Our Approach to Safety

Trekking the Rwenzori carries real risk. We would rather set out how we manage it than fill this page with reassuring language.

Turnaround criteria, agreed before you leave

A properly run mountain operation decides the rules for turning back before anyone is cold, tired and close to a summit — not in the moment, when nobody is well placed to judge. Ours are agreed with you at the pre-trek briefing:

• Altitude symptoms that do not improve with rest, or that worsen. Descent is the response, and it starts immediately rather than after a wait.
• Weather closing the summit window, which on the glacier section is a judgement your guide makes and you do not overrule.
• A fixed turnaround time on summit morning, beyond which continuing upward does not leave a safe margin of daylight to descend.

Your guide has the authority to enforce all three regardless of how much a group wants to continue. That is the point of setting them in advance.

Guide training

Our guides are trained in first aid and in recognising altitude illness, and work under the trail operator's guiding framework. On glaciated ground they are equipped and experienced in roped movement and crevasse rescue.

What the team carries

A comprehensive first-aid kit, and a means of summoning help from the mountain. Mobile coverage is patchy and is not relied upon. We talk you through exactly what is carried on your route at the pre-trek briefing.

Evacuation

There is no helicopter rescue on the Rwenzori. Evacuation is on foot, assisted by the crew, down to the trailhead and onward to medical care in Kasese. This is the single most important thing to understand about risk here: everything depends on descending early rather than late, which is why our guides act on symptoms rather than waiting for them to declare themselves.

Realistic timings from each camp are covered in your briefing.

Insurance

We require every trekker to hold travel insurance covering high-altitude trekking, and glacier travel where the itinerary includes it. See our travel insurance page for what your policy actually needs to say.

If you want to ask

Ask us about any of this before you book. An operator who cannot answer questions about crew ratios, turnaround rules and evacuation quickly and specifically is telling you something.