Chose a Climb Duration
The routes up Kilimanjaro range from 5 to 10 days and the length of your trip will have a big impact on your climb as the biggest challenge is not being well acclimatized. The extremely high altitude will have an impact on everyone young or old and all levels of fitness and health. If you have trouble to acclimatize and develop a mountain sickness, you may have to quit your climb so that's why we recommend you choose 8-9 day routes and give your body extra time to acclimatize and feel good.
Even though Kilimanjaro is a popular first high altitude climb overall summit rates on Kilimanjaro (across all routes & climbers) are estimated to fall between 45% and 65%. This is due to couple of factors:
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DON'T UNDERESTIMATE KILIMANJARO
There are great trails all the way up and you have porters carrying your stuff, but you will have to ascend more than 14,000 feet (about 30-40 miles) climbing thousands of feet every day depending on a route you chose. You may not need a special equipment or ice axes, but you may be surprised how your body reacts to the accumulated physical effort after walking up for a few days. So it's not that much about the difficulty, but about how much effort you'll put each day for a long time.
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ALTITUDE
The shortest route is not always the best. The longer the route, the more time you'll have to acclimatize and the more things you will see on the way. The Machame Route is about 37 miles long and 16,000 feet of climbing for example. Altitude acclimatization consists of physiological adaptations that develop in a time-dependent manner. This process can only take place gradually as you move up through various levels of altitude, spending time at each level before progressing upwards. Decreased oxygen availability in the ambient air is the only environmental stress unique to the high terrestrial altitudes. It lowers the oxygen supply to body tissues which cause altitude illness, the decline in physical and mental performances, and may exacerbate preexisting medical conditions. So, if it is your first high altitude climb or if you haven't been at high altitude in a while you should consider a Kilimanjaro climb duration of more than 8 days and we never recommend 6 days or less.
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