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Everything one who reads about climbing Kilimanjaro talks about being fit and the perils of not acclimatising properly. For most people the latter is essentially about hoping they will not suffer too badly from AMS or finding some other way of allowing the body to adjust to altitude before embarking on their Kilimanjaro climb. Spending time on Mounts Kenya or Meru are cited on some websites as good ways to acclimatise but both would add significant cost to most people's African adventure and in our case that information did not hit the PC screen until our planning was too far advanced, so irrespective of the cost, neither was for us an option. However, we did come up with another idea while looking for flights. Having gulped at the cost of flights from London we widened our search parameters and stumbled across good value flights from Munich in Germany, saving about £400 per person. This spawned a whacky idea. Why not spend a few days in the Alps, sleeping at altitude in one of the higher alpine refuges and summiting some reasonably high peaks into the bargain. The thought was that not only would this exercise the muscles upon which we would have to rely for the 4,000m ascent to Kili's summit but it should also (hopefully) help us acclimatise - at least to something between 3,000 and 3,500m, which must be better than the massive 100m above sea level where we live and would be great fun, so Africa via the Alps it would be then.
After a few false starts, like finding a hut well above 3,000m only to find it is surrounded by crevasse-ridden glaciers requiring ice gear to reach it, which we would not have with us, we settled on a refuge at the south end of the Otz valley in the Austrian Tirol high above the village of Vent at about 2,850m. It is surrounded by a number of 3,000m peaks which should keep us busy for a few days ranging from a stroll ascending about 400m above the hut to potentially climbing to nearly 3,800m subject to ice conditions. When we descend from the hut it is only a few hours drive to Munich airport from where we will jet off to Africa. A selection of photos can be found in the gallery
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