Nanyuki, 20 Jan 07...
mud, the first new route, vulture poo...and more mud!
by Lianna
After
spending a few days in Nairobi fixing BiRT up, buying stocks and tools and equipment,
we decided it was high time to go climbing. The open road was calling, and our
first destination was Lukenya, a 10-100m high granite crag 30km outside Nairobi.
It offers trad and sport, multi-pitch and single-pitch, adventure and safety,
and a great campsite next to a school that lets us use it's swimming pool for
a small fee - just what you want after a hard days' cranking under the African
sun.
But first we had to get there - no small task as it turned out. We left Nairobi quite late, shopped for quite a long time, got stuck in the rush hour traffic, then tried to drive 3km down a dirt track after some pretty heavy rain. End result - it was 9pm and dark, and most of us were knee-deep in liquid clay, shovelling and digging and laying the sand mats that hopefully would provide enough traction to allow BiRT to pull out of the deep deep mud she has sunk into! It was a bit of an effort, but we managed in the end.
To access Lukenya, you must drive through the grounds of Lukenya Academy, and it's also possible to camp on their land. This was our plan, and the Academy knew we were on our way. So when we arrived (eventually...) two very helpful school guards showed us the way to the best campsite. Great. Finally dinner time we thought! Unfortunately though, the guards hadn't realised that the small dammed lake next to our campsite had burst it's banks due to the recent heavy rain. So BiRT got stuck again, and we all camped in a swamp. Dinner sure did taste nice when we finally managed to light the fire and get it cooked!
Everything
calmed down a little for the following few days. After a digger came from
the nearby quarry to pull BiRT out of the mud, she sank again and the digger
came again. But we enjoyed 4 days of awesome climbing on great rock, good
weather, a couple of impressive tumbles and one very significant new route,
Flaking Out, HVS 5a, a 7-pitch girdle traverse of Lukenya's main face. We
enjoyed the company of members of the Mountaineering Club of Kenya, who joined
us for a few routes, reminiscences and a few beers. Watching the full moon
rise and light up the african plains, and then falling asleep to the noise
of a thousand randy bull-frogs croaking the night away, everything was very
peaceful...
But the time to move on came, so we broke camp, went and bought more food, then headed out into the bush again. 25km down a dirt track (we didn't get stuck this time...) took us to Frog, a small crag in the Ngong Hills, and from here the views of the Rift Valley stretching away into the distance are amazing. The acacia plains there are home to zebra and giraffe and cheetah. Hyenas and baboons came rummaging through camp on a couple of occasions, trying to snaffle any food they could find, I tell you, there is nothing more bone-chilling that being woken up with the barking of hyenas next to your tent.
We
spent a few days at Frog. Legally, Frog is on military land, but historically,
the land was all Maasai, which meant we had a few conversations with them
about our climbing rights - all solved very amicably with smiles and hand-shakes
all round. Myself and Peter spent a short while with one of the Maasai learning
all about bush craft and medicine, which was bizarre purely because he was
wearing a suit and tie, in the middle of the african bush!
Our next stop was Hells Gate National Park near Lake Naivasha. Our campsite there was Fisherman’s Camp, and idyllic grassy spot next to the lake, where the hippos come out of the lake to graze at night. Every night at about 3am a few of the big daddy hippos have a loud noisy fight, and it's tempting to wrap your sleeping bag a little tighter around yourself in some misguided belief that this will stop a rampaging hippo from trampling your tent. The climbing at Hells Gate ranged from Fishers Tower - a nice solid 25m high tower with 14 pleasant routes of all grades on it, to the Main Wall - a 150m high crag that rarely gets climbed but frequently gets shat on by vultures. Main Wall was adventurous and epic but now, a few days later, people are laughing at the photos of their guano-covered faces!
And
that brings us pretty much up to date. We are now in Timau River Lodge, a
lovely offbeat campsite on the flanks of Mt Kenya, which has geese, ducks,
turkeys, chickens, dogs, rabbits, tortoises and a whole menagerie of other
less identifiable animals that all run amok between the tents all day and
all night. People are planning and packing, buying food, collecting gear and
fuel for our big push up Mt Kenya. Tomorrow we begin our three day walk in
to the Austrian Hut, which we will use as the base from which we'll try and
battle our way to the top of Nelion and Batian and several of the other peaks.
It's going to be cold and hard, in contrast to the past few weeks, but it's
going to be great!
Check in again in a couple of weeks to see whether all the excitement was well-founded or not!
