Kilimanjaro: It's Never Too Late

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Is there an upper age limit to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro--a cutoff point when the physical body is tapped out and refuses to haul itself one more step up a 19,340-foot mountainside? Is there an age when you hit the wall on such high-altitude stunts? The question was on my mind recently—in May 2019--as I prepared, at age 71, to test myself on the mountain via the popular Machame route. If all went well and I reached the summit, I could check off another big adventure on my bucket list.

Surely, I thought, there would be kindred company on the mountain, other baby boomers hoping to check that box on their lists, and they would leave a record (name, nationality, age) at each camp site register en route. But my unscientific perusal of such records surprised me: The data showed that most Kilimanjaro climbers range in age from 20 to 50 (an equal distribution of women and men); fewer are in their 50s, fewer still in their 60s, and almost no climber is north of 70. In the past several months I was just one of two 70+ climbers who had summited and left a record of it in the register at Mweka Gate, a main post-summit exit for several trails.

At first the scarcity puzzled me. I’m in good health, trim, exercise regularly, and enjoy hiking, and I consider myself an average citizen of my demographic—neither better nor worse than others my age. But while I had coasted into my 70s, thinking all would be well, my fellow boomers, I concluded, had moved Kilimanjaro up to the front of their list: Most, I figured, were more likely to embark on Kilimanjaro in their 50s and 60s when they were still reasonably fit and had a margin of strength and vigor for feats of physical endurance. At 71, I was a latecomer. But I wasn’t the only one. The record-holder for oldest to summit Kilimanjaro is the American Dr. Fred Distelhorst, who climbed to the top in 2017 at age 88. The woman’s record is held by the Russian Angela Vorobeva, who stood on the summit in 2015, at age 86. Perhaps feats such as these are the upper limit of mountain climbing, or just a teaser to tempt us into thinking there is no limit.

I was glad to be in the company of such determined seniors. Surely we had been sustained by the same plodding patience that placed one foot in front of the other thousands of times and a measure of luck that spared us from any serious altitude sickness. Perhaps they had the good fortune of a guide like the excellent Prosper, 42, who plucked up my courage throughout the climb (“Young man!” “What a man!”) pushing me through a long week of acclimatization trekking, leading up to a long night of climbing from camp five, until at sunrise we stood on the rim together and then made our way up to Uhuru Peak, the highest point in Africa.

Later, in Moshi, I returned rental gear at Gladys Adventures, the trekking agency I’d signed on with. I talked with Felix, one of the Gladys employees, about climbers of advanced age who summit, such as the estimable 88-year-old Dr. Fred, two years earlier. Felix’s parting words to me were a tease: “Come back when you’re 89.”

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