"Climbing Kilimanjaro by the Machame... " a Kilimanjaro National Park Travel Page by VA_Dave

We did the 6-day Marangu route on Kili and we booked our guides through the <a href="http://www.maranguhotel.com">Hotel Marangu</a>. Great folks. They have a reputation of getting 75% of their climbers to the top - not the typical 33%. Our chief guide was Joachim, and Paul was our assistant guide. Our strategy for combatting altitude sickness was 2 ibuprofin every 4 hours and 1/2 a diamox tablet twice a day. That allowed me to reach the summit with no problems other than fatigue.
The first 4 days are 6 hour hikes with magnificant views. On the first day you hike through a rain forrest. The second day takes you though a ghostly forrsts with moss laden scrub trees. Since late November is off season, and we just about had the mountain to ourselves!

Here is my guide Joachim at about midnight on the final 6 hour climb to the summit. It was about 0 F with a strong wind blowing so I had on about 4 layers of clothes. And I was still cold! We started at 11:45pm, and reached the rim at about 5:45am just in time for sunrise. It took another hour to get to the true summit (19k ft/6k m). I beat a bunch of 20 somethings to the rim by starting about 30 minutes earlier then they did. Pretty good at age 59!

Here are Joachim and I at about 9am after coming down from the peak. I was feeling pretty good at this point, but there was still about 3 hours of downclimbing to the final camp. The 5th day is pretty long with about 7 hours of ascent and 5 hours of descent! My legs were really hurting by the time I got to the final camp. The downclimb was much worse than the climb. The last day was an easy 3 hour hike to the park gate.