Oldonyo Langai

25 October 2009

Today was the worst day of my life, physically. There were 8 of us the in house that decided it would be fun to climb Oldonyo Longai, which means Mountain of God in Maasai. The Maasai climb it whenever they have a drought to pray to rain. It is the only active volcano in Tanzania and its last eruption was in February 2008. It is good for us on the weekends to try to get out of the house and get our minds off of whatever we were working on for the week if possible. Since climbing Meru and Kili are much more expensive, we decided this would be a good alternative. For $100 plus transportation, divided by eight people, the cost to climb was about $100 per person. We had heard that this climb was harder than both Meru and Kili, but then again, we have also heard that Kili and Meru aren’t that difficult to climb. Some past basecamp volunteers have done the climb, along with Moses, the coordinator here, and no one advised us against doing it. I guess the last group went with 6 people and 2 of them gave up part way through, tried to go back down by themselves, got lost and had to sit there until someone found them the next morning. Although that made me a bit nervous, the girls that gave up were not exactly physically fit. The story that did make me nervous was that some guy who had climbed Kili took one look at Oldonyo Langai and said, “No way”.

On the way there, the scenery was beautiful. We saw our first giraffes, wildebeest, ostrich and several types of antelope. We drove along the Great Rift, which is the largest continental rift in the world. It was so beautiful and there were many little villages along the way. We drove in an 8 passenger Land Rover that had a lift top. The driver let us put it up during part of the drive so we could stand on the seats and look out the top. It was very fun and made me look forward to hopefully going on safari. After quite a while our driver pointed out the mountain that we were going to climb and we all started to get a bit nervous. The volcano was completely black and gray and its only contours were big cracks and crevices created by the lava from the last eruption. We all kept making jokes about paying the driver to drive us to the top, or just paying someone off to take some photos and we’ll photoshop ourselves into them, etc. We all still wanted to do it, but it was much more intimidating than we had expected.

We got to the base of the mountain at about 5:30pm and were going to hang out at this little campground until we were ready to start climbing around 11pm. Our driver, Douglas, drove our group and the guides to the base of them mountain and we were ready to start climbing around midnight. The whole drive we couldn’t see anything, not even the mountain in front of us it was so dark. All we could see was what the headlights lit up, which was the "road" made out of cracked lava that we were driving on.

When we got to the base, we got out to start our climb. Within the first 10 minutes of climbing I was already thinking that I wasn’t going to make it. We were walking at a very fast pace up a hill that you had to lean in to. I knew that at this pace, we would never make it to the top. After about a half hour, I surveyed the people around me to see how they were doing and after getting the general consensus that this was too fast, I yelled at the people in front and the guide to stop for a break and to slow down. After about a three-minute break, the guide was started back up the mountain. A foretaste of what was to come...

We were told that the climb would get cold and that we should bring warm clothes, but that was an understatement. None of us really prepared well with warm clothes, so when the wind picked up and brought freezing temperatures we were miserable. After climbing we were quickly moist with sweat, and when the wind blew it was almost unbearable. There was a little bit of moisture in the air that was making the dust and ash stick to our clothes and skin. The wind dried out my eyes, and also blew in dust and dirt, but it was impossible to wipe anything off because my hands were covered in dirt and I couldn't wipe my hands off because my clothes were completely caked in dirt.

Since it was the middle of the night, all I could see was the small circle of ground that my headlamp lit up, but it almost seemed like a blessing that I wasn’t able to see the distance below or above. The climb was about 1600 meters, but every meter was a challenge. We were doing about 50 meters every 15 minutes and at some points I thought that every step would be my last. I would look to the side of where we were climbing from time to time, half expecting to see the bones of climbers past. During much of the climb we were walking up deep dirt and ash, so every step I took I would slide back down half the amount of my step. And it was so steep that all of us had to monkey the climb the whole way up on our hands and feet. For every 5 steps taken, maybe the distance of 2 was gained. Sometimes it was so slick and steep that you would take a step and slide back down a good 3-4 feet, trying to cling with your hands to the crumbling rock. By the end of the day, my hands were completely raw. Each step took every ounce of strength and concentration I had.

About five hours in to the hike we took an hour long break, which was bitter sweet. I was so physically exhausted that I could not have possibly kept going, but the wind blowing on my sweaty body made me feel as though I might freeze to death. I was torn between not being able to climb any more and freezing. I didn't want to go on, but I REALLY didn't want to be left behind.

We had about another hour of climbing after our break before we would summit, but we made it in the 6 hour time frame that the guides gave us. When we made it to the top, finally, I was in such a bad mood and so mad about the climb that I didn’t even care to look into the volcano. It was very cloudy and we couldn’t see the sunrise, nor anything else around us. There was only about a three foot rim around the top of the volcano to sit on and the wind was so strong you could not stand up. The guides offered for us to walk around the rim once and we all just stared at them dumbfounded. Obviously we did not take them up on it. We sat there for about 5 minutes and were begging to go back down. Although I had been dreading the climb back the whole way up, there was nothing more that I wanted than to be as far away from Oldonyo Langai as possible and as fast as possible.

Descending the mountain was like skiing down a mountain of ash in tennis shoes, except for the times it was like scraping your butt on a cheese grater. There was not one inch of me that wasn’t caked with dirt. Most of the time we were sliding on our butts because it was too steep to walk down. Rocks along the way would get pushed down and would often come within inches of someone’s head. I was hit in the arm or leg by several coffee mug sized rocks on the way. There were certain times during the climb when I thought my life calling after this would be to tell as many people as possible to never climb this mountain. After the longest 12 hours of my life, we finally made it to the bottom. I have never been in such a bad mood in my entire life. Our driver was incredibly impressed that we had all made it, but I was not in the mood for praise. I was just mad.

As we felt we had not been adequately warned about the difficulty and dangers of the climb, on the drive home we asked our driver a lot of questions. He told us that it is definitely the hardest climb in Tanzania and that many people die on it every year. We were also told that 80% of people don’t make it to the top. I just continued to get more and more angry when I thought about how stupid it was for us to climb the mountain. Every decision for the rest of my life will be affected by our experience on that mountain.

Sorry for the long blog about nothing really with our work here, but none the less it was an experience for us here that will definitely leave a lasting impression.

(The first photo is a picture looking back up after climbing part-way down. The second photo is of us on the way down. I didn't know they were taking a picture so my tongue was hanging out and I have a unibrow made out of ashes, but it is a pretty accurate portrayal of how I felt the whole time :) You can also get a slight idea of the grade of the climb.)

Written by Whitney