50 Fun Facts About Kilimanjaro

Mount Kilimanjaro is in which country?

It rises near the Kenyan border about 300 km south of the equator, and its summit was renamed after the country was formed in 1964.

How high is Kilimanjaro's summit above sea level?

The figure comes from a British survey of 1952 and is still used by both the national parks authority and UNESCO.

Kilimanjaro holds which world record among mountains?

It rises about 4,900 metres straight out of its plateau base and is the fourth most prominent peak on Earth.

Kilimanjaro is what kind of geological feature?

Its highest cone still vents gas from fumaroles and could erupt again, though the other two cones are extinct.

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?

Its last eruptive activity, well over a hundred thousand years ago, created the current summit crater.

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?

The summit was renamed in 1964 after independence and the union with Zanzibar created the new republic.

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?

His guide called the white summit simply 'cold'; a glacier on the mountain now bears his name.

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

The German geologist climbed with mountaineer Ludwig Purtscheller after two failed attempts, one of which ended with him held hostage during the Abushiri Revolt.

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

The pair spent 16 days above 4,600 metres and were the first to confirm that the summit cone has 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, honoured in 1989 as part of the first-ascent party, lived to see which anniversary?

He died in 1996, 107 years after the ascent, and is sometimes credited as a co-first-ascendant.

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

Gertrude Benham had reached the crater rim alone in 1909 after her porters fled from skeletons on the route.

Which leader abolished the Chagga kingdoms on Kilimanjaro's slopes 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?

It refers to the snow on the summit; Mawenzi means 'broken top' after its jagged peak.

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

Kilemanjaare or kilemajyaro rests on kileme, 'that which defeats'; another theory has it as 'mountain of greatness'.

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

The park itself dates from 1973, when everything above the tree line was reclassified, and it received a further natural-wonders accolade in 2013.

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

His list used Kosciuszko for Australia; 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?

It is the easiest ascent and the only one with shared huts, but its short profile gives it the lowest summit success rate.

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

Trekkers often add a rest day at Horombo Hut and start the final push before dawn while the scree is frozen.

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

It approaches from the north near the Kenyan border; Machame takes 6 to 7 days and Lemosho 6 to 8.

Roughly how many trekkers attempt Kilimanjaro's summit each year?

Average success across all routes is 70 to 80 percent, and in 2007 the trade supported about 11,000 guides, porters and cooks.

What is the main physical danger of climbing Kilimanjaro, given that it is not technically difficult?

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?

Gustav Otto Richard Reusch made 65 attempts in his lifetime; the 350-metre-deep Ash Pit lies inside his crater.

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

The breach still offers a route to the summit, continued from the Lemosho approach on the western side.

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

The mountain also has its own shrew and a chameleon, Kinyongia tavetana.

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

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?

Bananas and irrigation channels are part of the same intensive farming system that made the Chagga relatively wealthy.

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

Precipitation up there falls mainly as snow and graupel, 250 to 500 mm a year, and quickly ablates.

Kilimanjaro rises from which great geological feature?

Volcanic activity began more than 2 million years ago, with the Shira centre first erupting about 2.4 million years ago.

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

Aeschylus and Herodotus had earlier written of 'Egypt nurtured by the snows'; a 1519 Spanish text called it 'the Ethiopian Mount Olympus'.

The mountain gave its name to a 1914 battle in which war?

British and German colonial forces clashed at Longido; the mountain was then 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'?

It first appeared in Esquire and follows Harry, a writer dying of gangrene on safari.

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 opening also mentions the famous frozen leopard carcass found near the summit, whose purpose there nobody can explain.

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

Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner co-starred, and a circus trainer stood in for Peck in the hyena scene.

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

Producer Darryl F. Zanuck's studio had added a whole character, Cynthia Green, for Ava Gardner.

The Chagga are speakers of which language family?

Their word Mangi means 'king', and around 1900 the German colonial government counted about 28,000 households on the mountain.

Kilimanjaro National Park covers roughly what area?

Its headquarters are about 44 km from the town of Moshi.

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

Rebmann's diary records locals' 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?

He got to slightly above 4,000 metres; Count Sámuel Teleki reached the snow at 5,300 m in 1887.

Kilimanjaro's second-highest cone, Mawenzi, has a Chagga name meaning what?

Its jagged summit ridge is off-limits to ordinary trekkers; climbing it needs a special permit and is limited to two people at a time.

How old was Anne Lorimor, the oldest person to summit Kilimanjaro, when she reached Uhuru Peak in 2019?

The oldest man, American Fred Dishelhorst, was 88 when he summited two years earlier using supplemental oxygen.