Kilimanjaro Success rate
Question
Is there any relationship between the route and success rate?
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5 years
1 Answer
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Answer ( 1 )
For many, climbing Kilimanjaro is the experience of a lifetime. It’s also a fairly big investment and you therefore need to understand your chances of actually reaching the summit and which routes give you the best chance at doing that.
Whilst we cannot say for certain which operator has the highest summit success rates, we can say for sure what gives climbers the best chance at success – and that is a slow gradual ascent.
Statistics for summit success greatly improve when you spend longer on the mountain. The longer you give your body on the mountain, the more time it has to adapt and acclimatize to the altitude. Essentially, the longer you spend trekking, the higher chance of success you have.
Route profile is also very important and all good operators will recommend routes that have a climb high, sleep low profile.
This means trekking to the higher sections during the day and sleeping on the lower sections to give your body the opportunity it needs to acclimatize. Low quality operators will simply rush you up the mountain on the shortest route possible.
Below we have provided the summit success rate figures published by the Kilimanjaro National Park. Please note, these figures are old and summit success rates are undoubtedly higher today as route profiles have improved and the number of hikers opting for the 5 day treks has plateaued.
All climbers, all routes 45% (we estimate this figure is closer to 65% today)
All climbers, all 5 day routes 27%
All climbers, all 6 day routes 44%
All climbers, all 7 days routes 64%
All climbers, all 8 day routes 85%