Longonot, a mountain that brings up many memories. Dust, effort, heat, and many beautiful faces. It seems that every time I look at it, it appears different. From the clear days where the crater and every ridge is visible from Kijabe, to the sunsets, where the dark red orb disappears over the peak of the mountain.
We decided to climb it on New Years day, our final outing of our trip to Kenya. We send out an email to Kijabe wondering if anyone else wanted to join us. Steve, and his son Matthew decided to come along. They'd done it before, but wanted to spend some time together after they had adopted Kenyan twins recently.
It was the first time I'd driven my parent's car on the highway for 10 years. I t was also on the wrong side of the road. Fortunately, the road to Longonot is pretty empty, particularly on New Years morning at 7am! I was surprised how easy it was to adjust to driving on the "wrong" side of the road. Adjusting to driving an underpowered 1976 Toyota was an additional challenge.
Viewing Longonot from the Road to Naivasha gave me a nice, warm, comfortable feeling about the climb. I'm in much better shape now than I was through most of high school, and we'd walked around Kijabe a lot. The trail was readily visible, and didn't really look that long. I recalled it being about an hour's walk, but I did recall it being a challenge.
We left Kijabe at 6:30. When we stopped at the park gate, and Steve went ahead to talk to the wardens. He had his Resident's permit to get the cheap rate. I was expecting and willing to pay the visitors' price. The exchange was quick, Steve told him we were from Kijabe, and pulled out his passport with permit, the warden just waved him off, "Sawa-sawa", "It's OK" and wrote us up as three resident adults and one resident child. Total cost, including the car, $11. We could have saved $4 by walking the extra km from the gate to the car park, but I guess we were a little lazy still!
The climb turned out to be more of what I remembered, and less of what I expected. We were only away from the car a couple minutes before we were panting, and we weren't to the steep part yet! I'd left my sweatshirt in the car. Steve took his off at the first stop, and carried it in the pack for the rest of the t rip. I had my digital camera along, as well as the standard film camera. I had planned on taking the video camera as w ell, but once I put 3 litres of water in my pack, and picked the whole thing up, I put the video camera down, and left it behind.
There is a steep part up to a plateau half way up the mountain. It is also the best place to observe the volcanic dust. The dust is incredible. It is fine, it is thick, it is everywhere. Walking can raise a dust-cloud thicker than a car will do in Canada! When water runs off the mountain, as it does in a heavy rain, it washes down the least protected areas. In this case it is the trails. Deep gullies are formed, and a new trail is begun. The end result is a mess of trails and gullies, and no particularly "better" choice. We made it to the plateau puffing and panting, and glad for the picnic table that had been hauled there for just such occasions. We broke out the ice-water, and drained half a bottle. The plateau was an easy walk, but all too short. Just a few minutes later and we were starting up another slope to the crater rim.
We hadn't gone too far when we turned around to take a look back. We were surprised to see three giraffe on the plateau, looking at us. We'd passed fairly near them, but hadn't been looking that direction!
The crater climb wasn't as steep as the climb to the plateau, but we were getting towards 9000ft, and we were feeling the altitude to go along with the tropical sun and steep slope.
The end result was spectacular, and certainly worth the effort. Coming to what looked like just another change in slope, the entire sky seemed to open up as we stepped onto the crater rim. Ahead was an even steeper slope downwards into the kilometer wide crater. To our right was the peak, about a quarter of t he way around the crater rim, and behind us was a vast expanse of the rift valley. Lake Naivasha could be seen in its entirety, and the Aberdare mountains could be seen stretching out their full length along the horizon. Kijabe could be seen, but was directly into the sun, so little detail could be made out.
Matthew told us that there were picnic tables just over the hill around the crater, so we headed that way. Sure enough, a minute's walk away were two picnic tables under about the only shade-tree on the rim. There was a lady and her daughter already there, who had started the climb a few minutes before us. We talked to them for a while before they headed back down.
We had a short discussion about continuing to the main peak, about a forty- five minute hike, but decided against it as we wanted to be home by lunch, and it would put our descent in the heat of the day!
It is possible to hike around the crater rim, but it is a three-hour, up and down, hike in the dust.
I hiked the crater rim once before, in 1982. I was preparing for a Mt. Kenya climb and wanted to break in a pair of boots that I had borrowed as well as keep in shape. Our mistake was to not bring enough water. My canteen held about one and a half litres, and I thought that that would be plenty. Wrong. We ran out half way around the crater, after conserving for a while. It was a long trek back to the car. We stopped at a small duka by the road and drank three Sprites each. I don't recall if they were cold or not, but liquid of just about any sort would have done at that point!
We had an enjoyable rest and talk at the tables, taking lots of photos, munching our snacks, and drinking our ice-water (yes, there was still ice in it) before deciding that it was time to head back d own. Facing the other direction, and thinking less about breathing, we were able to watch the giraffe ahead of us. Going down was much easier. We had time for conversation as we enjoyed the beautiful vista ahead of us. The sun was getting higher, and the dust was raised easier, but it was still down-hill.
We met several groups on our way down. They hadn't been quite as keen on getting up the mountain early! We stopped at the gate after we got to the bottom. We bought a few cokes, then sat down under a tree with Steve and talked about life and the future. It had been a glorious way to welcome the New Year.
Climbing a 9000 ft volcano on New Years morning was certainly a fitting way to start the year. The casual mention of the fact can certainly highlight the differences of life in Africa!