Mount Kilimanjaro stands on an otherwise featureless part of the East African plateau, on the Tanzanian side of the Kenya border, side by side with the smaller Mount Meru. Both mountains are extinct volcanoes, with Kilimanjaro actually being the agglomeration of three distinct volcanoes, whose violent creation is geologically associated with the creation of the Great Rift Valley, 100km to the West.

These two great mountains create a micro-climate around themselves and the rain-shadow created to their South and East supplies the beautiful and superbly fertile land in which the towns of Moshi and Arusha are situated, full of banana groves and coffee plantations. Mount Kilimanjaro National Park and Forest Reserve occupy the whole of Mount Kilimanjaro and its surrounding montane forest.

Kilimanjaro National Park comprises all of the mountain above the tree line and six forest corridors that stretch through the montane forest belt.

Origin of the name Kilimanjaro

There are many unsatisfactory explanations for how the mountain got its name and no one can quite agree which is the truth. "Mountain of Greatness", Mountain of Whiteness", "Mountain of Caravans", "Small Mountain of Caravans" are all names derived from the Swahili, Chagga and Machame dialects.

From what little we know on the subject, we think it might have something to do with the swahili word 'kilima', which means 'top of the hill'. The second portion 'njaro' presumably refers to the snow in some way. We did discover that a similar word 'ngare' means water in the Meru language.

There is also a claim that the word "kilemakyaro" exists in the Chagga language, meaning "impossible journey", but this is thought to have derived as a consequence rather than as a precidence.

Of course everyone knows that in truth the mountain was named after the legendary Tanzanian beer.

History

In the second century AD, Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer and cartographer, wrote of mysterious lands to the south of modern day Somalia that contained "man-eating barbarians" and a "great snow mountain". This knowledge he must have gained from the Phoenicians, who had circumnavigated Africa by this date. He may also have been drawing on ancient Egyptian writings telling of the great expeditions of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, whose ships had traded the Swahili Coast. Either way, Ptolemy's account stands as the first documented reports of Africa's highest mountain, Kilimanjaro.

The next thousand years however brings no mention of this great mountain. As the coast of East Africa rose in prominence as a trading route after the establishment of Arab rule in the sixth century, the main hub of activity centred around the island of Zanzibar and the immediate mainland known at the time as Zinj. The Arabs had at their disposal, an almost unlimited supply of ivory, gold rhinoceros horn and a far more lucrative and mobile commodity, slaves. The great slave caravans that ventured far into the interior would have passed close by to the mountain to collect water from the permanent streams but it was the Chinese traders of the twelfth century that were next to record observations of a great mountain west of Zanzibar.

Kilimanjaro was to remain a mountain of myth and superstition throughout the centuries - one of the great secrets of interior of 'the dark continent' It was actually the desire to find the source of the Nile that drove British explorers and geographers to first head inland towards the mysterious mountain around 1840 onwards. Up until then Kilimanjaro had been tall tale told by the Arab traders of Zanzibar. No one really believed that there was a snow-capped mountain on the equator. It wasn't an immediate leap from legend to clear fact though, as British geographer William Cooley cryptically reported back to London that there was indeed "a large ridge called Kirimanjara" and that it was in fact "strewn with red pebbles".

Krapf

In 1844, at the instigation of the London based Church Missionary Society, Johann Ludwig Krapf, a Doctor of Divinity and his wife Rosine arrived in Zanzibar. Krapf had a dream to link the West and East coasts of Africa with a chain of Christian missionaries, but it wasn't long before he discovered his high ambitions conceived in the parlours of Europe were not going to be so easy to realize in the field. In March of that year they moved to Mombasa, where Krapf was to suffer a major test of his faith when his wife died of malaria within days of giving birth. The child died also. Krapf was plunged into depression and suffered alone for two years until the arrival of Swiss missionary, Johann Rebmann, whose fresh enthusiasm was finally able to re-kindled Krapf's ambition desire to link the two coasts.

On 16th October 1847, Rebmann, with the help of eight tribesmen and Bwana Kheri, a caravan leader, set off for the mountain of Kasigau, where they hoped to establish the first of mission posts. The journey went well and they returned to Mombasa on the 27th of the same month. Along the way they had heard the stories of the great mountain "Kilimansharo", whose head was above the clouds and "topped with silver", around whose feet lived the mountain's people, the fearsome Jagga (now Chagga). Krapf immediately sought permission from the governor of Mombasa for an expedition to Jagga. His official reason was to find areas suitable for mission stations, but the legendary mountain was becoming of increasing interest to the two missionaries. Disregarding warnings about the 'spirits of the mountain', on the 27th April 1848, Rebmann and Bwana Kheri set off for Jagga and within just two weeks was standing on the great steppe of East Africa within sight of Kilimanjaro ... the first European to set eyes on the mountain. In his log he refers to "a remarkable white on the mountains of Jagga", which he could just make out through the haze. He asked his guide to explain what it was he was looking at and "he did not know but supposed it to be coldness". At that moment Rebmann realised that the legend really was true. There really were snowfields on the African equator. In April 1849, Rebmann's observations were published in the Church Missionary Intelligencier and although not properly substantiated until twelve years later, it remains the first confirmed report of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The First Ascent in 1889

In 1887, Professor Hans Meyer, a German geographer, made his first attempt upon the summit of Kibo. Accompanied by Baron Von Eberstein, Meyer was eventually defeated by a combination of thick snow, 30m ice walls and his partner's altitude sickness.

The following day, from the safety of The Saddle, Meyer estimated that the ice walls descended to just below the crater rim at an altitude of about 5,500m. The ice was continuous over the entire peak and it was evident that the summit could not be reached without some considerable ice climbing.

After an aborted expedition in 1888, Meyer returned the following year accompanied by the renowned Alpinist, Ludwig Purtscheller and a well organised support group determined to scale the peak. The climbers came prepared with state of the art equipment and established a base camp on the moorland from where porters ferried fresh supplies of food from Marangu. Daunted by the precipitous ice cliffs of the northern crater rim and the extensive ice flows to the south, the two climbers agreed that the best chance of success lay by tackling the less severe incline of the south eastern slope of the mountain. From their advance camp at 4300m the two climbers set off at 01.00hrs and reached the lower slopes of the glacier at about 10.00hrs. Although the glacier was not as steep or high as the walls encountered on Meyer's previous attempt, its incline never went below 35 degrees and ice steps had to be cut. Progress was slow but after 2 hours the men reached the upper limits of the glacier where the incline decreased. A further 2 hours of painful trekking through waist high snow and over deep weathered ice grooves found the climbers at the rim of the crater with the summit in sight. However time and strength were running out and the summit was still another 150m above them, so they returned to advance camp to try again after three days. This time the route was clearly marked and the previously cut ice steps had held their shape. The rim was reached in 6 hours and at exactly 10.30hrs Meyer became the first recorded person to set foot on the highest point in Africa.

Although Meyer and Purtscheller laid the trail for further ascents on Kilimanjaro, there was not an instant queue of would-be climbers. It wasn't until 1912, over 20 years later, when a path from Marangu was established and the first huts at Mandera and Horombo were built by Dr. E Forster for the newly formed German Kilimanjaro Mountain Club, that activity began in earnest. The outbreak of war in 1918 however delayed further expeditions and the building of the Kibo Hut. The year 1929 saw the next stage in the opening up of the mountain with the formation of The Mountain Club of East Africa (now The Kilimanjaro Mountain Club). Founded by C. Gillman, N.Rice, P Ungerer and Dr.Reusch. The Kibo Hut was finally completed in 1932, hotels began to organise safaris onto the mountain and the public began to reach Gillman's Point with a few of the more hardy going on to the summit.

Most people spend between 5 and 8 days climbing the mountain. In 1993, a Brazilian, Mozart Catão established the speed record by going up and down in 17 hours 30 minutes. The current return ascent record was established on 27th March 2000 by a member of Team Kilimanjaro, Rogath Ephrem Mtuy, in a time of 14 hours 50 minutes. He began the attempt from the Marangu Park gate at 0400 in the morning. He reached the true summit at 1530 and began the descent immediately, returning to the Marangu Park Gate at 1850, thereby achieving: fastest ascent, 11 hours 30 fastest descent, 3 hours 20 and the fastest return ascent, 14 hours 50. It is possible that Catão's record remains as that of the fastest non-African to complete a return ascent.

Geology

Mount Kilimanjaro was born of the catastrophic movements in the Earth's crust that created the Great Rift Valley that runs from the Red Sea through Tanzania to Southern Africa. The Rift Valley is an example of a Constructive Margin, where new crust is exposed as two Continental plates pull away from each other. Around 25 million years ago East Africa was a huge flat plain that buckled and ruptured after the African and Eurasian Continental Plates rebounded off each other causing huge rifting and weakspots in the thinning crust that led to the formation of many volcanoes in the region. Where the original valley was deepest, the volcanic activity was greatest eventually forming the huge volcanoes of Ngorngoro on the Rift itself and a string of volcanoes to the East including Meru, Kenya and Kilimanjaro.

The Rift Valley is still active today and Kilimanjaro is the result of comparatively recent volcanic activity. Originally consisting of three large vents; Shira, Kibo and Mawenzi, the formation of Kilimanjaro began approximately 750,000 years ago. Eventually the Shira cone collapsed and became extinct. followed by Mawenzi. The Kibo cone however remained active and about 360,000 years ago endured a massive eruption that released black lava across the Shira Caldera creating the Saddle at the base of Mawenzi. Kibo eventually levelled out at 5900m and has been periodically covered with ice and glaciers. Around 100,000 years ago a huge landslide created the Barranco Wall on the south western edge of the crater and Kibo's last eruption formed the Ash Pit, the Inner Crater and the perfect caldera.

Ecology

Glaciology

The summit of Kilimanjaro was previously completely covered by an ice cap more than 100m deep with Glaciers ranging well down the mountain to below 4000m. At present only a small fraction of the glacial cover remains which is most visible around the spectacular Northern and Eastern Icefields and the southern and southwestern flanks. However the ice is receding at such a rate that there is concern that the ice cover may disappear completely within the next 20 years. Evidence of this retreat was first observed by Hans Meyer, the first Westerner to make the summit, who reported in 1898 that the ice limit had withdrawn by over 100m since his first ascent 8 years earlier. This rapid change is therefore not entirely due to recent global warming but rather a result of a longer term cycle of climatic events. Studies by Sheffield University during the 1950's reported that Kilimanjaro has had a long history of glacial advance and retreat coinciding with a sequence of eight glaciations. The present ice cap is probably the result of the world wide drop in temperature experienced between 1400AD and 1700AD and suggests that there have been several long periods when Kilimanjaro was devoid of ice. The current retreat is the result of a general increase in the temperature of the earth over many hundreds of years.

Extract from : Ice Cap Retreat by Jonathan Amos in San Francisco 19/02/2001

The beautiful ice fields on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa could completely melt away in the next 20 years if the Earth continues to warm at the rate many scientists now claim. The calculation comes from Professor Lonnie Thompson, of Ohio State University, who has made an aerial survey of the famous Tanzanian peak. He said comparisons with previous mapping showed 33% of Mt Kilimanjaro's ice had disappeared in the last two decades - 82% had gone since 1912. Studies on other tropical peaks had revealed a similar picture, he told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He warned this melting could have serious repercussions for drinking water supply, crop irrigation, hydroelectric production and tourism. He said, "retreating glaciers is one of many symptoms that the Earth is undergoing dramatic changes within our lifetime. Climate change is just one piece in a much bigger puzzle."

Facts and figures