I have just got back from an amazing weekend, climbing Ol Donyo Lengai, the active volcano in the Rift Valley. Wow – really and truly wow.
It’s about a 6-hour drive to Ngare Sero, the village near the south end of Lake Natron, which is the centre of the universe as far as Lengai climbs go. Inevitably, then, it took us about 9 hours…
We hook up with Petro, a local lad who regularly guides Lengai (he claims to have climbed 200+times!), and having reviewed our gear, we set off at about 11pm for the jumping off point for the climb, about an hours’ drive away. The drive is , err, interesting at the moment: There has been lots of rain recently, so the track has been washed away in places, and some parts are impassable. Last week, a vehicle was left in a dry riverbed and was washed away in a flash flood while the climbers were up the mountain. Bit of a bummer, no? So we have plenty of fun finding a way around the toughest parts and getting as close to the mountain as possible.
Which is not as close as I might have hoped. We have to hike for an hour or so just to get onto the foothills of the mountain. Once there, the land slopes rapidly up, and my lungs begin to heave. Oops – not a good sign! After a bit, I find my rhythm and settle down. Petro does an excellent job of pacing us, stopping us from tiring ourselves out early on in the climb.
All the while, the bulk of the mountain looms above us in the dark. The moon has not yet risen and it is fairly cloudy, but there is enough starlight for this. The summit seems impossibly far away and, so far as I can see, vertically above us. Somehow we persuade ourselves we can do it and carry on, plodding through the night.
The going is tough: as we get past the half-way mark, it gets steeper. The ash layer from the recent eruptions is damp from yesterday’s rain, which stabilizes it, but it is still slick and difficult to negotiate. Sometimes we can drop into a narrow rain-eroded ditch, and use our hands for extra purchase. This can be a good thing, or not...
Higher still, and now the moon rises. We are looking down on a layer of cloud far below, ethereal white against the black mass of the land. We stop frequently to rest and catch our breath. I am pleased and surprisingly to find that I am not blowing too hard. How far now? About another hour, says Petro, but steep.
Steep?? And what is this exactly, if not **&%?@@* steep?
Sure enough, it gets steeper, as we climb through a narrow gap between towering ramparts of lava thrown up in the 2007 / 8 eruptions. It gets slippery too, the top layer of ash reduced to slime. One by one, we all end up on our backsides, flailing for grip. Then all of a sudden, as the eastern sky goes grey, we are there, on the crater rim – a slender bridge with steep sides falling away into the crater on one side and down, down to the distant plain on the other.
It is an awe-inspiring sight: a short distance away, a vertical drop into the crater. This is a pit maybe 300 meters wide and 200 deep. Steam hisses angrily from the sides, while far below pools of magma roil and spit tongues of molten lava into the air. A patch of rock breaks off and slips gracefully into the boiling pot, like an iceberg calving.
There is not a blade of grass up here. On my last climb 16 years ago, it was a much softer scene, rounded slopes with a layer of thin grass. You could walk down into the crater, and watch flowing magma up close. Now it is a monochrome world of black and grey and patches of scummy salt. In the background, a continuous low growling and rumbling, as if a great beast were asleep. Don’t for God’s sake wake it…
The sun comes up, brushing the mountain with gold, softening the scene a touch. We walk around the rim, aware of the yawning voids on each side. The slopes aren’t extreme, but they suck at you and catch at your stumbling feet.
We stay at the top for a while (is it half an hour? 45 minutes? I don’t really know) and then we head back down. God, my knees! They bend (sort of) but don’t really appreciate the heavy demands I am making. Now they are whingeing at every step. And it’s SUCH a long way down – how am I going to do this?
then, the going eases. The slope decreases, the ash is loose enough in places to move in short skating steps. It’s still a loooong way to the car down there on the plain, but to our collective surprise we’re there in a couple of hours.
Looking back from here, in the full light of day, the idea of climbing Lengai seems lunatic. It thrusts straight up from the plain, a great steep cone, like a kid’s drawing of a volcano, a forbidding sentinel in the austere landscape of the Rift Valley.
I did it – I was there. And you know what? Now that the memory has faded a bit, I would do it again. Not just yet maybe, but some day.
