Summit readiness check

How ready are you for Kilimanjaro?

Most operators offer a success-rate calculator. This is what we built instead: your altitude-illness risk, graded against the CDC’s published criteria using the real sleeping altitudes of the itinerary you choose.

Choose your itinerary

Slept above 2,750 m before?

Your age (optional)

Used for advice and park checks only — it does not change your risk band or the summit estimate.

How is your training going?

Not yet Some Good Strong

In the 14 days before you start, will you spend 2 or more nights above 2,750 m?

No Yes

I have a heart, lung, neurological or other significant medical condition, or take regular medication

What we don’t ask, and why

No height, weight, sex or age

Calculators that ask for these imply they predict your summit. The CDC’s guidance on altitude illness says otherwise:

“Training and physical fitness do not affect risk.”
Sex plays a “minimal role, if any.”
People over 50 have slightly less risk — not more.

What does predict it is the itinerary’s sleeping altitudes and how you have responded to altitude before. So those are the only things we grade — and the itinerary figures come from our own day-by-day plans.

Every itinerary, measured the same way

The two itinerary variables from the CDC table, applied to the sleeping altitudes in each of our day-by-day plans. Sorted by band, then first-night altitude, then nights on the mountain before the summit. No standard Kilimanjaro itinerary meets the CDC’s low-risk ascent rate — the question is how much margin each one builds back in.

Itinerary	First night	Nights before summit	Fast nights	Rest nights	Itinerary band
8 Days Lemosho Route	2,650 m · low	6	2	2	Moderate
9 Days Northern Circuit Route	2,650 m · low	6	3	2	Moderate
6 Days Marangu Route	2,720 m · low	4	2	1	Moderate
7 Days Machame Route	3,000 m · moderate	5	2	2	Moderate
6 Days Umbwe Route	2,850 m · moderate	4	2	1	Moderate
7 Days Rongai Route	2,625 m · low	5	2	0	High
7 Days Shira Route	3,610 m · high	5	1	2	High

Why there’s no percentage

A summit percentage needs thousands of audited climbs, broken down by itinerary, with “summit” defined the same way throughout. No operator’s figures are audited, and ours would be no exception — so rather than publish a number you can’t check, we show you the part that genuinely can be measured.

Our itinerary documents say it plainly: summit success can never be guaranteed. What the right itinerary does is give your body the time it needs. More on why published success rates don’t compare.

How the bands are worked out

First night, from below 1,200 m: under 2,750 m low · 2,750–3,400 m moderate · over 3,400 m high.
Ascent rate above 3,000 m: no night gaining more than 500 m is low; faster, but with an extra acclimatisation day for every 1,000 m, is moderate; faster without them is high.
Previous illness: none or mild is low · moderate or severe is moderate · HAPE or HACE is high.

Your category is the highest of the three. We count a “rest night” as a night above 3,000 m where sleeping altitude rises by no more than 100 m — our reading of the CDC’s “extra day”, allowing for camps a few metres apart.

Source: CDC Yellow Book, “High-Altitude Travel and Altitude Illness”, Table 3.5.1: risk categories for acute mountain sickness. Itinerary altitudes from our own day-by-day plans.