Kilimanjaro: who can get up, and which route gives you a chance
- Published
- 9 April 2026
- Reading
- 4 min read
- Where
- Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
Kilimanjaro is not decided by who is fit but by who may go to altitude and how fast their sleeping height rises. Both are known before you pay for the climb.
Kilimanjaro, 5,895 metres, is walked, with no rope and no crampons, so the question 'can I do it' tends to be measured in fitness. Wrongly: according to the US CDC, training and physical fitness do not change the risk of altitude sickness. Who can go up is decided by health, and which route gives you a chance by how fast your sleeping height rises from night to night.
Who does not go, and who goes only after a doctor
- Does not go (the CDC lists these as contraindications): unstable angina, decompensated heart failure, a heart attack or stroke in the last 90 days, poorly controlled asthma, severe COPD, severe pulmonary hypertension, sickle cell anaemia, poorly controlled epilepsy.
- Goes only after a doctor: stable angina, poorly controlled arrhythmias, moderate COPD, compensated heart failure, poorly controlled blood pressure, severe sleep apnoea, mild pulmonary hypertension, sickle cell trait.
- Children: the park does not let under-tens climb except with special permission, and the CDC says children are as susceptible to altitude sickness as adults.
- Everyone else can — with a licensed guide, without whom park rules do not let you onto the mountain.
A route is measured by sleeping height
Above 3,000 metres the CDC gives two rules: sleeping height should rise by no more than 500 metres a night, and you add a night at the same height for every 1,000 metres gained. No usual Kilimanjaro itinerary meets them fully, because the last camp below the summit is high. The difference is how big the largest jump is, and what comes before it:
What an extra day changes — not the largest jump, but a night to adjust placed before it. Camp heights differ between sources by a few tens of metres; they are rounded here.
So you choose a route not by its name but by its itinerary. The five-day Marangu makes the thousand-metre jump without preparation — twice what the CDC recommends, and without the night it asks for. The day you add, on any route, does not buy an easier climb but exactly that night.
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