The first ascent of Kilimanjaro

Hans Meyer · 1889 CE · Earth

The first ascent of Kilimanjaro — Hans Meyer · 1889 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Reach the highest point of Kibo across the ice cap that had turned Meyer back in 1887, and survey the summit region from a chain of supplied camps.

Historical context

When the missionary Johannes Rebmann reported snow on a mountain near the equator in 1848, his guide had called the white summit simply "cold"; in London the geographer Desborough Cooley persistently cast doubt on him. Forty years later the mountain lay in the German sphere of East Africa, and a Leipzig publisher's son, Hans Meyer, made it his object: turned back by the ice in 1887, taken hostage and ransomed in the coastal rising of 1888, he came back in 1889 with the Austrian climber Ludwig Purtscheller, a caravan of Swahili porters hired in Zanzibar, guides lent by the Chagga chief Mareale of Marangu, and a plan to put a chain of supplied camps up the mountain.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Chief Mareale's Marangu

    28 September 1889

    On 25 September 1889 Hans Meyer's caravan reaches Marangu, a Chagga state on Kilimanjaro's southern slopes, and the chief Mareale walks into camp to greet him: "Yambo, yambo, Dakta Maya." Near midday on 28 September the mountain party sets out: Meyer, Ludwig Purtscheller, two headmen, nine porters, Mwini Amani of Pangani and the Somali Mohammed, Abdallah and Ahmed, who is to cook, with one of the two guides Mareale has promised.

  2. Dr. Abbott's camp

    1 October 1889

    On 1 October a party of eight leaves the half-way camp by the Mue stream and follows a lava ridge across grass and heath towards the saddle between Kibo and Mawenzi. The porters are so done up that they drop asleep among the boulders on the edge of a ravine, at 12,979 feet, 3,956 metres in Meyer's German edition. An empty tin marked Irish Stew and a page of the Salvation Army paper En Avant show whose camp this had been.

  3. The Four Men's Rock

    2 October 1889

    On the morning of 2 October they cross the ravine midway between the two peaks and a sheet of brick-red volcanic ash, and at midday Meyer picks a spot sheltered by a wall of blocks under a great rock later named the Viermännerstein, the Four Men's Rock: 14,200 feet by his measure, 4,328 metres in his German list. He plants the German flag on top; the five men who carried the loads are sent back, and the two Europeans are alone on Kibo with Mwini Amani.

  4. Twenty strokes a step

    3 October 1889

    On 3 October, at half past ten by Meyer's watch, they begin cutting steps up an ice wall as hard as glass, each step costing some twenty strokes of the axe, and reach the foot of the last precipice at half past twelve. Towards two o'clock the secret of Kibo lies at their feet: a gigantic crater with precipitous walls.

  5. The hollow in the rocks

    5 October 1889

    On 5 October, after a day of rest, they move camp higher, leaving near midday with Mwini Amani carrying the sleeping sacks. In mist, towards six, they stop in a hollow in the rocks at 15,260 feet, about the height of Monte Rosa, which Mwini lines with armfuls of everlasting flowers; Meyer's list calls it the cave where they bivouacked. At three in the morning of the 6th they wake at ten degrees Fahrenheit and set off by moonlight and lantern.

  6. Kaiser Wilhelm's Peak

    6 October 1889

    By the steps of three days before they cross the great crevasse at eight, reach the rim at a quarter to nine, and after an hour and a half along the crater's edge climb three rocky pinnacles of loose blocks; at half past ten Meyer is first on the middle one, 19,700 feet by his aneroid. He plants a small German flag with three cheers and names the peak Kaiser Wilhelm's Peak.

  7. Into the crater, and Mawenzi

    19 October 1889

    From a camp under Mawenzi they try that broken peak on 13 and 15 October and are stopped each time by chasms and ridges too rotten to bear two men. On 18 October they bivouac in caves north of the Triplets, and on the 19th they cut steps to the great notch in the eastern rim, which Meyer's list calls the Hans Meyer Notch, and go down onto the crater floor. A third try on Mawenzi, from the north, fails on 21 October.

Outcome

The crater rim on 3 October and the summit on 6 October 1889 at half past ten by Meyer's watch, named Kaiser Wilhelm's Peak; the crater floor on 19 October by the Hans Meyer Notch; three attempts on Mawenzi, on 13, 15 and 21 October, that stopped short of its highest point. By Meyer's count, sixteen days between 15,000 and 20,000 feet.

Hans Meyer

A Leipzig geographer who, on his third attempt and with the Austrian Ludwig Purtscheller, cut his way up the ice cap of Kibo to the highest point of Africa on 6 October 1889.

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