Mt. Kenya - Day 1

Climbing Mt. Kenya, Africa's second highest mountain, has been on my list for some time. After summitting Mt. Kilimanjaro back in 2007, Africa's highest mountain at 5,895 m./19,341 ft., I entertained the idea particularly because it’s in the neighborhood. The tricky thing about Mt. Kenya  (5,199m/17,057 ft.), however, is that the real summit requires equipment and a certain skill set that you don’t need for Kilimanjaro. Kili is a long hike with the challenge of altitude sickness which apparently ends the trek prematurely for about 50% of those who attempt it.

Most who climb Mt. Kenya don’t actually summit the highest peak. Rather, they target what is called Lenana Peak (4,985 m./16,355 ft.) – the highest point that doesn’t require ropes and harnesses and clocks in as Africa's sixth highest peak. As we would be going as a family, we obviously opted on Lenana. 

The hike plan was five days and four nights, including the 3-hour drive back and forth to the base of the mountain. As with most people who climb in Kenya, and as we did for Kilimanjaro, we hired a hiking company to facilitate the logistics and transportation.

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Nairobi to Chogoria Gate

A small van would pick us up on Saturday morning at 7am. It was a more reasonable start time than I initially anticipated. Our guide, Lance (admittedly not a common Kenyan name), arrived on time with a driver. We loaded up and made the four-hour drive to the town of Chogoria which sits near the base of Mt. Kenya. While I’ve been on the west side of the mountain a few times, this was my first time on the east side. According to Lance, the east side is by far more interesting. That would prove to be the case.

In Chogoria, we met with our porters who would assist us with the hike. We would also change vehicles and squeeze into a small Toyota for the drive from Chogoria into the park where we would begin the hike. But first we needed to grab a bite to eat at the restaurant where we had our rendezvous. A couple bucks for chicken and chips (fries).

By about 1pm, we were heading towards the park. When you arrive at the park entrance, you need to check in. It’s an extremely tedious process that, for some reason, is to be expected when doing this sort of thing. The people that arrived before us were there for probably twenty minutes to a half hour. We were as well. It made me think about the border crossing between Burundi and Tanzania. In these semi-remote locations, they don’t seem worried that the process is archaic and slow since they have all day with not many people flowing through. There’s no real motivation to make the slow, handwritten entries in a logbook more efficient.

Homemade weight room with concrete weights. Gives you something to do when you're not delaying climbers.

We then drove into the park another half hour or so and we were dropped off. It wasn’t the end of the road, rather, it was for us to start hiking and begin acclimatizing. We would walk for a couple hours to where we would camp near the Chogoria Gate.

Road hike for a bit and then it becomes trail.

It was here that the real hike would begin the following morning. We officially met our porters and received our briefing for the hike. It was a nice setting, located at around 3,000 meters/9,800 feet. There is supposedly a lot of wildlife in the area (and lots of scat around our tent to testify to it) but all we saw were about four waterbucks and some Sykes’ monkeys.

We had time to get settled in and relax a bit before the sun began to set and the temperature began to drop sharply. We bundled up, had a basic dinner in one of the nearby cabins, and before long made our way to our tents.

As is the norm, I was the first one up. I was able to watch the morning sun just as it was beginning to catch the top of the mountain. The temperature had dipped well below freezing during the night and there was ice shimmering on the tent. It made me a bit nervous. If it was this cold at our current location, we were in for some cold weather the next couple of nights as we incrementally gained significant altitude.

It was wonderful to be on our way. Take a break from work. No cell reception for four days. Just us and this mountain.