Our Mount Kenya adventure

On the morning of Friday the 13th we began our four-day journey to climb Mt. Kenya. Our team consisted of members of the ecotourism group, the wind turbine group and one member of the group who is doing a project in Nairobi. So to be exact; our group consisted of Martijn, Harm, Jorinde, Ellen, Anne-Thomas and myself. We had arranged to be assisted by five porters – who would be carrying our backpacks, food and other supplies – a cook and a guide. Due to a power cut, our cook who was out buying the groceries was tardily since the cash register didn’t work without electricity. So we waited and finally we were ready to go and arrived at the gate of the national park at around three. Our adventure could begin.

After a short walk of about three hours we arrived at our stop for that night, a camp consisting of mountain cabins called Met. Station, since there is a meteorological institute close by. The porters had their lucky day, as just a short while after we had left the gate, a car passed us, and they were able to drop our backpacks in the car. The caretaker of the meteorological institute was both the supplier of firewood, and thus not long after arriving we warmed our hands, which had cooled in the mountain air, near a crackling fire. Our cook even prepared some popcorn for us, alongside with a cup of hot chocolate. We ate dinner, which was a lot more extended than we had imagined we would get during this trip, and retired for the night quite early.

The night had been cold, and we had another elaborate meal for breakfast, pancakes, eggs, toast and some fruit, and we left early for our second hike to Mackinder’s camp where we would be spending our following night. This route was a bit more challenging than the first day, and took us through a thick forest and over bushy highlands. We had a nice picnic for lunch and underneath the warm sun, we walked at a steady pace towards our destination. We arrived at Mackinder’s Camp, which is situated on the edge of a valley on an altitude of 4250 meters above sea level, and gives a clear view on the peaks of Mount Kenya.

We woke up at two ‘o clock in the morning and started making our way to the top – point Lenana on an altitude of 4985 meters high – around three, after a short breakfast of tea and cookies. The highest peak of Mount Kenya, the Batian, looked magnificent underneath the starry sky and the snow covered rock gleamed in the bright moonlight. We started our quest for the top walking on the edge of the valley and crossed a river, which meanders through the valley. From there on the way became steep, really steep. We had left the scenery of the valley, the grass and the shrubs growing between the stony surface, and were now as if on the surface of the moon. Nothing but gravel and rocks beneath our feet. The loose gravel meant that with every step you had to be careful not to fall down and bite the dust. With David as our guide, insisting on short breaks of five minutes or less, we ascended to the Austrian hut (4790m), our last stop before attempting to reach the top. We warmed ourselves a bit inside the hut, protected from the sheer cold and the icy wind. We wanted to be on the top at sunrise so we didn’t have much time to regain our strength. We defied the cold and commenced to our last stage, the final 95 meters. We passed frightingly steep snowy ledges and had to climb rock formations that were almost vertical. Though being able to see the sun’s rays starting to transcend the horizon warmed our hearts, figuratively and literally speaking that is. I don’t want to make this story too heroic, but everybody managed to reach to top, setting aside the freezing cold, defying the exhaustion and even sickness, which I personally think testifies of true courage and perseverance. So at sunrise, around 6:30 AM we were, to put it in the words of the notorious R Kelly, “the world’s greatest”. Putting real effort into smiling, which didn’t really succeeded as you can see for yourself, our guide David took this picture of us at the top.

Anne-Thomas had read in his Lonely Planet – some call it the holy grail of travel guides, others disagree completely – that there existed a summit circuit, which would take us around the Batian and back to Mackinder’s. Though this would take twice as much time as taking the same way back as we had came. Four of us agreed to do this, and so we split up and we – Anne-Thomas, Harm, Ellen and I - set out to do this. David, the guide I had previously mentioned, was really good at mitigating the steepness of routes and estimations of the time to get to a certain point. So when we asked him if this passage would be very steep and take very long, he was convincingly positive that it wouldn’t be that steep and would only take four hours. To be honest, nothing was further from the truth. This summit circuit took us past steeper hills than we had climbed and was a lot further than we had anticipated. We had to cross two valleys in order to get back to Mackinder’s camp, the mountain hut where we had spent our night. When we reached the ridge which enabled us to oversee the second valley we were flabbergasted as the entire valley was filled with thick grey smoke. This came as a huge surprise, this meant that a forest fire would be ravaging the park. David thought it was unsafe to cross this valley and so we discussed our options. One was to go to the exit the park at another gate, but all of our porters and the two remaining team members were back at Mackinder’s, and could not be reached by mobile phone or radio, since they have no reception in the valley. The other option was going back to them, by taking the same way back we had came, so we could decide what to do next together. We decided to do the latter, because we didn’t want to split up, and hoped that we could still use the Naromoru-pass to descend from the mountain. Therefore, already being plagued by fatigue, we had to return and get back to camp the same way we had come. This was mentally and physically painful, as we had to decline from the hill we had just climbed with great effort. We carried on and after a total of 13.5 hours of hiking, during which we encountered biting winds and even some hail, we were welcomed back at Mackinder’s. Just able to have some breakfast/lunch, at half past four in the afternoon(!), we dropped our broken bodies onto our beds.

David thought it best to leave the following morning early, since the dew and the night’s cold would retain the fire. Thus, the alarm buzzer woke us at four in the morning and we started our hike back to the Naromoru gate. It took us past burned bushes and smoldering ashes, the smell of it was a bit putrid and really pierced your nose. We saw smoke on both our left and right hand side, and sometimes even the tip of a blazing fire. So we rushed down the mountain, ignoring all pain and tiredness. When we left the highlands and reached the damp forests, we knew we would be safe and so we could breathe easily now. We had breakfast at Met. Station, where we had slept the first night of our expedition; a warming cup of tea, some tomato soup with toast and even some pineapple. With our bellies filled, we set out for the final piece of our way down, the last 9 kilometers to the Naromoru gate, where a member of the HSHC would be waiting to pick us up and bring us back to the guesthouse. With the end in sight, we could walk relaxed and were able to have some good conversation and joke a bit. On our way down, we had seen loads of people going up the mountain, all with the aim of putting out the fire, maybe a little ignorant, especially because most of them didn’t carry any equipment at all, though I truly admire their optimism. When we arrived at the gate, we even saw a helicopter, which was put to use in order to extinguish the fire. Moreover we heard that the big boss, the director of the managing organization of the Kenyan national parks, had come down from Nairobi to do whatever was in his power to help.

Tired but satisfied we got back to the guesthouse and enjoyed a warm shower – ignorant  of the fact that we couldn’t shower all at the same time, because the water supply isn’t capable of handling six showers in one go – we did it anyway. We had a nice meal together and exchanged stories with the ones that had remained at the guesthouse and had a laugh. Everybody was glad to be ‘home’ again. So that concludes our Mount Kenya adventure.

Love and greetings from all of us.