How we choose guides, and what they earn

The guide is the product. Everything else — the tents, the food, the vehicle — is logistics that any competent company can arrange. Hiring is the part that is hard to copy.

Where they come from

Almost every lead guide on Kilimanjaro started as a porter. That is the ladder: porter, then cook or assistant, then guide. It takes years, and the people who make it through have spent hundreds of nights on the mountain before they are responsible for anyone.

We hire from our own crew first. Every one of our lead guides carried loads for us before they led a climb.

What we require

• Kilimanjaro National Park guide certification, current.
• Wilderness first aid, renewed on a schedule we pay for.
• Altitude illness recognition training, including the specific signs that end a climb.
• English good enough to explain a medical decision to a frightened person at two in the morning.
• A record. We know how many climbs someone has led with us, because we have the logs.

What we pay

[TABLE: current daily rates for lead guides, assistant guides and cooks, set against the park minimum, plus the off-season position. Keep aligned with the porter pay page.]

The rates do not drop in the quiet season. That is the whole point of publishing them: a guide who is paid the same in April as in August does not have to leave for another company in April.

Retention is not a values statement. It is the only way to have experienced guides in five years’ time.

What they are authorised to do

Turn any climber back, without consulting the office. Call an evacuation. Change the day’s plan for weather. Overrule a client who wants to go faster.

Giving guides that authority only works if they are not afraid of being punished for using it. We have never reprimanded a guide for a turnaround decision, and we say so in the briefing.

The kit they get

Boots, jackets, gloves and sleeping bags, issued and replaced on a schedule, for guides and crew alike. A guide in worn boots is our procurement failure, not his personal problem.

Why this is on the website

Because it is checkable. Ask to meet your lead guide at the briefing — you will. Ask how long they have worked with us — they will tell you. Ask what they earn.

An operator who is comfortable with all three questions is telling you something that no review can.