Mid-October is the tail end of the dry season on Kibo, and this year conditions are reminiscent of the months prior to eastern Africa's very wet 1997-98 El Niño. My friend Simon Mtuy spent considerable time on the mountain recently, and sent some helpful photos.
The upper photo illustrates how little of the Furtwängler Glacier remains. Simon is standing next to the largest fragment; between the ice and the Uhuru Peak slope only a couple small patches of snow are visible. For scale, we estimate that a strip of ice only about 25m long remains, only one to two meters thick! Compare the current thickness with that in February 2020, when our Tanzanian helpers learned ice-climbing techniques. Additional comparisons are posted on this blog, including this synopsis from 2012; note the person in this panorama!
Simon also sent photos from Kenya of the lesser-seen north side of Kibo. The entire mountain is now free of snow, and the glaciers continue their monotonous decrease in both thickness and area.
