At the end of a very successful 2009 MEM Africa Northern Circuit/Western Breach/Crater Camp climb a few sobering points came to light.
The ugly fact of widespread litter and human refuse on Kilimanjaro, and particularly in the campsites, is probably inevitable thanks to the volume of people visiting the mountain annually, and perhaps even more so thanks to the sheer number of support crew involved.
However the situation at Crater Camp, one of the last frontiers of isolation on Kilimanjaro, was by any standards appalling.
Crater Camp
Crater Camp sits atop the legendary Western Breach and some 600ft below the summit. It is squeezed between the crater wall and the diminishing Furtwangler Glacier that sits like a giant ice-cube on the sandy floor of the Kibo Crater. It is a hostile and moon-like landscape, reasonably warm under direct sunlight, but virtually airless and bitterly cold the moment that the sun sinks below the line of the crater.
Despite this it is numbingly beautiful. Stark, unwelcoming, otherworldly and yet one of the most celebrated points of access on the mountain and a place that is a target for the most ambitious of Kilimanjaro’s’ annual migration of climbers. When our group trudged over the lip of the Western Breach after some seven hours of steady climbing in a diminishing atmosphere none of us were disappointed with what we saw. We were all, however, taken aback to see the landscape littered with a minor plague of litter, and even more so as we trudged closer to the camp to find it not only choked with the refuse and debris of regular habitation, but contaminated in every hidden corner – and some not hidden at all – with an accumulation of human waste.
The Litter Crisis
It stands to reason, of course, that this would be the case. At the higher altitudes all the camps grow increasingly grubby – this due mainly to the lack of motivation anyone feels above 15000ft – but also to the fact that the strict policy of no permanent structures in the camp have meant that large numbers of porters have simply used the cover of rocks to defecate, and moreover to empty the contents of portable toilets that no-one ever really feels like portaging down.
I spent a little while touring the site and taking photographs to draw the attention of the National Parks authorities to what is nothing less than an environmental crisis at the crater, all of which are featured in the slide-show below. On reporting back to the management of MEM Tours Africa contact was immediately made with the local National Parks Warden who confirmed that he was fully aware of the situation at Crater Camp. The matter had in fact been under consideration for some time and MEM Africa can now report that the decision has since been taken to close down Crater Camp to general use.
The End of Crater Camp?
The main reason for this is that environmental consideration make it impractical for permanent facilities to be sited at Crater Camp. At such altitudes natural decomposition is slowed almost to a standstill and as a consequence human waste buried in pit latrines as is the case at all other camps would simply never fully bio-degrade. Obviously unrestrained use of the site is being abused leaving the only alternative to close the site altogether.
Current booking obligations will be respected so it can be expected that traffic will be gradually curtailed over the period of a year or so. Thereafter special licenses will be required for any stay above the Western Breach and this will be under the strict proviso that what is portaged in is portaged out. Practically this will mean that any ascents via the Western Breach will have to be made in the morning, with an afternoon summit and an evening return either to Barafu or Millennium Camps. This is a terrible shame, and will make the Western Breach that much tougher, but will at least put an end to the unforgivable abuse of one of the most beautiful sights on the over-trammeled Kilimanjaro circuit.
Tags: Crater Camp, Kilimanjaro
