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.

Mt Speke

We climbed our first peak, 4890 meter Mt. Speke on the 8th of February. The most climbed route and mountain in the area was first ascended by Eric Shipton and H.W. Tilman, two of the most prolific late-in-coming mountain explorers we've seen. Tilman's first book, Snow on the Equator, begins in 1919. I would guess they were of an age that went to WW1 right out of school.
In 1919, they found themselves in Africa, I believe starting up coffee plantations. After a series of adventures (one being the finest mountain expedition, ever, to one of the world's most beautiful peaks, Nanda Devi), they found them selves on Everest in 1936. Again, a small team, traveling light, taking on a big dragon. Eric Shipton was on the very short list of leaders for the 1953 Mount Everest Expedition. The one that made the first ascent, and put Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on top.

I had high hopes for a Shipton/ Tilman route.

We left in dry weather at 5AM and walked for about an hour to Stihlman Pass. Just before the pass we cut off towards our route. The big mountains in the Ruwenzori are massive conglomeration of summits. They are like a spiked hairdo. All the peaks coming off the top of the mass that makes up the mountain. For this reason, traverses are appealing, if you can figure out the wetland trails. The big peaks are Baker, Speke and Stanley. The highest being a summit of Stanley, Mt. Margherita. How it got that name, I don't know, but I'll still drink to that.

There is a vast gulf in styles of guiding and protecting your client as we travel around the world. The Russians, on big mountains, like to act like sheep herders. European guides maintain low client to guide ratios of 2:1 or less. And they go like hell. American guiding tries to get the numbers up a bit (to cut costs for the clients) and we cater to the client more. We will walk with our clients. Euros meet you at the hut. We walk slowly. Euros don't have a low gear. Euros are in mountains that are often more dangerous. Euros trips can be done out of nice cute backpacks. Americans are often out for weeks, pulling sleds and carrying a pack that would have made John Henry eat a couple of extra flapjacks for breakfast....

I certainly was expecting to see plenty of differences in guide styles in the Ruwenzori. It is a remote, rarely visited area. Most of the visitors would, I expect, be pretty avid adventurous, high-skills types. An what I found is pretty true to my guess.

We started off with a bang. Vittorio happened to be carrying the rope. He, from the top of a 100' plus rock step, was hoping we would scramble up a rock slab. Easy enough, but I am not risking someone's neck on an inconvenience. The rope is... let's just say up above. Vittorio hoped we would batman up, using the thin climbing rope I had brought, as a hand line. 8.5mm rope, gloves, steep move at the top of the step... it could be a bad way to start the day off. My partner is a good climber and had no problem with any of the climbing we did. However, there is an excellence International Mountain Guides has doggedly cultivated over the many years they have been guiding. I needed to uphold the high standards they have set.
So we got the start worked out. As any mom would tell you, "A journey of a thousand miles still starts with getting in the car." The start. OK, little bit of a rocky start. Lets get on with it. The terrain stays a little too steep for my comfort zone. Easy enough ground, but a fall would often go 50'. Rather than the full rope work program, a cordolette between myself and my partner was just enough protection so we could relax. It also helps transfer a steady pace and eases communication between partners.

 If your country has been through a terrible war, or genocide, or a horrible dictator, I am guessing you have a different view on hazards. We are very lucky, in America, to have a very soft perspective on what is dangerous. I would argue it is too soft. To the point of impacting individual toughness, problem solving, and tenacity. With pitbull lawyers and a system that lets it go on, it is hard to change it up much. American society is softer than its competitors. There are certainly exceptions a plenty, but for the 333 million of us, on average... we are not Eastern Europeans.

Lets just say, I disrupted Vittorio's schedule quite significantly. We moved along slower than he wanted to. He did things differently. I argued, do only what will work. We held a very few, quick clinics on technique and I really tried to let him do his job. Really, Really tried. Hard.

You know what Yoda says about Try. I was still only trying. He took the indiscretion like a man though. He kept his mouth shut and did his job. Vittorio, as I suspect is very common in... East Africa, has an exceptionally sweet way about him. I suspect they have been through enough Hell for all their collective lifetimes. In the end, I can't help but have the highest of respect for the people. These guys just need some access to the outside world.

During our day, we had the curtains drawn, some rain, some snow, but not too much heat or cold. I wore the same clothing through out the day.

 When we finally got onto, what I would call, the remnant glacier, My boot selection was at the forefront of my consciousness. The fallacy of my ways, bringing a trail shoe style boot and a lightweight crampon for this terrain was a mistake. The Katoolah spikes I brought are a great set of lightweight spikes, but the tines are too short for alpine conditions. There may not be much of it, but 40-degree-glacier-in-retreat-equatorial-ice is still steep and hard. As much as my Keen boots are my typical go to boot, they aren't a mountaineering boot. What I wanted was a light alpine boot, with a sticky rubber sole, that would take full sized crampons.

The descent was slow. I bit my lip for the bulk of the time, coming down last. The size of the mountain is multiplied by the unending easy-but-not-easy-enough-to-un-roped-in terrain.

Mt. Speke is a large mountain. It fits in well for an acclimitization climb, but there is nothing there I would recommend as a route. Now a traverse of the mountain. It would probably be a 2 day program. That would be a worthy trip.

But, for my first full-on Shipton/ Tilman route, I was disappointed. It is a peak bagger route, not quality climbing, or a grand situation. Obviously, they evolved. As a writer, Bill Tilman is a quiet treasure. The route they did on Speke isn't their best work though.