Rain-sticky air presses against your jacket as the trail slips under a green cathedral of moss and giant heather. Porters' footsteps and distant bird calls thread through the forest; the peak of Kibo appears and disappears like a promise through a shifting veil of cloud. On the Lemosho Route, the mountain opens in stages—first a cool, fern-lined climb, then a wide, windswept plateau, then the thin, lunar slope that leads to Stella Point and the rim. By the time the summit greets the first light, the crater cliffs have a gravity all their own, as if the mountain exhales and reveals its teeth.