Mount Kenya: What Nobody Tells You
I am going to be honest about something that most Mount Kenya write-ups skip: the altitude is a real and humbling thing, and I handled it with less dignity than I would have liked. On my second day on the mountain, at somewhere around 4,200 metres on the approach to Austrian Hut, I sat down on a rock beside the trail, put my head between my knees, and told my guide Bernard that I needed five minutes. Bernard, who has guided this mountain for eighteen years, sat beside me without comment, handed me a piece of glucose candy, and waited.
Mount Kenya is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Africa's second highest peak. Point Lenana, the trekkers' summit, stands at 4,985 metres, and with proper acclimatisation it is absolutely achievable. But it is also absolutely an altitude trek, and your body's response to altitude is its own decision, not yours.
I joined a small guided group for a four-day circuit starting and finishing at Sirimon Gate on the northern side of the mountain. The approach route goes through a sequence of ecological zones that feel almost theatrical in their distinctness: montane forest at the lower elevations, where colobus monkeys look down from giant podocarpus trees; moorland above the treeline with giant lobelia and senecio plants; and finally the high-altitude zone, all rock and ice and thin, clean air.
The giant groundsels of the moorland zone are the most alien-looking plants I have ever seen growing in the wild. These enormous rosette plants - a large specimen will rise to five or six metres above the moorland - are an example of gigantism driven by high-altitude adaptation. They grow in communities across the hillsides above 3,000 metres, and walking through a field of them in the mist is a genuinely otherworldly experience.
Buffalo move through the forest section in the early mornings - we found fresh tracks across the trail that gave our steps a certain brisk purposefulness. The Mountain Club of Kenya maintains detailed route information and the hut system on Mount Kenya, and consulting them before you go is well worth the time.
The pre-dawn summit approach is its own particular experience. We hiked by headtorch across a rocky, partially ice-covered slope in absolute darkness and silence, breathing with conscious care. The technique for altitude hiking is to breathe before you need to rather than when you need to - two breaths for every step, a rhythm that keeps your oxygen levels steady.
Point Lenana at sunrise. The summit crater lit in orange and rose; below us, the entire Kenyan highland visible to the south as far as Nairobi; to the north, the dry country running toward Samburu; to the west, a single ribbon of cloud burning gold at its upper edge. Bernard was drinking tea from a thermos with the expression of a man who has watched this particular sunrise many times and still thinks it is worth getting up for.
Mount Kenya is not for every Kenya traveller. But if you want to understand the full geography of the country you are visiting - if you want to see Kenya from above - go up. Take Bernard. Eat the glucose candy. Take the five minutes when you need them.
