Kilimanjaro for beginners: what training actually helps

You do not need to be an athlete and you do not need mountaineering experience. What you need is specific, and most of it is not what people train for.

What Kilimanjaro is and is not

It is a long uphill walk at altitude. There is no rope, no ice axe, no technical climbing on any of the routes we run. If you can walk for six hours, you can walk Kilimanjaro’s terrain.

What it is, is high. Uhuru Peak is 5,895 metres and the air there holds roughly half the oxygen at sea level. That is the entire difficulty of the mountain, and it is not a fitness problem.

Gym fitness gets you up the hill. Time gets you up the mountain. They are different things.

What actually predicts success

• Days on the mountain, by a wide margin. Eight beats seven beats six.
• Going slowly on days one and two, when it feels easy and everyone goes too fast.
• Drinking three to four litres a day and eating when you have no appetite.
• Telling your guide the truth about how you feel.
• Route profile, specifically whether it climbs high and sleeps low.

Age matters far less than people expect. We have summited climbers in their seventies and turned back marathon runners in their thirties.

Training that helps

Long, slow walks with a daypack. Not fast ones. Four to six hours on a weekend, on hills if you have them, carrying the pack you will actually carry. Build to doing that on consecutive days, because Kilimanjaro is six of them in a row.

Stairs, if you have no hills. Descending is harder on the legs than climbing and the descent day is long.

Start twelve weeks out if you can. Eight is enough. Two is not, and arriving injured from a panic training block is worse than arriving untrained.

Training that does not help much

Running. It builds cardiovascular fitness, which is useful, but it trains you for a pace you will never use and it does nothing for the specific fatigue of walking downhill for six hours.

Gym cardio at intensity. Altitude does not respond to VO2 max.

Altitude tents and masks. The evidence is thin and they are expensive.

Breaking in your boots

The most common avoidable problem we see. Fifty kilometres minimum in the boots you will wear, in the socks you will wear. Blisters on day two become a limp on day four and a turnaround on day six.

What to expect physically

• Days one and two feel easy. This is the trap.
• Day three or four you will notice the altitude: headache, poor sleep, no appetite.
• Day five is usually the hardest for morale.
• Summit night is the hardest physically, by a distance. Six to eight hours of walking uphill in the dark and cold, starting at midnight.
• The descent afterwards is longer than anyone expects.

The honest bar

If you can comfortably walk for six hours carrying a small pack, three weekends in a row, you are fit enough for an eight-day route. Everything above that is insurance.