Three miles high !!

Barry and I have safely returned to Nairobi from our ascent of Mt. Kenya and we are both very tired but happy campers. We spent a total of 5 days in the park and spent 4 of those climbing Africa's second highest peak. Barry adjusted to the climb much better that did I, and on day 3 I thought I would never make it to the top due to a bad case of altitude sickness. I awoke that morning with no energy, a splitting headache and nausea that resisted even my anti-nausea medication. Thankfully this began to pass after only one day and then I was right as rain again. I somehow managed to slog it out to the next camp while I was sick and by the following morning Barry and I summitted the mountains second peak to an altitude of 4950m (16300 ft). From the top we could see all the way to Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is over 150 km to the south. Barry tells me that this is the farthest distance you can see on earth from one point of land to another. It was incredibly cold considering we are were at the equator. There is a huge glacier at the top and we were regularly treated to hail and even snowed at the higher elevations. We sure wished we had brought our winter sleeping bags for the last few days.


The climb itself had much to offer as the plants and animals here could only be described as bizarre, like nothing I have ever seen. We managed to spy a very elusive aardvark and the trees that covered the countryside above the 'treeline' were out of this world. One climber described the scenery as something out of Star Trek (the original, not the vastly inferior crap the nineties).


The hike out was uneventful but grueling. We originally planned to take a different route out but some guides warned us that these trails were difficult to pass due to recent rain storms that drenched the slopes each afternoon. These frequent and heavy rainfalls have resulted in the formation of "vertical bogs". If you have never experienced one of these consider yourself lucky. My knowledge of physics was often tested by how such steep slopes could possible hold that much standing water. In the end we more or less retraced our 3 day, 22km ascent in just under 6 hours! Once at the park gate we were exhausted so we arranged for a taxi to take us back to our comfortable hotel room for our first showers in 5 days. I now know the true definition of heaven!