Hiking Africa’s second-highest mountain beats Mount Kilimanjaro

The drive to the national park entrance passes through an avenue of tall eucalypts on the slopes of Mount Kenya. As our vehicle climbs towards the park’s Chogoria Gate, I’m briefly struck by the sense that I’m heading into the Australian High Country, a fancy soon dispelled by the sight of an elephant and her calf grazing at the roadside.

As I watch the animals pull at the branches of a tree, the idea that I’ll be standing by a glacier on an alpine summit four days from now feels surreal, if not absurd. But that’s the beauty of hiking on Africa’s second-highest mountain.

Rising to 5199 metres above sea level, Mount Kenya attracts less than a third of the number of trekkers who attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the continent’s tallest peak, but suffers nothing for its lower elevation. Its trails are uncrowded and the experience is arguably more rounded and rewarding – low on the slopes, the climb can be like a safari on foot, up high it becomes a full alpine ascent.

Ten years ago, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, but have wondered ever since about Mount Kenya, so I’ve returned, onto the trails of this vast mountain splayed across the equator. A short distance beyond the elephants, our vehicle stops and we begin to walk. This first day we’re hiking purely to acclimatise, heading up the quiet park road through bamboo forest and into thick cloud. A Land Rover bumps past us, bursting at the seams with all of our gear plus, in a Tardis-like miracle of space, 17 porters (10 of them ours for the coming days).

Like Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya is laced with trails. Our path is the Chogoria route, which is, according to the Mountain Club of Kenya, “considered the most picturesque on the mountain”.

The climb’s true start is at Chogoria Gate, 2950 metres above sea level, where we spend this first night in bandas (cabins). A thick mist adds a sense of foreboding to a sign warning of dangerous animals at night. Suitably, we wake to the mist-shrouded sight of three buffaloes grazing the lawns outside.

Mount Kenya is a big mountain, with its slopes covering a diameter of around 120 kilometres, but as we set out hiking through the persistent mist, it feels like a small world. Visibility is less than 10 metres. Leading us through the pall is Moses. At 62, the former policeman is tall and strong and has been guiding trekkers to Africa’s highest summits for more than 30 years. He’s climbed Kilimanjaro 101 times and Mount Kenya hundreds of times. And he’s adamant about his favourite.

“Most people come to do the Roof of Africa – that’s Kili – and that’s why it’s popular, but it’s not as scenic,” Moses says. “People end up loving Mount Kenya most. Mount Kenya has lots of peaks and valleys. It’s more dramatic.”

Three of those peaks will dominate our days ahead. Most imposing are the two highest – Batian (5199 metres) and Nelion (5188 metres) – standing tall, fierce and inaccessible to all but rock climbers. For trekkers, it’s the third peak, the 4985-metre Point Lenana, that beckons. The four-day climb to Lenana is punctuated by lakes – Lake Ellis, Lake Michaelson and Simba Tarn – with camping beside each one. On this first day, we see only two other hikers and are one of only three small groups camped by the shores of Lake Ellis. But we’re far from alone. When I wake in the morning, there’s fresh leopard scat near our tents, while word soon filters in that a lion had wandered through a nearby camp at dawn. It’s starting to feel a little too safari.

On the shores of Lake Ellis, the frosty morning breaks open into a bright and blue day, with the cloud now pressed into the valleys far below us. Starlings hang about as though we’re a food truck, and malachite sunbirds, as bright as the sky, flit between shrubs as we ascend a long ridge, topping out after three hours at the mountain’s most startling view. Suddenly, instead of looking onto alpine tussocks and the shrinking Lake Ellis, I’m staring down into a vast canyon, with peaks rising above like fins and Lake Michaelson pooled on a high ledge at the canyon’s head. For this view alone, I’d climb Mount Kenya over Kilimanjaro.

“You know you’re in the mountains now,” Moses says from over my shoulder, and I can only nod mutely and appreciatively. Lake Michaelson is the mountain’s standout campsite – perhaps the most beautiful camp I’ve encountered in Africa – set deep inside a volcanic crater among giant lobelias. As dusk nears, hyraxes, animals that resemble small wombats, graze the lawns around our tent and, at times, try to climb inside them.

Each day now brings more altitude and less oxygen and finally, above Lake Michaelson, we enter the alpine zone, where life seems to end, but the mountain goes on. Our final camp, Simba Tarn, is as bleak as the sleet storms that blow through as we rest up in our tents, preparing for the summit attempt the next morning. Simba Tarn is also the closest camp on the mountain to the summit, meaning that instead of the requisite midnight starts on Mount Kilimanjaro, we’re woken at a relatively sluggish 3.30am, setting out into the night for the final slow kilometres to Point Lenana.

In the darkness, the world loses all shape, reduced to the circle of light cast by my headtorch, with the lights of a large group down the slopes looking like a train rolling through the night. The air is cold and sparse. It takes an hour just to walk one kilometre, but soon we’re inching along ledges and scrambling over boulders in the dark. Twenty minutes before sunrise we come to a set of metal steps billed as the world’s highest via ferrata, ascending them step by step to rise onto the summit.

Immediately beside us are the cliffs of Batian, glowing orange in the day’s first light, and the remnants of the Great Lewis Glacier, looking ever closer to extinction. “I think it will be gone within five years,” says Moses, who has watched its inexorable decline over more than three decades.

On a clear day, you can see distant Kilimanjaro and the lights of Nairobi from Point Lenana, though today we look down onto a sea of cloud, with peaks piercing through them. It’s like standing on a floating island of rock amid a dramatic ensemble of peaks and towers. My breath is slow and forced, but my eyes and my brain are racing. I’ve found my African mountain of choice.

FIVE OTHER AFRICAN MOUNTAINS

Kilimanjaro

Tallest of all, 5895-metre “Kili” can be climbed along seven routes; allow at least seven or eight days for the greatest chance of summit success.

Simien Mountains

Ethiopia’s highest mountain range is one of the most beautiful high regions in which I’ve ever trekked. Hiking trips aspire to climb 4550-metre Ras Dashen, the country’s highest mountain.

High Atlas

Ascend North Africa’s highest peak, 4167-metre Jebel Toubkal, at the very edge of the Sahara Desert in Morocco.

Drakensberg

They’re far from the highest mountains in Africa, topping out at 3482 metres, but South Africa’s “dragon mountains” are as dramatic and fantastic in shape as their name suggests.

Rwenzori

Uganda’s “Mountains of the Moon” are indeed otherworldly, ranging from rainforest to glaciers and Africa’s third-highest peak, 5109-metre Margherita.

THE DETAILS

Fly
Under normal circumstances, Emirates flies to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, from Melbourne and Sydney, via Dubai. The routes are currently disrupted due to conflict in the Middle East. See emirates.com

Trek
World Expeditions runs a seven-day Mount Kenya Ascent trip, starting and finishing in Nairobi, with five days of trekking. Trips start from $4190. See worldexpeditions.com

The writer travelled as a guest of World Expeditions.