your like, your blood oxygen saturation, and your pulse every morning, every evening. Again, not every tour provider might not do this, but the good ones will. The good ones will. And any tour provider you're going with should do it. If your tour provider is not monitoring your health, Myles, then that's a red flag for a tour provider in my opinion. And it's, at least for us as Canadians, it wasn't an expensive pill. But of course, it depends on your health care and all that stuff. And then the other major side effect, which is something that I did experience quite a bit, was the tingling. So your fingers, like, you're going to feel tingly. My face got tingly. Like here, it was really bizarre. It was like, like tingling. It wasn't like painful or anything, but it's just a weird feeling. Another thing that I took specifically, and this is more for me, not necessarily for you, and I would make sure you talk to like a doctor or somebody before doing this, is iron supplements. I'm anemic, so I naturally take iron supplements, but I made sure I was on it. Taking them on a regular basis while we were on the mountain. Very, very adamant about taking iron supplements. That was at least a month before to make sure I increased my iron level in my blood, and I was taking them up on the mountain, and I had a really high blood oxygen count. I think one of the highest in the group, if not the highest. Yeah, it was really, really high. It was consistently higher than mine. Not saying that that's the reason, but it's something to look into if you are anemic or if you have lower blood oxygen saturations. Not that you would typically know that, because who knows that? And then another thing that you're going to want to take is just Advil and Tylenol, paracetamol, ibuprofen, whatever you want to call it, because chances are you will get headaches or you might get cramps if you're not used to hiking that long or whatever. Whatever the case. Headaches is a very common one with altitude, so you definitely want to have some Advils. So that's all there is for this video. We do have two more videos planned. We have a packing guide coming up next, so that's everything we packed for our trip and how you want to pack for Kilimanjaro, as well as our Q&A. So if we didn't answer your questions in this or you don't think it'll be answered in the packing guide... Or if you just have general questions about our experience and anything else that might not be in these videos, feel free to ask them. Let us know down below in the comments and we'll get to as many as we can. So make sure you're subscribed to the channel so you'll know when those videos come out. Hit that little bell and go watch the Kilimanjaro vlogs if you haven't. Yeah, they're pretty awesome. Okay, bye! Bye.