The Full Crew Breakdown
Most climbers reach the summit without ever counting how many people made it possible. On a standard 7-day Machame climb with 10 climbers, your expedition runs on a crew of 15–20. That is roughly 1.5 crew members for every climber — and every role matters.
Lead Guide: Certified Wilderness First Responder, minimum 5 years on Kilimanjaro, responsible for all safety decisions above 3,000 m. You will know this person's voice — they are the ones reading the mountain and calling the pace.
Assistant Guides: One per 3–4 climbers. They fan out across the group, monitoring pace and watching for early signs of altitude sickness. On the summit night push, you will have at least two guides within arm's reach the entire time.
Cook: Manages a propane camp kitchen at altitude, producing high-calorie meals designed for easy digestion and fast recovery. The cook's role is part nutritionist, part morale officer.
Porters: One per climber for personal gear, plus additional porters for group equipment (tents, food, fuel, chairs, tables). TANAPA regulations cap personal porter load at 20 kg — a strict rule that budget operators routinely violate.
For a group of 10 on Machame: 2 guides, 2 assistant guides, 1 cook, 12–15 porters. Total crew: 17–20 people. All of whose names you will never see published — that is our policy for their protection.
What Porters Actually Carry
The 20 kg ceiling is not arbitrary. TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks Authority) set it after years of porters being systematically overloaded by operators chasing lower costs. Enforcement varies — some operators treat the limit as a suggestion.
Your personal gear limit is 15 kg per climber. Your kitbag — sleeping bag, down jacket, layers, toiletries — goes to a porter at the start of each day. You carry only a small daypack with water (2–3 litres), snacks, sunscreen, and a layer.
The cook carries a separate food and fuel load. Group gear — tents, chairs, the dining tent, gas cylinders, a medical kit — travels on dedicated equipment porters whose job is purely structural. The result: your daypack at 3–5 kg feels almost weightless compared to what you trained with.
When you reach camp at 3,000 m and your bag is already there, waiting for you inside your tent — that is a porter who woke two hours before you did, walked the same trail faster, and carried your gear the entire way.
A Typical Day for a Porter
Wake is at 05:00. By 05:30, porters are already striking tents, collapsing camp, and sorting bags for the day. The camp needs to be packed and the trail ahead clear before the climbers wake — you should never trip over a porter's load on the path.
The march to the next camp starts at 06:00. Porters move ahead of the group, sometimes taking a more direct ridgeline route to set up by 14:00. Climbers on the same day will take the longer switchback trail. The porter arrives first, builds the fire, sets up the dining tent, and starts drawing water.
Rest days — the ones billed as "acclimatisation" for climbers — do not exist for porters. When you spend a afternoon at Shira 2 camp recovering, your crew is repairing kit, organising rations, and cleaning营地. They will sleep at the same altitude as you that night.
The descent on Mweka Route is the one part of the climb where the dynamic inverts. You descend quickly on established steps. The porters are the ones doing the heavy lifting — dismantling every tent, carrying every cooler, hauling the kitchen — for three consecutive days until Moshi.
The Tipping Reality
Tipping is not included in your climb price. It is a separate, cash-based obligation at the end of the climb — and it matters more than most first-time climbers realise. Crew wages are partly structured below market with tipping as a supplement. On some operator packages, the tip is effectively how your porter feeds his family that month.
Typical tip pool for a 7-day Machame with 10 climbers: $200–$350 per climber, distributed across 15–20 crew. The breakdown: lead guide ~20%, assistant guides ~15% each, cook ~15%, porters split the remainder. A porter who carried your personal gear every day receives roughly $8–$12 per day of your tip.
What separates Bobby Tours: we publish the tip pool structure before you book, and we pay above-market base wages so the tip is genuinely a bonus, not a subsidy of substandard operator wages. Budget operators who advertise low prices are often making that margin back by underpaying crew — meaning your tip has to do more work than it should.
Bobby Tours' Welfare Standards
Our crew welfare policy covers four non-negotiables: wage floors above the TANAPA minimum (verified and logged per climb), a hard 20 kg load cap enforced at packing, and proper accommodation in designated staff camps — never sharing sleeping space with climbers.
Every crew member receives a boot allowance at the start of each season and proper rain gear — not a disposable poncho, but a full waterproof shell. Cooks receive food handling certifications and annual health checks. All crew are covered by our emergency evacuation fund.
We run a fair-trade porter programme in partnership with the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project. Porters who return season after season with Bobby Tours move up a tier — more responsibility, better pay, a path to assistant guide. Career progression is real, not a slogan.
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