The cold, crisp morning wind brushed gently across my face as I gazed longingly up. Up towards an unobtainable objective. Unobtainable not because I lacked the enthusiasm, not because I lacked the gear, not because I lacked the ability, but unobtainable because of the loss of a climbing partner. Ah, the tips of the dual peaks of Batian and Nelion were just being illuminated by a brilliant golden glow among the white whisps of partial low clouds. How I wished I could be there on the summit. The whole of the Mt Kenya National Park and beyond would be below me. The long shadows cast by the golden dawn would give the landscape that glorious colour and texture that is only visible at dawn and dusk. I’d step away from the summit of Nelion, climbing gear at the ready for some abseiling, traversing and climbing to the summit of the last peak of the traverse, Point John, before abseiling all the way down the mountain and back to our tents at the bottom.
But reality can be frustrating. I never did get to see dawn from Howel Hut on the summit of Nelion. Months of planning and training, thwarted by some street food in Nairobi. But let’s take a couple of steps back. Back to the dream. To the hopes of two young lads with their eyes set on doing the youngest traverse of the ridge line containing Africa’s second highest peak.
The story of this trip began five days before the closing date of the 2024 MCSA Supertramp Award when my fellow University of Cape Town Mountain & Ski Club (UCTMSC) member, Matthew Trollip, contacted me asking if I’d be keen to apply for the award with either a trip to Mt Mulanje or Mt Kenya. Some recent unpleasant memories of jungleneering discouraged the idea of climbing through the overgrown sections on Mulanje and having had my eye on Mt Kenya for a couple of years, I chose the latter option. Next was the route. Matt suggested that we either attempt to do the second ascent of a newly opened Wyoming Route up the Diamond Buttress set up by two Americans, Mark Jenkins and Justin Bowen, or attempt the Mt Kenya Grand Traverse; a three-day traverse of the Mt Kenya ridge line, ticking the four highest peaks on the ridge line: Point Piggot (4 957m), Batian (5 199m), Nelion (5 188m) and Point John (4 883m). After some discussion, we decided that the Grand Traverse would be a heck of a lot more exciting, so we chose to apply for the Supertramp Award with the Grand Traverse.
Unfortunately, we were not awarded the original Supertramp funding, but early in 2024, I received communication from the MCSA that we would receive funding under the title of the Young Mountaineers Award. The dream was becoming a reality!
The MCSA funding managed to cover flights to Kenya, transport to and from Mt Kenya National Park, guide fees (it is law that you have to hire a hiking guide within the park) and park fees. Due to a change in the park rules, we ended up having to pay double what we had anticipated for park fees which severely drained our budget as we now had to pay a good $300 each for the eight days that we were to spend in the park. I contacted the Magaliesberg Section of the MCSA and Mike Behr from CityRock Pretoria to ask for some additional funding for gear. Both were very generous and thus our gear was sorted.
While I was already quite outdoor-fit going into the year, I was determined to up my game in preparation for the trip as, being the stronger climber, I would be leading most of the pitches with a pack at altitude. I hiked much more than I had previously to up my leg and endurance game, read books on training, intentionally carried much more weight than necessary on most outdoor trips and focused my climbing training on weight-added endurance. Some of this included running up and down Devil’s Peak before class, blindly ascending up ravines on Table Mountain, doing the Swartberg Traverse with a full trad rack and 80m rope (my bag was at least 22kg) and ascending the Waaihoek Trail twice in a day in both bad weather and at night (a good 2 400m of ascent and 1 200m of descent over 15km in half a day). By the time of the trip, I was feeling more than prepared.
The day of departure finally arrived, I said goodbyes to my family and hopped on the Gautrain with my then 27kg backpack and a 20kg suitcase full of gear and food. A two-layover flight from OR Tambo to Nairobi, through Kigali and Entebbe, and a sketchy taxi ride took me to Jabulani Backpackers where Matt was already waiting at 6:40 in the morning. As the flights and layovers were in the middle of the night, I got virtually no sleep, but my energy levels were on a high anyway simply due to the pure excitement of finally being in Kenya. We met our trusty mountain guide, David Maina Wanjohi, at the backpackers and hopped in a David-organised shuttle to take us to Naro Moru. Once at the Naro Moru gate (2 600m), we reorganised our gear and started the hike up to the Met Station (3 000m) where we spent the first night.
The next day, we ascended through the infamous Vertical Bog on the way to Mackinder’s Camp (4 300m). The walk itself was not particularly demanding, but from about 3 500m, Matt started to feel a bit under the weather. A headache started then and by the time we got to Mackinder’s, his headache had increased in pain to a 6/10 and he had an upset stomach. He had arrived in Nairobi a couple of days before me and had done some exploring. Unfortunately, however, in his exploring he encountered a fatefully delicious street-food dish of beef. He got food poisoning and thoroughly unleashed the contents of his bowels into the Nairobi sewage system as a result and thought that was the end of it. However, it was not. Matt ate very little the rest of that day and by the following morning, his headache had increased to a 9/10. After some discussion, we decided to abort the mission. Matt would descend to the park gate with David, while I would stay at Mackinder’s for the day and wait for David to return, after which David and I would make our way around the mountain to Shipton’s Camp, the main climbing camp at that time of year.
The rest of the trip can be summarised in a disappointingly short amount of time. David and I hiked to every single camp around Mt Kenya searching for climbers – to no avail. The only people there were non-climbers paying guides to take them up for the amazing price of $400 per person per day! The only peaks ticked along the way were the hiking ones like Pt Lenana (4 985m) and a couple of other minor rises in the ridge lines, like Midget Peak.
After a couple of days, we exited the park via the stunning Chogoria Route and on the last day in the park, we did a 19km rest day hike to visit Niti Falls and Lake Ellis. Another shuttle took David and I back to Jabulani Backpackers the following day where I met up with Matt who had spent the rest of his trip on the Kenyan coast. An 03:00 flight brought me back to South Africa where I returned frustrated, but grateful all the same.
While we did unfortunately have to abandon the expedition objectives, I learnt a number of valuable things. I had never been to altitudes higher than the Drakensberg, around 3 300m, so I was very curious to see how my body would react to physical strain above that. I was pleased to find out that I felt only a very mild headache on one of the days on the trip, having spent five days above 4 000m, three above 4 500m and ascending to just below 5 000m. This was a promising discovery for future trips. I also learnt about planning an expedition, adequate training for mountaineering, traveling solo in a foreign environment, and of course, about Kenya and Mt Kenya. I now have detailed photos of the mountain from all angles and have planned a proper route for the Grand Traverse as no such description exists. This was an invaluable reconnaissance mission if nothing else and I am more than happy to share this information with anyone interested.
A huge thank you to the sponsors: MCSA Young Explorer Award, MCSA Magaliesberg Section, Mike Behr and CityRock Pretoria, and my parents. A special thank you to Mattew Trollip, without whom none of this would have been possible.
Loren Ehlers
