So my trek on Mt. Kenya was a pretty incredible experience. It was at times truly spectacular, and at others, one of the worst physical and mental tests of my life. This is the longest and most in-depth journal I’ve yet posted, since it made a pretty dramatic impression on me, and has been an unforgettable climax to my time in Africa, for better or worse.
Day 1
The first day, in (immediate) retrospect, was something of a waste. When I was told that it would be spent in Nanyuki town (near the Sirimon Gate), in order to ‘acclimatize,’ it didn’t quite sink in that I would be doing no trekking whatsoever, so my 5-day itinerary would really only be 4 days. The elevation in Nairobi is around 1500 m, while Nanyuki is only about 2100 m, while the gate is nearly 2600 m, so the idea of using the town to help prevent altitude sickness is a bit of a joke (though it most definitely lets the tour company save money on park fees, charged daily).
In any case, staying in Nanyuki did give me the opportunity to try some local Kenyan fare. I took my break from vegetarianism in order to try the local flavours whereever I’m traveling, and I would have been remiss in visiting Kenya without having some nyama choma. Nyama choma is essentially just barbecued hunks of animal, sold by the kilogram. The server cut up a giant piece of beef into bite-sized chunks in front of us, then poured out a little mound of salt in front of each of us to dip the pieces into. You eat it with the staple carb of your choice (in our case, chapatis). From my veggie perspective, it’s not really any more ridiculous than the Korean BBQ that I’ve enjoyed in the past, but that’s not saying much. At least the meat’s local and organic, right?
Besides the food, there wasn’t really anything to do in Nanyuki. I spent a little bit of the afternoon visiting in a village hut with some relations of my guide (the only real time I’ve spent with more rural locals), but beyond that, I read Lovecraft and had an early night. Maybe for the best, since I still had something of a cold (though it lingered with me to some extent throughout the trek).
Day 2
The trek started, in earnest, sometime around noon, after we took lunch outside the wind-whipped Sirimon Gate, with the tiny peaks of Mt. Kenya visible through breaks in the clouds in the far distance. The first day is an easy uphill walk along a dirt road for 9 km to the Old Mose’s Camp, and took about 3-4 hours. The vegetation transitioned from grey, gnarled old-growth forests to scrubby, yellow brush as we moved up. At one point, some porters up ahead of us threw down their bags and leapt to the side of the road; apparently they’d spotted an elephant, and were taking cover. There was certainly enough evidence of their presence from the mounds of grassy dung, though we didn’t actually see any.
The first base camp was only around 3300 m up, but I’d obviously spent far too long on the Tanzanian coast, because by the time the sun was setting, I was chilled to the bone, and had to put on my wool gloves. Despite having no feeling in my toes, I slept surprisingly well despite the shabby camp dorms (though the fact that there were mattresses, however ratty, on the mountain impressed me a bit).
Day 3
We woke up not too long after dawn, took breakfast, and started the hike to the second base camp, Shipton’s, at 4200 m. Our route took us up and down steeply sloped mountain valleys for 14 km, past all kinds of bizarre plants (Kenyan Highland Cabbages? Sirimon Spire Pineapples? Tufted Pickle Weed? I haven’t a clue) that grew inexplicably larger the higher up we got, to completely unexpected proportions. The whole trek took 6-7 hours, and by the 5 hour mark or so I started to flag before we ate lunch next to a glacial river.
The meals on the trip were simple, but the portions were generous in the extreme – I would be surprised if I was eating fewer than 5000 calories in a day, though I was burning it all. A sample day’s meals might include:
Breakfast: 3 pieces of fried bread, one plain piece to eat with the fried eggs, a sausage, 3 pancakes, and fruit (usually a banana, some passion fruit, and mango or orange slices), plus tea, coffee, or hot chocolate.
Lunch: 3 or 4 sandwiches with an avocado spread including onions and tomatoes, more fruit, and some sugary, concentrated orange drink.
Snack: A large plate of biscuits, with popcorn or home-fried donuts. Lots of tea.
Dinner: Thick oxtail soup and bread, giant servings of potatoes, vegetable stew, several pieces of fried fish, and dollops of local spinach-like greens, followed by fruit for dessert. More tea.
Shipton’s Camp is directly below the base of Mt. Kenya’s three main peaks, with astonishing views when the clouds broke. Despite the altitude, it was warm enough while the sun shone, but the temperature quickly plummeted after dark. High mountain winds whipped through the valley, like the African Gods on the peak were bellowing pagan warnings at us silly interlopers.
Despite the truncated 4-day route, I was quite lucky that I didn’t suffer from my rapid climb, like some of the others doing the trek. I drank prodigious amounts of water and tea (though the latter was as much to warm my hands as stave off altitude sickness) and took rehydration sachets, and it seemed to work, since I had only a very mild headache before I took a brief nap in the afternoon.
Since we were challenging for the summit around 3:30 in the morning in order to reach it by sunrise, we retired for the night around 9:00, though between the cold, the thin mountain air, and the anticipation, no one slept very well, and I snatched only a few hours of sleep.
Day 4
Bundling up in three pairs of socks, two long-sleeve shirts, two hoodies, my wind/rain shell, hat and gloves, we had a light breakfast of tea and a few biscuits, then started our climb to the peak, Point Lenana. Neither me nor my guide had headlamps, so we had only the light of the full moon filtered through the morning mist to guide us. I relied heavily on my walking sticks, scrambling up the scree slopes, the low visibility helping me to focus on planting one foot in front of the other. It was a rather surreal experience, with exertion, altitude, and the impossibly subtle gray-blue palette of the night lending a dizzy determination to the climb, with no sense of passing time. When one other hiker, a zealous Dutchman named Manuel, and his guide came to overtake us, wearing headlamps, it actually made seeing much more difficult, since the erratic contrast of light and shade were confusing. As we got closer to the top and persistent snow started to become visible underneath the boulders, we actually needed to stop for a few minutes, since we had climbed too quickly, and would reach the freezing, unsheltered peak before dawn. About fifteen minutes before dawn, as crepuscular light began to diffuse through the dense mist, I finally started to get some sense of the terrain I’d been scrabbling up. Painted in gray scale, the frost-tinged boulders and gravel looked like an unreal moonscape, completely unlike anything I’d seen before. Near the top, we abandoned our packs and started the final stage of the summit climb, scrambling up and over huge, shear rocks.
Manuel and I were the first climbers to reach the top that morning. Point Lenana, the only peak of Mt. Kenya that can be reached without technical climbing, is 4985 m above sealevel. While the morning dawn was obscured by clouds, it did little to dampen our giddy elation of having met the mountain’s challenge. The clouds moved quickly, however, offering stunning bursts of sunlight and tantalizing glimpses of the higher peaks, the permanent glaciers, and the surrounding countryside, including Mt. Kilimanjaro, hundreds of kilometers in the distance. My fingers froze stiff from trying to snap photos of the stunning scenery, with no shelter from the frosty winds.
I have no idea how long we spent on the peak, but all-too-soon we were beginning our descent. In the morning light, the scenery transformed completely, moon rock becoming brown, only dusted with frost. The way down was much harder than the climb up, as I slipped down loose gravel, losing my footing all too easily and hammering my joints with every step. Finally, crossing past gorgeous glacial tarns that had been invisible in the dark, we arrived at Minto’s Hut, at 4300 m, on the other side of the mountain. We had traveled 12 km and ascended and descended 800 vertical meters before breakfast. The remaining 16 km in the day’s hike took us along the Chogoria route. While there must be more beautiful places in the world, I would need compelling evidence to prove it to me – nothing in my life thus far can compare with the sight of the Gorges Valley yawning before me, with blue skies and rolling green hills in the distance, and the jagged rock of Mt. Kenya brooding behind me.
The brilliance of this day, which ultimately took us to the park gates, stood in stark contrast to what would come next.
Day 5
My first rumblings of discontent occurred when I found out that I would not be staying in the self-contained (hot-water equipped!) bandas as I’d been told originally, but would instead be spending the night at the adjacent campsite, in a tent that was too small for me to stretch out completely. Even that wouldn’t have bothered me, had I not woken up with my head in a puddle around 4:30 in the morning. It had started to rain, and my tent evidently leaked around the zipper gasket. I spent a little bit of time reorganizing my things to get them out of the rain, tried to shift my position, but as the rain started to seep through my sleeping bag, I decided to get up. The cook was already starting to prepare the morning’s meal, and I think that they could tell from my expression that it would be a good idea to get a cup of coffee into my hands as soon as possible to occupy me.
I was actually in good spirits by the time we set out. The rain had been intermittent that morning, and I saw no reason to assume it would be otherwise the rest of the way (this was the dry season, after all), so I didn’t even bother to put on the rain trousers I’d rented in case of bad weather. The rain was relatively light at first as we started the final 32 km push to Chogoria village, along a dirt road through temperate bamboo rainforest.
It rained harder, and the dirt road rapidly became a slippery river of mud. After about two hours, I was thoroughly sick of the rain, and quite ready for it to stop. I was soaked but not saturated, and so if the sun had come up at that point, I feel like I could have entertained some hope of drying out by the time we arrived. Soon, however, my boots had completely soaked through, so with every step water sloshed around my socks. As the third hour progressed, I was actively in the process of hating life. The only saving grace was conversation with a British traveler named Andy – without something to keep my mind off the slog, I’m not sure I could have made it. By the fourth hour, the entire affair had moved beyond miserable, to the point of being completely, comically ludicrous – so while the physical discomfort intensified, we were at least able to joke about it, slightly deliriously. I barely even bothered avoiding the puddles – I would swear, reflexively when I accidentally slipped into one, but I soon found that the sensation was the same as stepping on the drier portions. At some point we passed a Land Rover that was quite stuck in the mud. At about the fifth hour, the forest opened up, the scenery began to change and we saw the first hints of civilization. I bought a handful of bananas for 4 cents (our first break, though we didn’t sit) at a roadside shop, and finally, the torrential rain stopped. While we saw more signs of life, the roads became much worse – where before there had usually been at least some hard clay to walk along in between the rivers, here the road degraded into a slippery, sticky morass. The sunlight and change of scene brought an end to the monotony, which actually made the remaining hour more difficult. The roads went from terrible to worse, so that progress was slow, drunken stumbling, and the rain would sporadically start up again to spite us.
Finally, we made it to our destination in Chogoria village, where we would stop for lunch before the matatu ride home. It had taken us something over six hours to traverse 32 km, without breaks, in uninterrupted, pouring rain. I had entertained some meager hope that some of my things would be dry, but mostly I had completely avoided thinking about it. When I finally had a chance to open up my bags to find something dry to change into, it was a bit like a kick in the stomach as I realized that quite literally every single possession I had brought with me to Africa was now wet. Clothes, books, journals, papers, all were soaked through with the oppressive, penetrating moisture from 6 hours of torrential downpour. It seemed so cosmically unfair that after what I’d just gone through, that the hits kept coming. The ziploc bags that I kept my electronics in, thankfully, saved my laptop and cables, and my camera had been at my belt under my rain jacket the whole time, but anything paper was largely ruined. It hadn’t even occurred to me to leave some of my things back in Nairobi – I didn’t have anything to put them in, and wasn’t sure of a secure place to keep them, so I thought storing a pile of assorted valuables would be more trouble than it was worth. It was an egregious error in judgment, but no one could have foreseen the extent to which we had been soaked – according to my guide, in seven years of trekking, something similar had only happened to him three times.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in a rather foul mood, and after a few tentative attempts at consolation, my guide quickly learned to leave me alone. The five hour matatu ride home didn’t help (the ride to Nanyuki had taken just over 3 hours). At one point, after an interminable time spent with my knees pressed against the seat frame in front of me, crushed against the side window bar by an immensely fat woman, and needing to visit a toilet, I asked my guide how far we were from Nairobi; I nearly snapped when I heard that we were still two and half hours. I spent some time reading Lovecraft, ignored my bladder, and calmed down a bit. The whole miserable joke that the day had turned into came to another head when our matatu ran out of gas and stopped at the side of the road, but I took it as a blessing, a chance to stretch my legs, piss, and reshuffle our positions on the matatu, and my mood improved. Eventually we made it back to Nairobi, I got back to my hostel, took inventory of my things (unsticking each individual page of the brand-new-but-ruined SE Asia Lonely Planet that I still needed for the next three months), had a hot meal and a beer, chatted with some of the other travelers, and actually managed to feel normal again.
At any other time in my life, I can’t imagine enduring what I did that morning. Never before had I been faced with such an extreme physical and mental trial, and in other circumstances would simply have said, “Fuck it!”, stopped for a hot drink somewhere, and called for a ride. But here in Africa, on a mud road, many miles from anything, I knew that I was the only one who could help myself. No one else could help relieve the pain in my shoulders – they were carrying their own loads. No one else could take me to my destination – as we’d seen, the roads were completely impassible to 4WDs. There was nothing I could do but walk on, and bear it. I’ve made mention, half-jokingly, in previous posts, of building character, but this was the kind of dramatic, traumatic, daunting experience that builds character. Before in my travels, I had found myself dealing with discomfort that would have driven me mad in Canada, all without complaint, simply because I had no one to complain to. This last death march brought that feeling to a final, climactic head. I would never, ever repeat the experience willingly given the choice – but having done it, I really do feel like I’m a better person for it.
That’s life.
