Mount Kilimanjaro: On Africa’s Roof, Still Crowned with Snow
A THICK veil of snow had settled on Kilimanjaro the morning after my group arrived in Tanzania. Over breakfast, we gazed at the peak filling the sky above the palm trees of our hotel courtyard in Moshi, the town closest to the mountain. It was as Hemingway described it: “as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun.”
I had wanted to climb to the roof of Africa before climate change erased its ice fields and the romance of its iconic “Snows of Kilimanjaro” image. But as we trudged across the 12,000-foot Shira plateau on Day 2 of our weeklong climb and gazed at the whiteness of the vast, humpbacked summit, I thought maybe I needn’t have worried.
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