On a typical day on the mountain, you will be awakened from your tent around 6:30AM by your waiter/porter, who will bring you a warm pan of water to wash your face and hands. Breakfast will then be served. After you assemble your day pack, you will begin walking by 8:00AM, while the porters stay behind to clean up the campsite, and pack up the tents and other equipment.
While the hours vary from day to day, your average walking time will be around four to five hours per day. During the walk, your guide will decide the pace and when to take a breaks depending on his assessment of the party’s performance. The porters consistently move ahead of the group in order to prepare food, boil water, and set up tents so that everything is ready when the party arrives. Lunch may be a boxed lunch or on occasion a hot lunch if the day’s hike is a short one. Dinner is served around 6:00PM every night in a mess tent (for parties of 2 or more). Down time is spent chatting with your fellow climbers, staff, others sharing the campsite, reading, singing or otherwise relaxing. We use four-season, warm, waterproof mountain tents with a rainfly. Each three-person sized tent will comfortably house two climbers and their gear.
For most routes, summit day is a tough, 11 to 15 hour day. It begins very early for most people because guides try to time their reaching of Uhuru point with the sunrise. For those who are leaving from Barafu or Kibo Hut that means that climbers usually begin their push for summit at midnight, and ascend in the darkness, cold and wind. It goes without saying that under these conditions, climbing is difficult, not to mention that the path is through loose gravel (skree) and up a steep slope.