A note from our founder

If you arrived here from The $27 Summit, you may be wondering why an investigation that asks operators to answer questions in writing is signed by a brand instead of a person.

The short answer: the argument matters more than the author. The numbers in that piece belong to KPAP and to the public record, not to me. If my name were on it, the conversation would become about me: my company, my prices, my motives. Those are fair questions, and the disclosure in the piece answers them plainly: we operate on this mountain, we charge premium prices, and we profit if the story moves people. But the porters' arithmetic doesn't depend on who I am. It can be checked by anyone, against sources we linked, without trusting us at all.

The longer answer: I've spent my life in mountains. I served as a soldier in the Swiss Armed Forces. I've climbed at high altitude on several continents. When I first walked Kilimanjaro's routes and did the arithmetic on what the men around me were earning, I decided that if I ever built something on this mountain, the crew's pay would be a design principle, not a line item to compress. White Mountain Camp is that decision, built out: mountain crew paid above the KPAP partner wage floor as base salary, not tip-dependent income, with loads, meals and equipment we're willing to put in writing for anyone who asks, including people who will never climb with us.

I'm not hard to find. My name is on this company's registrations, and it appears on our homepage. This page exists so that no one can say we hid. We led with the brand because the brand is what will still be making this argument on the mountain in ten years, whoever is writing the notes.

Ask the five questions. Whoever you climb with.

Asante sana.The Founder, White Mountain Camp