Uhuru Peak not the true summit of Kili shock!!!

Tuesday November 21st 2006

I have just received an email in which the writer claims that Uhuru Peak is not, in fact, the highest point on the mountain, and thus not the highest point in Africa either. Normally this sort of email can be dismissed as the work of a crank - but not this time. For the author of the email is none other than John Rees-Evans, owner of Team Kilimanjaro, regular climber of Kilimanjaro and one of the most respected figures on the mountain. He is also, dare I say it, the one man on Kilimanjaro whose obsession with the mountain seems to be on a par with mine!

The pertinent part of the email is reprinted here below:

“I climbed a few weeks ago and while on the summit (I summitted twice) I wanted to check out two theories that have been growing on me with every visit:

the actual height of Kili

the actual location of the true summit.

You’ll probably know that the new series of GPS now communicate with 20 rather than 12 satellites and are therefore more accurate. I had noticed that the summit always looked slightly lower than two points further along to the north west, one just a few metres along and the other 220m away. Also, with my race-monitoring always-on GPS (only 12 sats), ie always warmed up and therefore with the best lock and minimal fluctuations, I had consistently noticed elevation readings on the summit to be around 5899 – 5901m rather than 5895 - 5896m. So I took a reading with a brand new 20 satellite GPS and now am almost persuaded that:

the altitude at the summit is exactly 5900m, not 5896m as claimed by the last survey, and

the true summit is actually 220m away from the official summit on a grid bearing of 308º. Its altitude is 5901m. This is the base of the cairn there, not its top.

If I am right I won’t be very popular because it will mean that of the thousands who believe they have summitted almost none will actually have done so in the very strictest sense (and so will have to come back and climb it again!), as this point is right on the edge of the upper crater wall and not visited even en route from Crater Camp. The accuracy claimed by my GPS at these points was both 1.9m. I will aim to spend longer on the summit and get a more accurate reading with a warm and fresh set of batteries but I strongly suspect that further investigations are going to corroborate these findings.

I have always thought that the GPS 3D global grid calculations took account of the fact that the Geoid is not actually uniform. If you know otherwise please let me know - I am quite surprised that the official height of 5896m could really be 4m out (apart from the fact that it’s in the wrong place).”

The ramifications of such a discovery could, of course, be rather huge. So what do you think? Have any of you stood at Uhuru Peak and felt that the ground to the north-west was slightly higher? Does anybody else have any readings that confirm - or refute - John’s own measurements? We would be fascinated to hear of your opinions.

I think this is a topic that could run and run….

New estimate on Kilimanjaro’s glaciers >>