Travel

Preparing to Climb a Real Mountain

If you have climbed mountains in the UK, you may think that it will not be a significant leap to start climbing mountains further afield in places such as Asia or Africa. However, if you choose to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you will have a vastly different experience than you would climbing mountains closer to home.

However, with the greater challenge comes greater reward, and whilst that may sound like a sentiment from a superhero movie, it is one that still happens to be very true, and very pertinent to the climbing of ‘real’ mountains.

Climbing mountains such as Kilimanjaro will almost certainly give you an adventure unlike any you have experienced before. However, it will also offer challenges that you might have not experienced before too and therefore it will be important to get your body ready for the feat if you want to enjoy it as much as you should and, just as importantly, successfully reach the peak you are aiming for.

Training for Kilimanjaro should involve a great deal of hill walking and spending long periods on your feet in a variety of different environments. Improving your fitness is a must, but it is also worth getting your muscles used to the particular movements they will be doing as even the fittest of people may not have the muscular endurance to climb a mountain if their body is not used to the motion of climbing.

Finally, make sure you get used to the cold. Being able to walk distances in cold weather is very important and only training your body to cope with walking in warm weather may still leave you unprepared for the challenge of a real mountain.