'Kilimanjaro ... it nearly killed me' - that was the tag-line for a
story
in last Sunday's Observer that once again highlighted the inherent
dangers of a peak fee system that encourages people to climb the
mountain as quickly as possible to save money.
Travel writer Tim Moore, to his credit, doesn't skirt around the
risks involved or the unpleasantness of attempting a near 6000-metre
peak in just five days without any prior acclimatisation.
Only 25 die per year...
At one point he quotes the co-owner of the Marangu Hotel at the
foot of the mountain:
'Nearly 25,000 people a year set off up Kilimanjaro, and only 25
die.' Not since John Gummer wedged that burger in his daughter's
mouth - says Moore - has an attempt at reassurance proved so
spectacularly ill conceived.
The problem with Kilimanjaro is that a hefty peak fee is levelled
for each day spent on the mountain. As a result, in order to keep
prices to an acceptable level, tour organisers try to get up the
mountain as fast as possible, leading to a now standard time on the
normal route of five days.
Ideally, you'd want at least twice that time before ascending to
6,000 metres, and even an extra day in the itinerary would have
benefits. One figure we've seen for success rates on the standard
route is just 40 per-cent, a woeful figure given that it's
essentially a non-technical, high altitude fell walk.
More importantly walkers are not just suffering unnecessarily to
climb Africa's highest mountain, but are dying in the process.
Something that's quite unjustifiable.
Five days itinerary 'unjustifiable'
In a separate
piece, the paper quotes trekking operator Guerba, who organised
Moore's trip, as saying that they didn't believe more time was needed
for acclimatisation or that more warnings of the dangers were needed,
before going on to quote a British Mountaineering Council
spokesperson as saying that the five day timespan taken to climb the
mountain on the Marangu route is 'unjustifiable'.
Porters and operators are well rehearsed at removing casualties
from the mountain at speed, but that shouldn't be allowed to justify
a peak fee system that is clearly at best making the ascent of the
mountain an unpleasant and pointlessly hard undertaking and, at
worst, putting lives in danger.
