The Lost Mountain
"From
the crest of the ridge the last half of the plateau was finally revealed.
The vast natural forces that had thrown up these regular downs had suddenly
run wild. In the docile plain there opened a gorge perhaps half a mile wide,
leading to a bowl shaped valley. It was the valley of Wehni. From the center
rose the scoriated black thumb that was the mountain. It was in fact twice
the height that it first appeared and its sides perfectly sheer to the ground.
Once again my stomach contracted in fear."Thomas Peckenham, The mountains
of Rasselas.
We have just been back from the first successfully expedition to climb to
the
summit of Mt Wehni. We are the first known people to be on the summit since
it was the prison to 200 princes 300 years ago. Two helicopter missions failed
to land on the summit. The british forces could not climb the peak and numerous
explorers were just left at its base imagining what treasure the summit still
held. The princes were held on the peak to protect the king from being over-thrown,
all 200 of them were kept on a summit 120m by 80m. until they were needed.
The cut steps and wooden steaks that were used to climb the peak had long
gone and the closest you could get to the visible ruins was by looking across
from the hill tops on the other side of the valley.
Where do I start, perhaps at the point when we were joined at Gondar (Town
in Ethiopia) by Bill Lumly and Gar 
Powell-evans.
The former is proposing to write a book on our Mt Wehni Experience, and the
latter a photo journalist proposes to submit an article to the sunday times!!!!
They arrived armed with maps, two way radios and a massive amount of enthusiasm.
You could imagine their horror when we heard from a local that a climbing
team accompanied by the BBC had left 2 weeks before us with the same objective
in mind. We were all shocked and upset to think that we had missed out on
the first ascent by only two weeks. It was not long until we discovered that
the local was actually talking about us. We had passed through Gondar 1 week
earlier to climb some basalt towers in the north and he had added the BBC
bit to the story himself. Happy again knowing that it was still unclimbed
we sat down with the maps to try and figure out the minor problem of where
the mountain was!!! Gar was able to get the grid reference from the forces
expedition and had plotted it on his maps. The position it gave us was 70km
north of where the sketch diagram in Thomas Peckenhams book shows it to be.
Who do we trust? The British army or a pencil drawn map. Of course we went
with the sketch map. This was the first time the mountains position would
change for us, but not the last.
I
had been put in touch with a local lad that claimed to know the where abouts
of the peak from a contact in a village further south. An unused road could
get us 5km from the peak ,but as the roads were so bad we needed to get a
local bus/tank to drive us in. That night the bags along with 30kg of oranges,
150 loafs of bread, 250l of water, 10kg of the smallest onions in the world,
and all the climbing kit we could collect was packed into the "bus".
We left the next morning at 6:00.
The bus stopped 5 hours latter at the town of Addis Zemman.Our guide jumped
out and spoke to a man, after a heated discussion they both came on to the
bus and informed us the walk started here. The mountain had moved again!!
We were informed that it layed 20km that way ( direction given by a throw
of an arm). We had to trust this nearly blind old man, and go against the
advise of the trusty contact. This was hard to do, as to walk in 20km and
find out he had directed you to his hut for lunch would have been soul destroying.
But we trusted the blind man and packed up the water and food onto the backs
of 11 very small donkeys and set off. The word had gone round the village
that white people were here to climb their hills, and a crowd of a couple
of hundred kids screaming YOU YOU YOU at us escorted us for the first hour
of
the walk.
The donkeys were useless we were "walking" (pushing donkeys up hills)
at an average speed of 1.5kmph, and with the big pass still to come getting
to base camp that night was out of the question. In farct we only managed
to get half way. The last 100m to the top of the hill involved us carrying
the water for the donkeys. We camped on the out skirts of a small village.
We still did not know if the peak we were walking towards was the one we wanted.
We left early the next morning, with their bellies full of straw, the donkeys
trotted on at a happy pace. The hill top opened out to a flat plateau, rather
like salisbury plain but with monkeys. There at the edge of the plateau we
received the same view that Thomas Peckenham had 50 years ago. Did my stomach
contract in fear? No! Did I smile like a kid at christmas and almost cry with
relief and for the joy of the others? Yes! There it was only a couple of Km
away we could make out the ruins on the summit and the guard house built two
thirds the way up the cliff. We made a base camp under an enormous olive tree
and in the shadow of the west face of Mt Wehni. 
The audience had grown and the murmur of the crowd had grown to an excited
roar. The forangis had come to climb the prison of the princes. There was
suddenly a mad cry from the hill overlooking the col on which we camped. Aman
stripped down naked and started running down towards us. He reached as pot
20m away stopped and started whipping him self while dancing in a style of
a religious "stomp" after one had just licked the cane toad. Our
guide,Mike, translated his cries and told us that he is upset, because we
will steal the arc of the covenant that is on top of the peak!!! The local
priests took this seriously. After an hour or two they approached us and said
that before we climb we had to have our bags checked so when we returned they
would know what we had taken from the summit. This gave us a buzz, as they
really had no idea of what was on the summit.
The route I climbed was easy climbing but very unprotected (Placing only 4
bits of protection in 6 pitches of climbing). Along the route we would come
across very polished rock. This would have been done by the thousands of princess
passing up and down the route. About 60m from the summit we passed through
the door way of the guard house and from there I could see the rest was just
a scramble. We had done it we had completed the dream of so many explorers
and were about to join the vultures in knowing what secrets layed on top.
The top was covered in long grass hiding all the walls and pot holes what
we stumbled across. Our aim was to map the summit and photograph everything.
Most is just ruin but the church gave us a bit more interest. With old painting
on the wall and crosses and amharic scripture carved into tablets partly hidden
by the cracked plaster walls. We sadly found no gold or boobi traps, and all
skeletons were deeply buried. In fact the only interesting artifacts that
we found were two massive clay pots containing nothing but Hiarax poo. We
spent the night on the summit and then descended the next day.
We
on the on the floor 3 abseils and 2 hours later the priests were the first
to great us. They dipped their heads and kissed my hand. An english speaking
man approached us, " We have so much respect for you, such an incredible
journey I have never seen!" The rest of the day was spent drawing the
ruins and the carvings on the back of a box of tea bags, for the chief of
the village to keep and show the awaiting crowd.
We celebrated that night with spit roast sheep. As it is lent they would not
kill the sheep, but were happy to let us do it. This was another experience
close in making me a vegetarian. But I soon forgot this when it was cooked,
eaten and was being slowly digested as I lay back and looked at the route
we had just taken to the summit. Absolutely perfect. The next day I took the
last of the 12 members in the team to the summit along a route that was graded
E1 5a and named "beneath the path of princes"
We left the next day and walked 7 hours back to Addis Zemmen and based our
selves in a bar celebrating with ice cold beer while we waited for the Bus
to take us to Bahir Dar to meet the truck. The whole experience is everything
I could have hoped for. Rumors of being beaten to the top, Donkeys, porter
disputes, crazy locals screaming out legends of treasure, ruins, fine climbing
and every member of the team climbing to the top and safely coming
down.
The Hot Rock first ascent of Wehni book is being written at the moment and
the video made on the ascent was taken up by national geographic and turned
into a half an hour special. If you would like to see the book or video, contact
me.
