The Lake District: Sca Fell via Lord's Rake

Following on from our successful ascent of Helvellyn via Striding Edge late last year, Alex and I decided to make the most of our time in the Lake District and go up another mountain. After some discussion which involved checking the list of Wainwright Fells and buying another Ordnance Survey map, we decided on Sca Fell – England’s second-highest mountain. This would involve a considerably longer morning drive from Ambleside before we could start walking, for our chosen setting-off point for this mountain would be Wasdale which is on the western side of Lakeland (Ambleside is reasonably central, which makes it a good base for exploring the Lake District; the problem is that the OS’s 1:25,000 Explorer series, which is better for walking than the 1:50,000 Landranger series, has four maps that cover the area).

Another early start, but our journey took longer than expected. After the fun of driving along the Kirkstone pass the previous day, Alex (for we went in his car!) now had two other passes, Wrynose and Hardknott, to look forward to. Alas, the former was closed due to ice on the road so we had to divert to the south, actually leaving the Lake District National Park in order to get to Wasdale via the outskirts of Broughton-in-Furness. Our journey ended with a drive along the shores of Wast Water, not a lake either of us had visited before but which, we learned via the Internet, is the deepest lake in England.

Not long after nine, we parked up at the National Trust’s Wasdale car park and enjoyed a breakfast of tea and bacon rolls from the food van. While chatting with one of the volunteers (who didn’t charge us for parking after I’d claimed – truthfully as it happens – to be an NT member who didn’t have his card with him), we learned that a few days previously, a group of students had had to be rescued after one of their number had tried to go up Scafell Pike naked. Now, I’ve heard of people doing some crazy stuff in the mountains – extreme ironing springs to mind – but this one really took the biscuit, especially given the time of year. Suitably clad, we set off.

Before we go any further, though, a couple of points of order…

Firstly, is it Sca Fell or Scafell? Usage varies, with the Ordnance Survey going for the former and some guidebooks, most notably Wainwright, preferring the latter. My use of the former is purely a matter of personal preference.

Second, why is it that of the peaks in the Scafell range, the highest one is called Scafell Pike (implying that it’s not the highest)? Wainwright explains…

“When men first named the mountains, the whole of the high mass south of Sty Head was known as Scaw Fell; later, as the work of the dalesfolk took them more and more onto the heights and closer identification became necessary, they applied the name to the mountain that seemed to them the greatest, the other summits in the range … being referred to collectively as the Pikes of Scaw Fell.”

So it was a case of mistaken identity – the tallest peak did not appear so. It’s actually true that from some vantage-points, Sca Fell does look like it’s a bit taller than it near neighbour Scafell Pike which is England’s tallest mountain. For the record, Sca Fell is 3,162ft/964m and Scafell Pike is 3,210ft/978m (I’m using Wainwright for the imperial measurements and the OS for metric).

(We’d hiked up Scafell Pike, years ago, which was another reason for choosing to do Sca Fell this time as it would be a new one for us; if memory serves, the ascent of Scafell Pike had been done in the summer and involved walking up from Great Langdale and camping overnight somewhere in the hills. Clearly this has not resonated with us as much as the youthful lunacy that was the winter overnight camp for Helvellyn.)

The climb was gentle at first but got gradually steeper. Our well-maintained path (the National Trust at work!) followed the Lingmell Gill, one of the streams that flows down into Wast Water. This splits into two paths, one of which goes up to Sty Head and the other to Mickledore, both high passes from which the summit of Scafell Pike can be reached. For Sca Fell we wanted the Mickledore option, but we would be turning off before we got that high.

Our turn-off, which did not look at all inviting, was a scree-slope from which we would be able to access Lord’s Rake, a steep gully which passes under the summit plateau (which cannot be ascended directly without proper climbing equipment). Now I am no fan of scree at the best of times and I did struggle to get as far as the entrance to Lord’s Rake, and once I got that far I was wondering whether this was really such a good idea.

During a short break to allow for the consumption of some cofftea and a Mars bar, I took stock of what we were about to do. The gully was full of loose rock, and amid a few discarded pieces of kit the animal skeleton close to the entrance did not bode well (dog or fox, probably, although quite what a fox would be doing at that height is anyone’s guess).

But onwards and upwards! In such cases I am more than happy to bring up the rear of any party, the result being that Alex was able to get some pretty good pictures of yours truly scrambling on hands and knees, apprehensive about whether the next bit of rock I got hold of would be too loose to support me.

It ended at a narrow gap between two rocky outcrops – or so we’d thought, for after that the route (I struggle to dignify it with the word ‘path’) descended and then ascended to another, equally narrow, gap. My descent was not pretty but I take heart from Wainwright (who I read afterwards), who states that “where boots cannot gain a purchase on the sliding stones and polished rocks, other methods of locomotion may be adopted, especially when descending. It is no disgrace even for stalwart men to come down here on their bottoms”.

Lord’s Rake – you may not be surprised to learn that we came up with some very rude alternative names for it – is meant to go up, down, up again, down again and then up one more time before you make it out onto the open fell. I’m not exactly sure what we did, for after dropping down from the second peak we ended up doing a steep climb up an icy gully to get out onto the plateau. Wainwright (again) says of Lord’s Rake that “one’s fellwalking education is not complete until its peculiar delights and horrors have been experienced”, so at the very least I can consider myself educated as a result of this experience.

It was with relief that I staggered – on two feet, now – up onto the plateau. The summit cairn was easy enough to locate, and unlike Helvellyn the day before we had the place to ourselves. 

Celebrating with cofftea and a swig from the hip-flask, I could see across to the slightly higher and much more crowded summit of Scafell Pike – clearly more walkers prefer the glory that goes with standing at England’s highest point to the relative solitude of the second-highest! Looking east, we could see the sea and the Isle of Man. To the east, Bow Fell and Crinkle Crags (the Lake District’s sixth and seventeenth-highest peaks, going by Wainwright) stood out. Helvellyn, which is to the north-east, can’t be seen from Sca Fell because the summit of Scafell Pike is in the way.

What next? Alas, a ridge walk over to Scafell Pike was out of the question, for the Sca Fell plateau ends with Broad Stand, a very steep rocky wall which means that accessing the Mickledore pass (from which there’s a route up to Scafell Pike) is much easier said than done. Descent – considerable descent – is involved before you can walk up to Mickledore. From the plateau, we took the path down to Foxes Tarn (more of a pond than anything else) and then down another gully to get us to the path that goes up to Mickledore. At some point there, we had our lunch with a very nice view to the south-east.

We continued up a combination of grass and scree (albeit not as bad as the scree that took us up to Lord’s Rake) and eventually reached Mickledore. This pass, some 2,755ft/840m up, stands directly below Broad Strand, that steep cliff and theoretical direct route between the two highest mountains in the country which has been described as ‘extremely dangerous’ by no less an authority than the Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team (Wainwright never attempted it, stating that his disappointment at not doing so was “amply compensated by the pleasure of going on living”). From Mickledore, we had a good view across to Lord’s Rake – had we really done that?

Descending back down to Wasdale involved plenty more scree but thankfully it wasn’t long before we were back on more solid ground for a downward walk with views over Wast Water in the fading light. Back at the car park, we decided that a quick visit to the nearby Wasdale Head Inn (a well-known hang-out for climbers and fellwalkers) would be in order before our return to Ambleside.

The Lake District: Helvellyn via Striding Edge

To the Lake District, for a couple of days of walking with Alex on a cold but dry weekend late last year. It had been a while since I went up to Lakeland – I used to go there quite a few times when I was in the Ventures, and this time there was a sense of unfinished business. We used to do a lot of hiking, or fellwalking if you prefer – Great Langdale was a favourite, as I recall – but I always felt, looking back, that we’d missed something.

Helvellyn is the third-highest mountain in the Lake District, which also makes it the third-highest mountain in England. Located on a ridge between Thirlmere and Ullswater, there are various routes up it and we did a couple, but we never did what is regarded as the classic way up. I’m talking about Striding Edge. 

If you approach Helvellyn from the east (ie. if you hike up from Ullswater), there are two ridges that lead onto the summit – Swirral Edge to the north and Striding Edge to the south. The latter is an increasingly narrow ridge which involves much scrambling before the final ascent; a favourite among walkers who fancy a challenge, but it can get very dangerous when the weather turns on you.

(The dangers of walking at altitude in the Lake District are nothing new, by the way. There have been a number of fatalities in the vicinity of Helvellyn, the earliest known one being Charles Gough, an otherwise obscure artist who fell off Striding Edge in April 1805; his body was found three months later with his dog, Foxie – his only companion on his final walk – watching over him. A Lakeland version of Greyfriars Bobby, perhaps, although many accounts of Gough’s demise – which inspired poetry by Scott and Wordsworth, no less – omitted contemporary speculation that Foxie had survived by eating her master’s remains.)

Alfred Wainwright, that legendary fellwalker who casts a long shadow over the area thanks to his seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells which remains the standard work of reference for walking in the Lake District despite having been written decades ago, described the ascent of Helvellyn via Striding Edge as “a classic ascent recorded and underlined in the diaries of all fellwalkers”. It was Wainwright who gave his name to the Wainwright Fells, a list of 214 peaks which are the ones he described in the afore-mentioned series of books. Climbing all of them is the aim of many a fellwalker who loves walking the Lake District, just like those who like to ‘bag’ the Munros up in Scotland. We managed a few Wainwrights back in the day (Helm Crag, Scafell Pike, the Old Man of Coniston, various of the Langdale Pikes, etc), although no-one was keeping score.

The closest we got to Striding Edge was a morning ascent of Helvellyn via Swirral Edge which, looking back, was ridiculous to the point of being downright dangerous. Alex, myself and a couple of friends thought it would be fun to walk up to Red Tarn, the small lake located underneath Helvellyn on its eastern flank, camp overnight and ascend Helvellyn itself in the morning. This was undertaken during the week between Christmas and New Year (a favourite time of ours for going up to the Lakes, what with there being no sixth-form or university commitments).

It was as mad as it sounds. Camping overnight at an altitude of over 2,000 feet in December was an ordeal in itself (it turned out that my supposedly four-season sleeping-bag had its limits) and in the morning, after a quick breakfast of tea and Ready Brek (we’d taken a petrol-stove with us) we packed up our kit and went for Swirral Edge. We chose that one purely because we were carrying full kit (the plan was to end up on the Thirlmere side) and Striding Edge would have involved some significant doubling-back on ourselves.

I’ve never been exactly sure what happened next but instead of the expected path, we ended up scrambling up a steep scree-slope before having to do some actual climbing (and no, we did not have a rope with us). At one point I was struggling to get a hand-hold and the only thing I could firmly grasp was a ledge which Matt, who was above me, was using as a foot-hold. If he’d shuffled a couple of inches over to his left, the result wouldn’t have been pretty. When I reminded him of this a while ago, he referred to it as ‘that time we nearly died’. He wasn’t joking … much.

A couple of years later, Alex and I were back, this time on a day-walk up from Ullswater, and once again we declined Striding Edge, mainly because we wanted to see where we’d gone wrong; after making it to Red Tarn we followed a fairly straightforward path up Swirral Edge; the only scrambling was to get to the summit plateau itself. Obviously, we’d missed the path in a big way.

So we never did do Striding Edge. Over the years, it occasionally rankled – there was a sense that, although we had stood on the summit of Helvellyn on several occasions, we’d not done it justice. We did plan to do it a couple of years ago, before my fortieth birthday, but in the event we ended up heading back to the Lakes late last year, shortly after I’d turned forty-one.

After a night in an Ambleside B&B (itself followed by a pint or three in the Golden Rule, our new favourite Lake District pub), we set off early (before the designated breakfast time, although the B&B-owner had kindly left the cereal out for us). One morning drive via the Kirkstone Pass later, we were parked up at Glenridding (one of two villages from which you can hike up to Striding Edge, Patterdale being the other) and on the path before 8am.

Some things had not changed; as we were sorting out our kit – sandwiches, waterproof jackets, a flask of tea, binoculars, Ordnance Survey map and the like – a couple in the car next to us were equipping themselves with much less kit than us, their clear intention being fellrunning. That’s never been our speed; as they were talking about making sure they had one of those water-bottles that’s got a rubber tube so you can have a drink without breaking your stride, Alex and I were asking each other whether we’d remembered the hip-flask, and who had the knife to slice up the block of Christmas cake we had with us!

Ullswater was covered in mist as we climbed out of the valley. It was cold, but it was a clear day, and other than the mist the views were wonderful. I’d been worried about the weather but, to be honest, we couldn’t have picked a better day for a hike if we’d tried. With a couple of stops on the way, made good time getting up to Birkhouse Moor, following which the path levels out and we were rewarded with a view of the Helvellyn summit in front of us, flanked by the two ridges and with the often-overlooked Catstye Cam to the right (“If Catstycam stood alone, remote from its fellows, it would be one of the finest peaks in Lakeland” – Wainwright again). 

We stopped for a break at the Hole-in-the-Wall, a gap in the drystone wall which marks the start of Striding Edge (from there, a separate path runs down to Red Tarn, this being the path we’d taken that time we camped out overnight). The Christmas cake, good walking food that, was duly sliced up and washed down with the tea from the flask. I’d made it black, as I know from experience that the metal makes the milk taste funny, although as the flask in question has been used for coffee many times it gave the tea a certain taste – from there on, we took to calling it ‘cofftea’.

Striding Edge, which is just under a mile long, starts off quite pleasantly with a well-marked path to the right of the ridge itself. This gradually changes as the ridge sharpens, with the path sometimes switching to the left of the high point and sometimes leaving the walker with no option but to walk (or scramble) along the frost-coated top, with views of the Helevllyn summit ahead. We were most certainly not alone, for there were people who’d come up from Patterdale as well as Glenridding (the two paths meet at the Hole-in-the-Wall); such is the allure of Striding Edge that when the weather’s nice (which it was), it is very popular.

For me, the hardest part was at the end of the ridge where you have to descend – awkwardly – before scrambling up a rocky path that leads onto the summit itself. Part-way up, there was a great view to be had of the now-completed ridge itself, and as we approached the summit we stopped briefly at the memorial to poor old Charles Gough (who was just 21 when he died).

The summit itself – the shelter and the cairn which marks the highest point (3,118 feet, or 950 metres) – was busy. As well as our fellow-walkers who’d come up Striding Edge, there were a couple of groups of students and even a few mountain-bikers who’d come up from the (considerably less arduous) Thirlmere side. Having admired the view, we had our lunch at the shelter and Alex took the cyclists’ group photo for them by the trig-point. The hip-flask came out for a celebratory swig, as it always had done years ago (the one thing that’s changed there is that we used to put blended Scotch in it, and now it’s single malt).

Getting down via Swirral Edge was something of a scramble, albeit nothing like the upward one we had done years ago. Looking down from the path, we could see the steep scree-slope that we’d ascended before, including a near-vertical climb to get to the path! What had we been thinking? Down by Red Tarn, we tried and failed to work out exactly where we’d camped before heading back to the car at Glenridding.

Back in the comfort of an Ambleside pub that evening, we plotted our next move. We’d allowed for two days in the Lakes, in case the first day wasn’t good weather-wise, but it had been a fine day and there was another one forecast. What to do next? How about another Wainwright Fell, preferably another of the higher ones, elsewhere in the Lake District? I bought an aerial map that marks the Wainwrights in height order (Helvellyn being number three). It turned out that we’d actually ‘bagged’ more Wainwrights than we had thought, for although by dropping down from Swirral Edge to Red Tarn we had not ascended Catstye Cam (number ten), we had unknowingly included number 78 on the way up, for Wainwright had included Birkstone Moor, that plateau before Striding Edge, as a fell in its own right!

Anyway, after some discussion we decided that the following day we would head west and attempt Sca Fell; having done England’s third-highest mountain, we figured that we might as well top that by going for the second-highest. But that’s another story… 

No picnic on Mount Kenya (part 3)

When I was unable to sleep during the night at Shipton’s Camp, all I could hear in our dorm was the sound of the mice scrabbling around on the floor. I did manage a few hours though, and was woken up by Jesse at around 3:10am.

           

I got dressed very quickly – tee-shirt, clean boxers, shirt, trousers, three pairs of socks, jumper, fleece, waterproofs, gloves and woolly hat. Everyone else, it seemed, was heading down via the Naro Moro route and so had to sort out all of their kit, which would be carried by the porters, while I didn’t have to bother as I would be coming back down the way I’d come. Which was just as well really, because I didn’t much fancy having to lug my kit all the way to the top, which I would’ve had to do as I was the only trekker who was too cheap to pay for a porter.

           

While getting ready, we all got a bit of a laugh at the expense of a group of Irish girls. They’d taken much longer than the rest of us to reach Shipton’s the previous day, and so their guide had decided that they’d better start before everyone else. By 3:20, though, one of them announced that they were running late. “Since when,” asked Jesse, “has 3:20 in the morning been late?”

After several cups of tea and some of my chocolate biscuits, Moses and I set off at four – after everyone else had left; he had reckoned that, given our pace on the last two days, we could still make it to the summit for sunrise. As we left the hut, I couldn’t see the gully we had to climb up, but I could see the pinpricks of light at various points from everyone’s torches. Sticking behind Moses, with my Maglite on and with the theme tune to Where Eagles Dare inexplicably playing in my head, I made my way to the gully.

Luckily, it wasn’t a scree slop and we made it up there with a steady, slow pace suited me at that altitude. Pole, pole – slowly, slowly in Swahili – is the unofficial motto of mountain-trekkers in East Africa. Well, I thought we were going slow but it wasn’t long before we passed the Irish girls, got out of the gully and onto the scree above it – according to Moses, another reason why the final ascent is always done before dawn is because that means you can’t see how bad the scree slope is. I have always disliked scree because you lose a pace for every couple you walk on the loose surface. Despite this, we still made good pace.

           

By around five, we caught up with Jesse and his guide, and subsequently we stuck with them and continued to make our way ever upwards in the darkness. By this stage, my hands were numb with the cold despite the fact that I’d kept my gloves on and had been constantly moving my fingers in order to help with the circulation. We couldn’t have been walking for more than forty minutes as an extended group until Moses stopped us. He explained that we were just below the final ascent, and that as we’d made such good time we needed to stop otherwise we’d get to the top while it was still dark! So we had a short break, during which I offered around some chocolate that I’d thought to put in my pocket back at Shipton’s. We sat facing east, watching a distinct glow appear on the horizon. The sun wasn’t up just yet, but there was enough light for us to switch our torches off – apart from Jesse, whose torch had died on him some time previously. It was in this grey pre-dawn that we made the final ascent.

          

 

We climbed to a saddle, from which we could see a glacier below – the same glacier that we’d seen when looking up from Shipton’s. Point Lenana itself cannot be seen from Shipton’s, from which it is obscured by an outcrop of jagged rock. This outcrop was now to our left, with Lenana itself to our right. And after a short scramble, we were on Point Lenana – 4,985m (or around 16,300ft) – and we truly felt that we had reached the top of the world.

           

The high-point itself is marked by a metal cross and a metal Kenyan flag, along with a couple of memorial plaques. Although my fingers were by now frozen, I got my camera out to take some photos – we could literally see for miles, although all that we could see for those miles was low cloud. But that’s missing the point – all that cloud was just so low compared to us! As we were on the peak itself, the sun rose – a fantastic experience, watching sunrise from the top of an African mountain. We all shuffled round so that each of us could get their photo taken on the high spot – and despite the wind-chill-induced sub-zero temperatures, everyone was really excited – sunrise at the summit! We’d done it!

           

Too soon, it seemed, we had to head back down, and it was therefore time for me to part company from the others, who'd be going down via a different route and then heading straight back to Nairobi. Jesse and I had exchanged e-mail addresses – though quite how we were able to write anything with our frozen hands I don’t know.

           

Walking down, and with my waterproof jacket now off as we were out of the wind, we passed the Irish girls who were still on their way up and looking as though they’d definitely bitten off more than they could chew (so to speak). I told them that they didn’t have far to go and that it was “totally fuckin’ worth it” – clearly I was still on some sort of adrenalin high as a result of reaching the summit – and the only one of them who had sufficient energy to respond called me a “bloody liar”.

           

Descending that scree was no fun at all, as I’d known it wouldn’t be, although Moses was most definitely in his element and I had a job to keep up with him – a job not helped by the fact that I had to stop to take my waterproof trousers off before the lower part of my body became drenched in sweat, as the sun was now well and truly up.

           

I reckon it took us an hour and twenty minutes to get down from Point Lenana. As soon as we got back, Moses went straight into breakfast-making mode (what a guy!) while I staggered into my dorm and tried to sort my stuff out. Breakfast was some sort of millet-based porridge which was great with plenty of sugar, followed by sausages, omelettes and pancakes. As well as being an excellent guide, that man was an amazing cook.

           

Over breakfast, I chatted to one of the Irish girls, who’d decided after about an hour’s walking that she wasn’t going to make it to the top, so she came straight back down to Shipton’s and went back to bed. Probably a wise choice in the circumstances.

After breakfast, Moses announced that as he’d now ran out of food he could carry some of my kit in his backpack. Just when I thought he couldn’t have gone up any higher in my estimation!

           

We set off at nine. Most people who trek Mount Kenya tend to take two days over the descent; I’d opted for one – from Point Lenana at sunrise, I’d be spending the evening in a Nanyuki bar with a well-earned bottle of Tusker beer. The trek from Shipton’s down to Old Moses took us just over three hours, and the pace killed off any lingering post-summit elation I still had. Nevertheless, I took great delight in telling anyone who I met going the other way that I’d stood on Point Lenana at sunrise that morning. One group of English students I encountered looked absolutely shattered, even though by the time I encountered them they were less than an hour out of Old Moses, and they had porters.

           

After lunch at Old Moses – I could’ve sworn Moses had told me he’d cooked all the food, so he’d obviously left enough behind to rustle up a vegetable omelette for our return journey – the walk back down to the park gates was fairly straightforward. I’d caught my breath back from the fast descent from Shipton’s, and after being fed and rested I flet good. Moses, by the way, seemed utterly unaffected by both altitude and pace  – but then, he did this for a living.

           

The final part of our walk became a bit of a nature trail. We saw loads of baboons, who seemed disturbed by some sort of predator lurking in the trees – Moses reckoned that there was probably a leopard nearby – along with several colubus monkeys and a blue duiker. There was also plenty of evidence of buffalo (hoof-prints), elephants (piles of poo) and spotted hyenas (more poo; hyena poo is easily identifiable because it’s white, from the bones of whatever animal they’ve eaten). Moses, who’d already admitted earlier in the trek to being an addict of wildlife documentaries, was a walking encyclopaedia as far as African animals and birds are concerned. Factor in his cooking skills and his expertise on the mountain, and I think that I’m not exaggerating when I say that I had the perfect guide for my Mount Kenya trek. Not bad considering that I met him on a street corner while he was touting for business!

           

We made it back to the park gates at four; I reckoned that, taking stoppages into account, I’d walked for nine hours that day, a fair amount of which had been at altitude.

Back in Nanyuki, I got my stuff back from the Montana Trekks office and checked into a room in the Jambo House Hotel where said office was located – on the grounds that I didn’t feel like lugging all my stuff any great distance. Even taking it all up two flights of stairs was a challenge in the circumstances though. After finalising the paperwork at the office – saying very nice things about them in their visitors’ book, generously tipping Moses and ordering my certificate (to be collected the next morning, I did what everyone had been talking about doing the previous evening. Still clad in my sweat-streaked walking-clothes, without even removing my boots in fact, and smelling like I hadn’t washed properly for a few days (because I hadn’t), I headed straight for the hotel bar and ordered an ice-cold bottle of Tusker. Beer has rarely tasted so good.

No picnic on Mount Kenya (part 2)

I was amazed at how warm I was on my first night in a Mount Kenya bunkhouse – especially as I only had a lightweight, two-season sleeping-bag. If Old Moses was anything to go by, the bunkhouses were evidently of better quality than I’ve been led to expect from reading my guidebook.

On the morning of Day Two, Moses excelled himself with a breakfast of omelettes, sausages and pancakes – by far the most substantial breakfast I’d had since leaving England. Jesse and Laurie seemed very jealous of this, until they got the same served up by their guides.

           

We set off at 7:20am, about ten minutes after Jesse, Laurie and their assorted guides and porters – I, evidently, was the only hiker who was cheap enough to want to carry his own backpack. We’d be walking a total of 14km (just over 8½ miles) and ascending 900m (just over 2,900 feet) up to Shipton’s Camp, the departure point for the (very) early morning assault on Point Lenana.

           

We were above the tree-line. Moses pointed out several different types of plants to me as well as birds; of the latter, we saw starlings of the slender-billed and red-winged varieties, and a female beautiful songbird. There were also several mountain chats, who get very close-up to you; Moses says that they are nicknamed ‘friendly chats’ because of this. I felt lucky to have ended up with a guide who is as keen on birds as I am.

           

For much of the morning, we walked along with Jesse and Laurie. At one stop, we had a clear view of the peaks of Mount Kenya – Lenana to the left of the two highest points, Nelion and Batian, which can only be climbed by mountaineers with the proper skills and equipment. We stopped at this viewpoint, and took some photographs.

           

The walk then became an exercise in contouring for the most part, rising by Shipton’s Caves and then becoming steeper as we made our way up to the camp itself. We arrived at 12:30 – not bad at all when you consider that the guides had all estimated that we would be there at 2! I felt tired but felt much better after a cup of tea (some things don’t change, even at over 13,000 feet). Even so, I had during the course of the day’s hike decided that if I was going to attempt Kilimanjaro after this I would definitely arrange to have a porter carry my kit.

           

That said, the only kit-related problem so far was that Moses had asked me this morning to help him carry some of the food – including an avocado. I wouldn’t have given this much thought, but the confounded thing split during the walk, meaning that part of the inside of my backpack got covered by a green slime-like substance. Luckily I kept all my kit in plastic bags, a trick I learned in the Scouts, but I still had to use some toilet-roll to clean the backpack out.

           

In terms of layout, Shipton’s Camp was similar to Old Moses – a collection of huts with separate accommodation for the guides and porters. The bunk-rooms were smaller, and there were a lot more mice, who all had black-and-white stripes on their backs.

           

In the afternoon we went on another acclimatisation walk, climbing a further 900 feet up, although we didn’t go up the gully that is the route up out of the camp towards the summit. Moses, who was still able to smoke at altitude (I’d decided to leave my cigarettes back in Nanyuki) reckoned that this would stand us in good stead for the following morning, and he even insisted that we stay up for at least 20 minutes so that I could get used to the extra altitude. 900 feet may not seem like a lot but there was a definite difference in the air compared to Shipton’s; I found my pulse racing and I was very short of breath.

           

Back down, Moses told me that we would have a 3:30am start the next morning; he reckoned it would take 2-3 hours to get to the summit, which has to be reached at sunrise because that’s the time of day when it’s least likely to be cloudy at that height. Looking up as he said this (at around 5pm), we couldn’t see anything for the clouds, in contrast to the clear skies we’d enjoyed on our earlier walk. In fact, on our acclimatisation walk we’d gone up the the cloud level, more or less.

           

I wished I’d thought to take a book with me, or at the very least a deck of cards, which would have been a great way to pass the time before dinner. All I’d brought was a Mount Kenya map-guide that I’d purchased in Nanyuki, and Moses has more or less convinced me that the information on the map is somewhat less than reliable. That said, I was the only trekker who had a map and everyone else wanted to have a look. Dinner was be served at around 6:30, and after that was an early bed-time for everyone. Only one man has bought a book with him, and it was a true story called No Picnic on Mount Kenya. This was written by Felice Benuzzi, an Italian who was taken prisoner during the Ethiopian campaign in the Second World War and sent to a POW camp in Nanyuki. There, he persuaded two of his comrades to escape with him, their only purpose being to attempt to climb Mount Kenya and then return to the camp.

There was plenty of conversation to be had over dinner, initially at how big the portions were. The guides – Moses was by no means the only one who doubled up as a cook – they had all carried fresh food up with them, and we ate very well. One bloke, a New York-based Englishman, even had a table-cloth laid out for him before his meal was served!

           

No-one stayed up for very long though – we would all have an early start the next morning. Before going to bed, the New York Englishman apologised to me in advance; my bunk was right next to the toilet, and as a result he was convinced he’d wake me up during the night.

To be concluded...

No picnic on Mount Kenya (part 1)

 Way back in 2005 I went travelling in Africa. Actually, that’s an understatement. Over the course of six months, I travelled from Cairo all the way down to Cape Town. When planning this trip, I’d made a list of things that I wanted to do there. Hiking up Mount Kenya came towards the top of this list. I could boast of some previous experience of trekking in the mountains, although in terms of high-altitude multi-day treks (in the Alps and the Pyrenees) I hadn’t done anything for several years.

By late August of 2005 I had made it down to a provincial Kenyan town called Nanyuki, which is located on the Equator. Nanyuki is also the nearest town to Mount Kenya, and it’s where a lot of the trekking companies are based. But where were they? I went looking, but I was looking on a Sunday and they were all closed. I resolved to go back the following day, but just when I was heading back to my hotel I was approached by a man in the street (near the bus station, as it happens) who asked if I was looking to trek up Mount Kenya. If you’re a mzungu in Nanyuki, that’s a fair assumption. His name was Moses and he worked as a guide for Montana Trekks (yes, that’s how it was spelt), based in the nearby Jambo House Hotel.

We got chatting, and after being taken to the company’s office (located on the ground floor of said hotel) I decided that there was no point in extending my search for other trekking companies. I’d found what I was looking for, and I’d even found the man who’d be taking me up the mountain – Moses, clearly a man who knew his stuff when it came to mountains in this part of the world, was to be my guide. It was a choice I would not regret; I wouldn’t usually recommend trusting a random local you meet on the street, but this time it paid off!

Anticipating some serious mountain trekking, I’d bought my hiking boots with me on the grounds that I hadn’t wanted to chance it by borrowing or hiring a pair once I got to wherever I would be starting my trek from. So far, said boots had been used for strolling around in the hills surrounding Aksum and on that day when I’d gone to the Blue Nile Falls. Now, I hoped, they would come into their own – as would the the waterproof jacket which had already seen African service in Gondar and the hitherto-unused fleece. I hadn’t packed everything I’d need for a proper mountain trek, though – for some reason I hadn’t thought to include such obvious essentials as gloves, a woolly hat and waterproof trousers when loading up my backpack in anticipation of going to Africa.

Luckily for me, though, Montana Trekks – like all good trekking companies – had taken this into account, and when I turned up at the office on Monday to book my trek and sort out payment Moses let me loose in their store-room, which was full of items that various backpackers had left behind over the years. I emerged with a pair of decent gloves, a pair of red, heavy-duty waterproof trousers (which he reckoned I’d only need for the summit walk anyway – and only then for protection from the wind) and a multi-coloured woollen ski-hat that I’d have liked to have kept. After arranging my trek for the following day, I went to a local general store to buy some snacks for the trek – to my delight, the place sold McVitie’s Chocolate Hob-Nobs, so I bought a packet of them along with some chocolate bars.

The following morning, I got to the Montana Trekks office early, and deposited my non-walking kit (which filled five plastic bags) in the store-room. Shortly after nine, Moses arrived and started sorting out his kit; he reckoned that my pack was too heavy but quite frankly I wasn’t sure what I could have left out of it. I’d decided to carry my own backpack, mainly because I hadn’t wanted to pay the extra money to have a porter to do it for me. For his part, Moses was carrying all of our food as well as his personal kit.

We would be trekking up to Point Lenana, which at 4,985 metres (16,355 feet) is the third-highest peak of Mount Kenya and the highest that can be reached without specialist climbing equipment.

           

Our transport to the Sirimon Park Gate was a Toyota saloon that had to be push-started. During the journey itself, our driver turned off the main road onto a dirt-track, which his car was patently unsuitable for. Was this the road to the Mount Kenya National Park gate? No. It turned out that Moses had decided that he needed to pick up an extra jumper from his home.

When we got to the Sirimon Gate after a journey that took over an hour, we completed the signing-in formalities with the rangers on duty. Moses had to show them his official guide certificate (complete with hand-print, as not all guides are literate) and sort out the park fees, while I had to show them my passport.

           

We got started at around eleven, and the walk itself lasted for about three hours. Using the Sirimon Route, which approaches Mount Kenya from the north-west, we walked through woodland for the most part along a very clearly-defined path. Moses pointed out several piles of elephant dung (apparently recent), and identified two types of birds for me – mountain chat and auger buzzard.

           

Old Moses Camp, our base for the first night was above the tree-line at around 3,300 metres (11,000 feet) above sea level; it consisted of several single-storey wooden huts. Once we got there, Moses made his way into the kitchen hut and got on with the business of preparing lunch while I claimed one of the bunk-beds for myself (us tourists were in a different bunkhouse to the guides, cooks and porters). I do not wish to sound ungrateful but I did not like the lunch at all – it was an avocado salad, and things probably weren’t helped by the fact that it looked disconcertingly like green vomit. The tea, made with sugar and condensed milk, was much appreciated, though.

           

As was expected, I wasn’t the only hiker at Old Moses – although I was the only one with Montana Trekks. Over the course of the afternoon, I was joined by a couple of Americans, some Irish girls and one other Englishman. He was called Laurie and he must’ve been in his sixties. In fact, he hadn’t been in England for years – he ran a commercial fishing company in Madagascar but had taken some time off to go mountaineering. He said he’d climbed Kilimanjaro the previous week.

           

Some time after lunch, Moses and I did an acclimatisation walk to help get me used to the altitude – we went up another 200 metres. The ground around Old Moses Camp seemed to be very boggy – although Moses assured me that it is not as bad as the eastern Naro Moro route, where ‘vertical bogs’ – I shuddered to think what those were – are a common feature.

           

I spent much of the afternoon chatting to one of the Americans, who was about my age. Jesse was from Colorado, although he’d been studying in Cape Town and after Kenya planned to visit Morocco and travel around Europe. Last week, he’d been down in the Maasai Mara, which I intended to visit after Mount Kenya – he’d had a great time there and showed me plenty of photos he’d taken of animal kills on his digital camera. Like everyone else apart from me, he’d arranged his trek from Nairobi.

           

After watching the sunset, we all sat down for dinner – prepared for us by our respective guides. My main course of meat-and-about-six-veg was immense, and the others were served with similar-sized portions.

It was a clear night, and the sky was full of stars. I felt a twinge of regret that I couldn’t identify any of the constellations.

To be continued...