What I did over the weekend

On Saturday, decided to climb a real mountain in Kenya, went online to search and found this:

Mountain Longonot stands at an impressive 2777 m high and is a mountain which is an extinct volcano. The crater at the top occured because during the last volcanic burst, the top caved down. Thought it looked interesting so gathered a group of 3 friends and we headed off on an early Saturday morning.

To those who needs to put things in perspective, the highest mountain you can climb without climbing certificate is Mount kilimanjaro, which stands at 5895m, the top of that is covered with snow. The highest hill in Singapore, Bukit Timah Hill is a mere 187m.

We started off on the trail, being greeted by cactuses, trees with spikes and thorns and the volcanic ash beneath our feet. Within the first 10 minutes, we know this was not going to be easy. The mountain face was steep and we sometimes needed to use our hands to hold onto walls, branches to balance ourselves. There was no safety marshalls anywhere, no railings. We were pretty much on our own to climb the mountain.

The air was also starting to get thin the more we climbed up, sometimes one of us got dizzy and we had to rest for awhile for acclimatization. Our breaks were every 10 minutes because it was just so steep. Mount Longonot, which means steep ridges, has certainly earned its name

After only 1.5 hours of climbing (and it felt like 3 hours), we could see the tip, pushing on, we finally reached the top of the crater! And the view was amazing, the air was so fresh and the group was re-vitalized again. To our amazement, there were other people already there, and they were old people, overweight people, kids... It goes to show that if you took your time, like they did, anyone would be able to make it to the top.

Everyone was feeling mighty proud of this and the feeling of acheivement and awe was immeasurable. Rested for over an hour on the top of the hill, took lots of pics, all of which you can see from this link: https://picasaweb.google.com/staceyrhuang/LongonotAndHellsGate?authkey=Gv1sRgCP6N0cyWqrGZgwE#

Then we started our descent, which was extremely tricky. It turned out, going up a steep mountain is much easier than going down a steep mountain. We had to bend down, sometimes, cause it was so steep, it was easier to run down the mountain path. I'm quite good climbing up but i must admit, i'm lousy coming down the mountain. At one steep turning, i lost my balance and took a fall at the side. The picture below with the X shows where i fell, if i didnt hold on to the side of the wall, would have tumbled over and down the mountain edge.

Was covered in dust but it could all be shaken off. Trekked back down again took another hour. Everyone was exhausted by this time.. and guess what, it was only 12 noon. Went to town to eat a quick lunch as we made a decision to head over the a nearby national partk, called Hell's Gate and explore it.

Hell's gate was beautiful, it had wonderful gorges which we can walk within. We hired a guide who took us through. This was a different type of climbing, we had to side step past muddy streams, climb over boulders, climb up cracks in the gorge. It was very exciting and thrilling. I thought i was in an action movie film! In fact, this was where tomb raider, my angelina Jolie was filmed! The walk within was cooling and the scenery was breathtaking.

This was a particularly challenging area to cross. We had to cross over this big boulder so we had to use a tree branch for us to step and walk on and then we can lift ourselves up to pass the huge rock.

Was not as risky as Longonot but as interesting if not more. Also had some climbing to do such as when we wanted to come out of the gorge. See below...

Came back, we were tired but satisfied, legs aching, back was burnt (not enough sunblock) but my time in Africa became just that more meaningful and enriching.