Take a minute and briefly reflect about climbing one of Africa’s highest peaks as the start of your mountaineering “career”! The thought of it brings mixed feelings ranging from anxiety, fear, excitement, self-doubt or even self-belief.
It is without doubt how I felt before taking on Uganda’s mountains of the moon commonly known as the Rwenzoris.
The Rwenzori Mountains located in Uganda’s South Western region are the region’s tallest block mountains with the highest peak Magherita at 5,109m above sea level.
From local mountaineers to internationals of my acquaintance like Malaysian climber Ravichandran Thalumalingam who have climbed mountains in the region, one learns that Rwenzori gives a harder challenge to manoeuvre to the peak different from Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mt Kenya or even the Everest.
Preparation
While many of my unfit colleagues opted to wait for the climbing day, I embarked on a two week jogging schedule before challenging the Rwenzoris coupled with football weekends to keep fit.
The anxiety for a challenge that clearly wasn’t going to be an easy one pushed me to Google about the prospects of the journey. Many of the findings could be handled but what scared me was the possibility of an altitude sickness.
On the team were reporters and renowned mountain climber Tim Macartney-Snape who was in the country on a mission to conquer the Magherita peak together with a group of other climbers. Tim together with a colleague were the first Australians to reach the summit of Mountain Everest in 1984.
According to Tim, one simply doesn’t climb a mountain without prior preparation.
“It takes both mental and physical preparation several weeks after you decide to climb a mountain,” he told us.
Plans rather changed and some of us couldn’t reach the summit because it could be risky for a bigger group that we were, according to John Hunwick who runs the Rwenzori Trekking Services, one of the three service providers in the mountains.
The trek
The trek begins from the western Uganda town of Kasese in an area called Kilembe right at the base of the mountain. Equipped with walking sticks, our luggage, rain gear and whatever we might need high up the mountains, we kicked off to the first camp named Sine located at about 2,000m above sea level where we would spend the night. It was, according to guides, a four hours walk for fast trekkers but it obviously took us more than that, close to seven hours for some.
In single file with our porters in tow, we set off close to midday following a small soggy trail that passes through the thick rainforest of the Rwenzori National Park at the foot of the mountains.
Because our speeds varied, the group started breaking up hours after and I found myself with two younger colleagues ahead of the main group very anxious to get to the camp.
Beautiful scenery.
The trek to the Magherita peak cannot be conquered in a single day so Rwenzori trekking services has set up several camps at different altitudes high up the mountain, completely furnished with beds, solar power and warm baths. The camps are settled at the edges of different vegetation covers. On a minimum, it takes 8 days to go to the peak and return to the foot but several packages are available for say one, two three or four days.
From the base to the first camp is a thick rainforest which accommodates about 217 species of birds, 17 of which can only be found in here. As you continue deeper into the forest, you could easily come face to face with different animals like the forest elephant, chimpanzee, hyrax, black-and-white colobus, L’Hoest’s monkeys, duiker, and Rwenzori turaco.
The site is also a UNESCO heritage site.
From high up the mountains flows crystal clear streams from the glaciers that are believed to be the primary sources of the River Nile waters, the world’s longest river.
Beautiful little waterfalls interject the streams and if you are really not afraid of the cold water, you can jump into one.
The nights
The trek to Sine camp exhausted many of us. According to the guides, this is one of the hardest and longest although it is not a very steep course. By day fall, we were holed up in the shelter beside the camp’s dormitories telling stories of how the day’s adventure was and getting instructions for the following day before having a warm meal of beef, rice and bananas that was really a relief to all of us.
The nights are cold up here but the Uganda wildlife Authority has banned lighting fires in the park for reasons typically conservation related so we basically had to survive on the mercy of the cold and the resistance put up by our jackets.
The guides fed us with stories about the mountain and the superstitions that surround it. For example, in the earlier days, women were not supposed to climb the mountain but surprisingly now, the number of female porters is bigger here with many young girls offering the service to make ends meet.
Day two
On the second day we were to head as a group to the next camp which provided us with the opportunity to explore the mountain more. Many opted out at this point and decided to descend because the next course was steeper.
We moved higher up to the Kalalama camp, a steep hike that required us to manoeuvre on ladders and move really slowly. The hike was however worth it because it had two beautiful vegetation zones.
About ten minutes out of the Sine camp, the bamboo zone opens up just after the bigger rain forest below. It consists of small green bamboo trees with a series of flowers and butterflies in the undergrowth. Along the trail, one can hear a thunderous gush of water from a river that flows out of the mountains higher up.
The bamboo area stops suddenly as the heather zone opens up towards the second camp that is located at 2,147 metre above sea level.
This would be the end of the journey for us and the rest of it to the peak was to be covered by Tim and his colleagues.
The descend from here to the mountain bottom was the most hectic. A persistent pain in the knees while sloping made us buy an earlier advice from the porters who trek up and down the mountain almost every day that the best remedy for that was to simply run down at a pace one was comfortable with.
So we ran! Stopping to catch our breaths occasionally until we got to the bottom.
The two day experience up the Rwenzoris was as telling as it was challenging and it gave us novice mountaineers the urge to return stronger and conquer the mountains’ highest peak Magherita with hope that it will be even better.
Some packages of the Rwenzori
One day trek
Cost One or 2 persons $40 each and involves a forest walk.
Two days
Costs $200 and involves climbing upto 2,500 m above sea level.
Three days
Cost $350 dollars and involves climbing as high as 3,100 m.
Eight days.
Cost $1,200 dollars and it is the ultimate challenge that involves conquering the Magherita peak.
What to carry along
Sleeping bag
Overhead torch
Rain coat and rain proof pants
Heavy jackets
Gumboot or good hiking shoes