At 11 pm, when the mountain is completely dark and the temperature has dropped below zero, your guide will knock on your tent and say: time to go.
You will already be awake. Almost nobody sleeps properly on the evening before summit night.
The departure
Base camp at midnight is one of the stranger things I have experienced. The tents are lit from inside, orange against the dark. Headlamps move between them. There is no sound except wind and the scrape of boots on frozen ground. Nobody talks much.
You will feel the cold within two minutes of leaving your sleeping bag. This is intentional — you dress in camp for the temperature at the summit, which means you are overdressed for the first hour of walking. This passes. Do not take off a layer just because you are warm on the early slopes.
I have guided this mountain more times than I can count now. And every summit night, when we leave base camp and I see that column of headlamps going up into the dark, I still feel something. It does not get ordinary. — Godfrey Mariki, Kilimanjaro guide
The pace your guide sets will feel almost insultingly slow. Slower than you walk to the kitchen. Slower than you think is necessary. This is correct. Pole pole — slowly, slowly — is not a comfort phrase. It is the most important tactical decision of the entire climb.
What altitude does to you here
By the time you leave Barafu, you have been above 4,000 metres for two or three days. Your body has adapted partially. But the upper slopes of Kilimanjaro — between 5,000 and 5,895 metres — are beyond where adaptation can fully compensate.
The air contains roughly half the oxygen of sea level. Your lungs are working harder than you will realise until you stop walking and listen to your own breathing.
A headache on summit night is normal and not a reason to turn back. Confusion, loss of coordination, or persistent vomiting are different — tell your guide immediately. These are your guide's decisions to make, not yours. That is what they are there for.
The cold compounds everything. When you are cold, your body diverts blood to your core. Your fingers and toes go numb. Your thinking slows. These are normal physiological responses — which is why your guide is watching you, not just walking in front of you.
Stella Point
After five or six hours of darkness, the sky begins to lighten — not sunrise, but the first greying of night before dawn. And then, at 5,756 metres, you step over the crater rim.
This is Stella Point. On every route except Marangu, it is the first moment you reach the lip of the volcano. The wind here is different — it comes off the Southern Icefield, directly off the glacier, and it hits you without warning.
The first time I reached Stella Point as a climber, years before I became a guide, I sat down on a rock and cried. Not from sadness. I did not know what it was. I still do not have a word for it that I find adequate. — Godfrey Mariki
Most climbers need a rest at Stella Point. Take it. Eat something if you can manage it. The final section — the crater rim walk to Uhuru Peak — takes another 45 minutes to an hour, and the altitude is not finished with you yet.
Uhuru Peak
Uhuru Peak is the highest point in Africa. The sign is wooden, with altitude painted in white. There is a glacier to your left that has retreated significantly in the past thirty years — you can see the old moraine where the ice used to reach.
You will not feel what you expect to feel. Most climbers describe a strange flatness at the summit — not disappointment, but a kind of quiet. The emotion comes later, on the descent, when the altitude releases its grip and your brain chemistry returns to something normal.
Photographs at the summit take longer than you think. Fingers do not work well at –20 °C. Accept help with your camera. Do not spend more than 15–20 minutes at the top — your guide will keep you moving, and the cold matters more now than the view.
The descent
Going down takes the knees. The same scree that was firm on the way up is now softening in the morning sun, and you descend in long sliding steps that cover ground fast but punish your joints.
Most climbers reach the bottom of the scree section at a camp for breakfast. Then continue to the park gate. A day that started at 11 pm the night before ends — if all goes well — in the late afternoon.
Summit day is the longest day of your life on the mountain. It is also, almost always, the day people say they would do again. — Godfrey Mariki