Mount Margherita

Mt. Stanley. On most trips, we would have walked long, grinding walks or slogged miles of glaciers to get to the climb.
In the Ruwenzori Mountains, there is no grind, no monotony. In fact, this place is an attention deficit dream. The scenery is soon  to change and if we change the lens on our eyeballs, and take a look closely, there is plenty to marvel at. The people of Uganda are the real treasure, with plenty to teach the rest of the world. And the history of the Ruwenzori is rarely paralleled in a mountain setting.
So, we arrive at the Elena Hut, prior to tomorrows ascent, with, "We here already?" 

The initial ascent from the hut is a long, 1-1/2 hour rock ramp to a ridge, giving us access to the glacier. With a peppering of new snow, I am going to walk in spikes, otherwise, I'll be slipping all over the place. I go out for a half-hour exploration of the route, to try the crampon on rock theory out. I get to feel the terrain we will be on in the dark and see if it is worth grinding away at my lightweight Katoolah spikes. By walking carefully, we should minimize the piercing fingernails-on-a-chalkboard sound of crampons on  hard rock, glacier polished slabs. Especially jarring when the only coffee you have drank for a week is instant.

The one thing the people of Uganda need to get their act together on, is coffee. I marvel at how they feel they have the best coffee beans in the world, yet it is so damn hard to get real coffee! I'll carry the grinds out. I have been holding the shakes at bay with the very excellent, I must say, Ugandan tea. All I need now would be one of those thin little weeny cucumber, tomato and butter sandwiches and I could be back in the Shipton/Tilman days.

I just realized it. What distinguishes this place. This place is primordial. I would not be surprised if Stanley and Livingstone stepped out of a hut, or  Cleopatra's emissary- hunting the source of the Nile, or a dinosaur was spotted off in the distance. This place is timeless. Anything we build here, won't be here long, without a good maintenance program.

A 5 AM start got us to the ridge crest at dawn, where we caught a pretty, veiled sunrise. With, or without the comma, the statement is true. We caught a view of Mt. Margherita, for no more than a minute and a half. Soon, we were on the glacier.

The glacier portion is a long, rising traverse. I saw no real trail in the stiff whiteout. No wands marking the line like Hansel and Grettel's breadcrumbs. The route was locked onto the muscle memory of Vittorio's legs repeating that traverse. I could instantly recognize the tactic. In the US, we would use wands because we expect optimum efficiency, even if they take away the mystery and the romance of the route. They Pasteurize it. Vittorio knew how long this should take. He knew to err on the high side of the goal (a navigation error is far more excusable, if I don't have to work to correct it). Too rarely do we, in the 'developed' world, rely on ourselves: our intuition and senses. Vittorio brought us into the rock rib we wanted to cross about 100' high, after a good half-hour traverse. Nice work.

At the far end of the glacier traverse, we shifted the rope handling from glacier travel to short roping through a notch in the rib separating the two glaciers. About a thousand foot long, it was nice to have a solid nav fix. To drop down off the rib, the locals have fixed (maybe a stronger term than represented by reality) a 20' (sectional) steel ladder. Steel. It had to be, because by the lower third, the ladder was cantilevered off a protrusion of rock. I was bouncing at the end of a not quite vertical diving board. Ease up on the anchor ties a bit?

Back on the new glacier. Still a whiteout. This one, however, was a direct ascent up the center of the glacier. The views were... so Ruwenzori... nothing. There is a beauty in that though. You don't see anything bad.
At a change in slope angle, we shifted a shade right out of the fall line, aiming for a break in the rock wall we could sense off to the east. I would guess we had an hour on the glacier between Margherita and Alexander.

The saddle joining these two peaks is what makes this the prettiest peak in Africa. The world's major mountains generally would not rate aesthetic. K2 is pretty, but nothing compared to its itsy little just-under-26,000' Gasherbrum IV, neighbor. A reason the Matterhorn is such a classic mountain is its beauty and its dominance. Very rare. Mt. St. Elias is pretty from Yakutat, Alaska, another Duke of Abruzzi first ascent. So, Mt. Stanley rates. If we could just see it. It just adds to the allure, the rare experience of a treasure.

None of this Top 40, beat-this-song-into-the-ground stuff here in the Ruwenzori. We'll treasure any views we get.

At the end of the snow, we come to the crux of the climb. The rock is easy fifty class standard. It would be fine in mountain boots. Climbing the rock would be the traditional way to get through the area. However, it is not the sporty way to go. The circus ladders the guide service has tied up (I can't stretch the term 'fixed' to this installment), are the real adventure.

They are, again, steel. The two separate sections, both about 10', are racked- the welds between rail and rung are cracked. They are tied to ropes, disappearing over a rock above to unknown anchors. This is a danger point when fixing ropes on an expedition. Wind will move the rope back and forth, abrading through the sheath. Once through the tougher sheath, the ropes core is nearly defenseless against abrasion. With the weight of the heavy steel ladders, I found no rope abrasion on any rigging on the entire route. A sign of care taken by Ruwenzori Mountaineering Services. The ladders don't hang straight down. They angle across the wall, giving them their circus element. I had a doubled, knotted rope from above to clip above each successive knot. If you drive by at 40MPH, from 500yards, it is a little bit like a via feratta. I was simply hoping to not repeat the last the last time I ran into a ladder on a big mountain.

On the Second Step, of Mount Everest's N. Col route, from Tibet, there is a ladder. This is in the neighborhood of 28,300'. The Chinese installed it in 1975. I stood below it and looked at its anchors: an ice screw driven into a crack. Hammered in. And some other lame piece. All connected with junk rigging. Not the material used. It would have made a very strong dog leash. 'Junk' refers to the workmanship. I looked up at what I was proposing to ascend, "This isn't going to hold." Above, the weeny little fixed rope disappeared over and edge (term used as in, 'a knife edge'), without an anchor in sight. The idea, should you ever be fixing rope on a climb, is to anchor below the cutting edges. This way the edges do not have to sustain the affects of abrasion while under tension. I got to ride the ladder on the Second Step. When it broke loose, both it and I swung into gravity inspired pendulum, until the anchor below interceded. Below was 10,000' of air. One bounce, and I'd soon be on the glacier below. I don't remember any real panic. High altitude is good for that. I do remember the critical concern, "Do not - drop - the - ladder!" Once that was all over, it was a simple matter of leaning the ladder up against the step, like I was painting a house. No problem.

Soon we were all at the anchor above Mt. Margheita's ladders. It was a nicely constructed piece of rigging: good choice in materials, the angles from anchors were all good, appropriate choice of knots and a good stance at the transition to the continuing traverse. Within a half hour of walking, we were on the top.

The view was missing though.

It had not been a particularly difficult ascent. Our weather had been good. We were a strong, experienced team. What makes it such a memorable climb? There was not one hour of the entire trip, that I was wishing hadn't been there. This entire trip is, start to finish, a quality experience.

We had planned from the outset, to descend from Margherita past the Elena Hut to the Kitandara Hut on the same day. That deserves another post itself.