EDGE EXPERIENCES
Mt. Kilimanjaro. 19,341 ft.
July 9 - 18, 2027
When the only way forward is slow.
Ten days, including a seven-day ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro shaped by altitude, effort, and the discipline of moving slowly, built for people who:
Lead at a pace that has quietly stopped producing clear thinking
Want the mountain and the work, and are honest that both are the reason
Are drawn to environments where how you show up matters more than how you perform
Will train for twelve weeks, because a mountain is not negotiable about readiness
Are willing to be uncomfortable, off the grid, and not in charge for a week
The mountain sets the pace
Most leaders are operating in conditions designed for a world that no longer exists.
You optimized for speed. You built systems for efficiency. The environment you built them for is gone.
This is not about escaping that. It is about standing somewhere it cannot follow you.
At altitude, the things that have always worked stop working. You cannot push harder. You cannot think your way through. You cannot perform your way up.
The only technique is going slowly. Pole pole, as every guide on that mountain will tell you in your first hour.
Most leaders have never operated that way.
Seven days of it, and something gives. Not because anyone pushed you toward an answer, but because the conditions stopped letting you avoid one.
Kilimanjaro is not a metaphor. It is a deliberate change of conditions.
Capacity stops being theoretical
And the decisions that follow are different
Most people arrive carrying something they have not been able to put down at a desk. A decision they keep deferring. A pace they know is not sustainable. A quiet question about whether they still have it.
Seven days at altitude, alongside people doing the same thing, and that ambiguity resolves. Not gently. Clearly.
People leave with:
Proof of what they can do under sustained difficulty
A clearer sense of what they are willing to carry, and what they are not
One or two decisions they came in avoiding, and are now ready to make
Not because anyone pushed them toward answers. Because the mountain removed the conditions that made avoidance possible.
Designed before the mountain, on it, and after you come down.
BEFORE
April to July · twelve weeks
A training program built for this climb. Cardio, strength, elevation. I do it with you, on the same plan.
A curated gear and packing list. Exactly what to bring, and what to leave.
The leadership work starts here, before anyone gets on a plane. What you are carrying. What you want to be true when you come home. Said out loud, to the people who will be walking beside you.
THE MOUNTAIN
seven days. 19,341 ft.
Machame Route. Rainforest, moorland, alpine desert, arctic summit.
Every evening we debrief the day. Not what your body did. What showed up when you hit altitude, when you wanted to stop, when the plan did not survive the conditions.
One stretch built for walking alone. Most people find the thing they came for there.
AFTER
three months
A conversation in your first two weeks home, while it is still raw and before everything closes back over.
The group together once a month for three months. The people who were on that mountain are the only ones who will understand what you are describing.
A final conversation at the end, measured against what you named before you left.
The Experience
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Day 1 · Friday July 9 · Arrive Arusha
You land at Kilimanjaro International. Someone is waiting at arrivals with your name on a sign. A drive to the hotel. Check in, unpack, breathe.
Day 2 · Saturday July 10 · Arusha
The whole group together for the first time. We walk through the week ahead so nothing on the mountain is a surprise. Health check with the guide team. Gear check, while there is still time to fix something. Welcome dinner, where each of us says what brought us here.
Day 3 · Sunday July 11 · Machame Gate to Machame Camp
We register at the gate and meet the crew. Then you step into the rainforest. Dense canopy, moss-covered trees, colobus monkeys in the branches if you are lucky. The trail climbs steadily but gently. Your body finds its rhythm.
5,400 to 9,800 ft · 5 to 7 hours
Day 4 · Monday July 12 · Machame to Shira
The trees thin and the world opens. Wide volcanic landscape, giant lobelias, groundsels that look like another planet. Tonight you see the summit for the first time. It looks impossibly far. It is not.
9,800 to 12,300 ft · 4 to 6 hours
Day 5 · Tuesday July 13 · Shira to Lava Tower to Barranco
The day that makes or breaks summit success. You ascend to Lava Tower at 15,200 feet for lunch and the altitude will hit you. Slow, heavy, maybe a little nauseous. That is the point. Then you descend to Barranco to sleep lower and wake stronger.
12,300 to 15,200 to 13,000 ft · 6 to 8 hours
Day 6 · Wednesday July 14 · Barranco Wall to Karanga
The day starts with the Barranco Wall, a steep scramble that uses your hands but no ropes, and one of the most exhilarating sections of the route. Crest the ridge, traverse beneath the Southern Glaciers. Karanga is short by design. Rest and hydrate.
13,000 ft · 4 to 5 hours
Day 7 · Thursday July 15 · Karanga to high camp
Base camp for the summit attempt. Barren, windswept, almost no vegetation. Arrive early afternoon. Eat, hydrate, rest. Your guides brief tonight's plan: wake at 11pm, light breakfast, depart by midnight. Try to sleep. You will not sleep much. That is okay.
13,000 to 15,300 ft · 4 to 5 hours
Day 8 · Friday July 16 · Summit · Uhuru Peak, 19,341 ft
Midnight. Headlamps only. Cold air, thin air, one foot in front of the other. Scree and switchbacks. Pole pole. The altitude makes everything harder, breathing, thinking, moving. You keep going.
Stella Point at sunrise. The crater rim, and the sky turning orange, then pink, then gold. You are above the clouds now.
One more hour. One more push. Uhuru Peak, the highest point in Africa. You made it.12 to 15 hours on your feet
Day 9 · Saturday July 17 · Down, and back to Arusha
Closing ceremony with the crew who carried you up and did it with a smile and a lot of song. Final descent through the rainforest to the gate. Your legs are tired, your body is wrecked, you do not care. Sign out. Collect your certificate. Back to Arusha, premium room, hot shower, real bed.
Tonight: the celebration dinner. You stood on the roof of Africa.Day 10 · Sunday July 18 · Recover, and go home
Sleep in. Your body earned it. A spa treatment after breakfast. Then afternoon transfers.
What changed, and what do you take home? That is the work that starts now. -
Seven-day Machame Route expedition with certified Tanzanian outfitters, professional English-speaking guides, a small climber-to-guide ratio, daily health checks, emergency oxygen and a comprehensive medical kit
Led by Tracey, on the mountain, every day. Leading, debriefing, facilitating the work. This is not outsourced
Two nights in Arusha before the climb, so you arrive, rest and prepare
One night in Arusha after, premium room. Hot shower and a real bed when you need them most
Upgraded tents with cots at every camp. Private dining tent. Private toilet tent. You are not sharing facilities with anyone outside our group
A private porter. Your daypack is carried for you
All meals and water on the mountain. Chef-prepared breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Unlimited boiled water. Dietary needs honored
Airport transfers, both directions
The twelve-week training program, built for this climb, starting in April
The leadership program before, on the mountain, and for three months after
A curated gear and packing list
Welcome dinner, summit celebration dinner, and a spa treatment
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International flights
Travel and medical evacuation insurance, required
Crew tips
Tanzania e-visa
Personal hiking gear
Extra hotel nights
The safari extension
Personal expenses and alcohol
Joining
Investment for 2027 is published at the end of September. Join the waitlist now.
Dates & Logistics
The Climb: July 9 to 18, 2027. Seven days on the mountain.
Dates:
Arusha, Tanzania
Machame Route, Mount Kilimanjaro
Location:
An intentionally small cohort.
Group Size:
A twelve-week training program beginning in April, group sessions before departure, and three months of integration after you return
Preparation:
Questions
YOUR BODY & THE CLIMB
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Fit enough to walk five to seven hours a day, on consecutive days, carrying a daypack.
The training program builds exactly that. Cardio, strength, and long hikes with a pack on. Those hikes do not require mountains. I live in Chicago and train on city miles like everyone else. What you are building is the ability to keep walking on tired legs, day after day, which is a different thing from being fit.
Most people who ask this are fitter than they think and less prepared than they need to be. Those are two different problems, and the twelve weeks solves the second one.
What matters more than your fitness today is whether you will do the training. People who train arrive ready. People who intend to train arrive hopeful.
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Mostly, you cannot, and that is worth knowing before you go.
The CDC is blunt about this: training and physical fitness do not affect your risk of altitude sickness. Susceptibility is partly genetic, there is no screening test for it, and the most reliable predictor is simply how you have responded to altitude before.
What protects you is the route. The seven-day Machame profile is built for acclimatization rather than speed. Day five deliberately takes you to 15,200 feet and then back down to 13,000 to sleep, because climbing high and sleeping low is what teaches your body to adapt. Add going slowly, drinking far more water than feels reasonable, and daily monitoring by guides who do this every week.
So train for the walking, and let the route handle the altitude. That is why the extra day exists.
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No. Kilimanjaro is a trek, not a climb. No technical climbing on the Machame route, no ropes, no harnesses, nothing to learn beforehand.
The Barranco Wall on day six is a steep scramble where you will use your hands. It is the most technical thing you will do all week, and people who are nervous about it are almost always fine once they are on it.
The mountain asks for endurance and patience, not skill. What stops people is altitude and consecutive days. Never technique.
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Then you do not summit. It happens, and turning around is not weakness.
The seven-day route exists because the extra acclimatization day materially improves the odds. But altitude does not respect fitness or training. Anyone can have a bad day at 18,000 feet.
If you cannot continue, a team goes down with you. Not one person. A team, and you are never on that mountain alone.
What happens after that depends on the situation, and that call is mine to make with the guides. Sometimes the group keeps climbing. Sometimes everyone comes down. We decide early rather than late, based on your health and not your pride.
And turning around does not end your experience. The group, the work, the three months afterward, all of it continues exactly the same. The summit was never the product.
Summiting is not the objective. Everyone coming home is.
Meet your guide
Most of my career was spent inside one of the world's largest consulting firms, working alongside the leaders of global banks, health insurers, media companies and the biggest names in software.
I also built a business inside it. From nothing, to $122 million a year in investment, serving a company of 700,000 people.
The rooms where the hardest calls get made are rooms I know from the inside, because I was making some of them.
The whole time, I was also on a trail somewhere.
I've summited Mt. Kilimanjaro multiple times.
Hiked the Andes in Peru more times than I can count. Iceland. Alaska. Japan. This route, the Camino Francés into Santiago, several times, including once with my son. And too many other trails to name.
None of it happened on a sabbatical. It happened on vacation days and red-eyes, between quarters, with kids at home and a job that never slowed down. The trips were never an escape from my life. They were how I kept my footing inside it.
What I do now sits between those two things. Leaders come to me carrying something they have not been able to put down at a desk. The mountain does what the desk cannot.
So I have a good guess about who is reading this. Someone other people rely on. Achievement oriented, trusted, carrying more every year. And somewhere along the way the thing that used to feel clear stopped feeling clear, and there is nowhere in the week to say that out loud.
That is why I build these. Not to get people away from their lives. To give them enough altitude, and enough quiet, to think clearly again.
My job on the mountain is steady presence and clear structure. Not steering. You do your own thinking. I build the conditions that let it happen.
Tracey
The next step is a conversation.
A short conversation is the best way to determine fit.