Today was the first sunny day – all day – of my trip. The mountains were visible all day. No afternoon mists. No afternoon rain. Am I still in Africa?
We hiked about 180 degrees around the mountain to the Shipton hut. It went up over three small passes, so about 2000 vertical feet up and down. It took about 4 hrs. Tonight’s camp is also at about 14,000.
On the high passes I had my phone on and maybe it sent out yesterday’s blog. It downloaded the headers to my email but I can’t read the body of the emails. Attempts at sending photos also failed. Am I really going to spend a week on Mt Kenya with hardly any internet at all? In this day and age, can I do that?
With these casual days I’ve had more time to focus on the otherworldly flora and fauna. I’ll have to do a big photo dump when this trip is over.
My cold is now a full on cough, and it’s really annoying. This morning I felt downright sick, but after an hour on the trail I felt fine… I just sounded bad. It looks like there are a couple of westerners staying in the hut tonight and I do feel a little pull to go talk to them, but I don’t want to go inside with this cough.
There were three other parties at last night’s hut: one was a trekking group from Hungary. The other two were climbers. Both were attempting the true summit today. Both were going super fast: going from sea level to the Mackinder hut at 14,000’ on day 1, and then going for the 17,000’ summit on day 2. In all my years I have never gone so high so fast. I once hiked up Mt Whitney in a day from Los Angeles, and I remember a vicious headache on the summit. I honestly don’t know how they do it. Is it just drugs? One of them did say that they had a headache at the hut. Because tonight I’m on the other side of the mountain, I’ll likely never know how they did. I’ve been stewing on this all day.
My guide Steve has been opening up to me a bit. He’s never been out of Kenya, but he speaks English pretty well. Being a guide on Mt Kenya is his main job, and I think it pays better than his peers. He seems to like doing it. He’s been eating with me, and says that he never eats like this at home. At dinner tonight he said that he was still full from lunch (me too!). I told him that I don’t eat like this at home either.
Tomorrow is a 7 AM start. We’re going to hike up 16,355’ Peak Lenana, which is the highest trekking peak in the area. If you’ve read No Picnic on Mt Kenya, this is the peak the Italian POWs climbed. Tomorrow should be pretty casual, and then the next day is a planned rest day, and then the big climb. Im not going to lie: I’m a little nervous: I don’t think I can do a big climb in the state I’m in. Well, I still have two days…
Sent from my iPhone
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