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发表于 2013-3-16 08:59:04
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Thank you WanchaiBoz and lulululu.
“The process alone will make you stronger and thus make you ready for upcoming challenges”
To me, it’s my best vacation ever. I feel like I am a newborn man now.
More about the Machame and Marangu Route:
"The principal advantage of the Machame Route over the standard Rongai, Umbwe and Marangu Routes is that day 3 ascends from 3847m to only 3984m, yet via 4642m at the base of a volcanic rocky outcrop known as the Lava Tower. The 600m height differential ensures that Machame exploits the ‘climb high, sleep low’ principle to maximum effect. This and the fact that the summit assault on the Machame Route is via a ridge rather than a loose scree slope and is therefore considerably less difficult than the assault on Marangu and the standard Rongai Route, is responsible for the fact that Machame boasts the best summit success rates of all the routes after the TK Rongai Route.
Most climbers opt for the 7 day route in order to err on the side of caution with respect to being well rested and adequately acclimatised prior to their assault, however timings on the 6 day route are still safe and most people with active lifestyles and who are younger than around 45 years of age, and not carrying significant excess body mass, will usually manage very well on the 6 day Machame Route.
Marangu Route; problems with acclimatisation
The trail is maintained in impeccable condition by the park authorities and affords vast and beautiful views of Kibo’s eastern aspect in good weather once the saddle is attained. The principal reason we however do not recommend the route is that minimal scope for acclimatisation is afforded with only some 200m being gainable from Horombo Huts, even if one opts for the 6 day route which includes a day’s supposed ‘acclimatisation’.
"Marangu is not the easiest route to climb Kilimanjaro
As TK climbers will already know, unfortunately the process of successfully and safely climbing Kilimanjaro is a bit more complicated than simply starting at the most accessible point and following the trail that has the easiest going.
While there are no accurate statistics recorded or retained for any of the other routes, KINAPA do however keep quite accurate records for the Kilimanjaro route. The reason for this is that it is the only route that begins and ends at the same gate, so it is a simple matter for the registrar to compare the Marangu check-in register with the summit certificate register that is kept at the same location, as he only needs to exclude Rongai records. The last time we spoke to the registrar he advised us that the following are the summit success rates across all operators on the Marangu Route:
Marangu Route Summit Success Statistics
•Percentage of climbers reaching Kilimanjaro’s Summit from Marangu = 42%
•Reaching Gilman’s Point but failing to attain Uhuru Peak = 38%
•Failing to reach Gilman’s Point = 20%
The main reasons for so many people giving up at Gilman’s Point and failing to reach Kilimanjaro’s summit are threefold, in our view:
1. The Marangu Route is favoured and marketed by companies that have little or no mountaineering background. To non-mountaineers, the concept of a summit is slightly irrelevant and somewhat arbitrary, and the things of principal importance are the ‘overall experience’ of the challenge, the cultural exchange, or the beautiful views. The guides within such companies have usually been indoctrinated by this company ethos and so when the climber (and the guide himself) is tired at Gilman’s Point - which is a pandemic condition that we all suffer from, including our best athletes - he has no particular motivation to encourage the climbers to go any further, unless they themselves are still particularly keen to do so.
Your guide’s motivational role is usually extremely important when trying to summit Kilimanjaro
Our experience of climbers at altitude is that whereas at home, if you were asked about the possibility of giving up at say, Stella Point - just 143 vertical metres short of the summit - you’d probably say ‘That’s a ridiculous idea! I’ve trained so hard and spent so much money on travel and equipment, that I wouldn’t dream of giving up when I had already proven that I could get so close!’, Whereas, when you’re actually there and are struggling to think clearly, with only around 54% of the oxygen fuelling your brain that you’re used to, it’s surprisingly easy to get confused and disorientated and to wonder why you once thought the summit was so important, and with the nausea and suffering and extreme tiredness, it can be very tempting to succumb and to give up... and then to go home and feel some deep regret, and to reflect on the possibility of coming back and trying again!
We frequently receive emails from our climbers telling us that if it were not for their guide constantly encouraging and motivating them all the way to Uhuru, they believe that they would not have summitted. And yet it should be understood that we deliberately do not publish our own summit success rates, and we do not pay our staff bonuses for summitting. Whereas typically in any given year we will have several dozen climbers describing to us how grateful they were to be motivated to summit, to date we have had only one person - who failed to summit - ever complain to us that he felt that Simon should not have placed such importance on the idea of summitting and should have allowed the climbers in his group to give up at Stella Point without any sense of disappointment or resistance from him (even when it was acknowledged that there were no perceptible medical impediments to their continued progress).
Reaching Kilimanjaro’s summit is important to most climbers
Since we do not use statistics for marketing advantage (although we believe that we would possibly have the highest recorded ratio if we did) climbers should please understand that the only reason that we place so much emphasis on summitting is because we genuinely believe that attaining the summit is of substantial importance to nearly all of our climbers, and it is our conviction that our climbers expect us - even at the risk of possibly being misconstrued or criticised by some - to do our utmost to aim to ensure that climbers who have put in so much time and effort, and have sometimes had to scrimp and save so carefully to be in a position to undertake this challenge, should have the best possible opportunity to realise their goal, and in some cases, their very dream. ..." |
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发表于 2013-3-9 20:40:46
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