Kilimanjaro

History

For the local Chagga people who farm Kilimanjaro's foothills, the mountain has always been revered. When Johannes Rebmanµ reached this area in 1848, being the first European to see Kilimanjaro, he reported that his guide had once tried to bring down the 'silver' from the summit, which mysteriously turned to water on the descent. A later explorer, Charles New, who reached the foothills of Kilimanjaro in 1871, heard stories from the local Chief Mandara about spirits on the mountain jealously guarding piles of silver and precious stones. It was said that anybody trying to reach the summit would be punished by the spirits with illness and severe cold.

Other explorers, Gustav Fischer and Joseph Thomson, reached the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro, and in 1887 Count Samuel Teleki managed to get to a point only 400m below the top of Kibo. The summit was eventually reached in ctober 1889 by Hans Meyer, a German professor of Geology, accompanies by Ludwig Purtcheller, an experienced alpinist, and Yohannes Lauwo, a local guide from the village of Marangu. Mayer named the summit Kaiser Spitze, after the German Emperor. When mainland Tanzania (then called Tanganyika) gained independence in 1961, the name of the summit was changed to Uhuru (Freedom) Peak.

Geography

The massif of Kilimanjaro is roughly oval in shape, 40km to 60km in diameter, and rises almost 5000m above the surrounding plains.

Kilimanjaro is even more distinctive because it is not part of a chair or extended range. As well as being the highest mountain in Africa, Kilimanjaro is one of the highest freestanding mountains in the world. The mountain has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The two main peak areas are Kibo, the flat-topped dome at the centre of the massif, and Mawenzi, a group of jagged points and pinnacles on the eastern side. In fact, the top of Kibo is not flat, but dips inwards to form a crater which cannot be seen from below. Kibo and Mawenzi are separated by a broad plain called the Saddle. A third peak area, Shira, lies at the western end of the massif but is lower and less distictive than Kibo and Mawenzi. The highest point on Kibo and the whole Kilimanjaro massif is Uhuru Peak at 5896m (19,344 ft) and this is the goal for most trekkers. The highest point on Mawenzi is Hans Meyer Point, at 5149m (16,894 ft) but this cannot be reached by trekkers, and is only rarely visited by mountaineers.

 

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