Kibo Peak

The cone everybody photographs

Kibo is the youngest and highest of Kilimanjaro’s three volcanic cones, and the flat white dome in every photograph of the mountain. TANAPA gives it as the highest peak at 5,895 metres — the same figure as Uhuru Peak, because Uhuru is the high point on Kibo’s crater rim — and describes it as covered by snow throughout the year despite sitting close to the equator.

The other two cones are very different objects. Mawenzi, at 5,149 metres, is a shattered spire open only to technical climbers by special permit. Shira, at 3,962 metres, is the oldest and has collapsed into a plateau. Kibo is the one that is walked.

The crater

Kibo has a summit crater, and the routes that reach the rim look into it. TANAPA lists crater camping among the mountain’s tourism activities and describes what visitors can see there in terms worth quoting for their specificity: the unique bench-shaped glaciers, a formation the authority says is found only on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Crater camping requires a special permit and is not a normal part of a trekking itinerary; it is covered in the crater camp guide. TANAPA publishes no altitude for the crater camp site, and none is given here. The same applies to Arrow Glacier and to Lava Tower: figures circulate for all of them and none has an authority behind it.

The Western Breach is the one route that arrives inside the crater rather than on the rim, through the collapsed western wall of the cone.

The ice

Kibo’s glaciers are the most photographed and least stable thing on the mountain, and the published record about them currently disagrees with itself. A 2009 study in PNAS recorded 85 per cent of the 1912 ice cover as gone; Tanzania’s Daily News reported in April 2026 that KINAPA’s conservationist for ecology gave GIS figures showing ice cover up from 2.2 to 5.92 square kilometres since 2000. The parent guide sets out both and treats neither as settled.

What is not disputed is that the ice on Kibo is a changing feature rather than a permanent one.

Getting onto it

Every trekking route on Kilimanjaro is a route up Kibo. TANAPA puts the climb at five to nine days depending on route, requires that all climbs be guided by a licensed operator, prohibits solo trekking, and restricts entry and exit to the gates named on the permit. The route decision is covered in climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

Kibo is also visible in full from a long way off, and often more clearly from the plains than from the mountain. Arusha National Park and Mkomazi both look across to it, and a scenic flight past the cone shows the crater and the ice fields in a way no trekking route does.

Common questions