Crown of Africa - Unlocking the Secrets of Mount Kilimanjaro
I surfed on around these couple of days and found a website Crown of Africa - Unlocking the Secrets of Mount Kilimanjaro. Its a nice flash presentation with some details of the mountain, the routes, history, how to gear up and train, as well as some links to some operators.
Pretty neat information they have there on the mountain. I like the presentation on the mountain climate.
According to the presentation, there are five climatic zones
Lower Montane Forest - Gentle lower slope with a cool moist climate.
Upper Montane Forest - Lichens, Mosses and ferns.
Heath and Moorland - Smaller trees, forest slowly opening up.
Alpine Desert - Thin dry air, wild fluctuation in temperature.
Summit - Snow capped!
Unfortunately, it didn’t state which altitudes the ecological zone change.
Then again, in the reply email I mentioned earlier, I remember reading that “the first few days that are the most important for aesthetic appreciation.” I guess the vibrant flora plays a part! Hmm… I’ve seen deserts, and I understand why! Boring!
Actually, I’m supposed to reply to the email, but I haven’t. I have posted up the email to my Rovers committee, but it seems like not many are interested due to the really steep price. Yeah. US$2000 isn’t something within our budget, at least for now!
Oh! I forgot where I read this, but I came across something interesting. It seems that when people trek to snow capped mountains, the water freezes, so you can’t drink from your bottles! Two ways to overcome this are (1) pack it deep inside the bag to protect it from the freezing environment (2) add some alcohol to lower the freezing point of the solution! Cool right?
Tags: alpine desert, kilimanjaro, montane forest, rovers, summit
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February 21st, 2006 at 1:11 am
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About the water, do those “thermal flasks” help? Or, you know, the kind that you can hold soup in, and the soup never becomes cold? Sometimes when my mum boils me herbal soups she uses these containers, and even when I take them to work and drink it very late at night it’s still warm!