A jaw dropping conversation with a porter.

With a beautiful site like the Kitandara Hut and adjacent lakes, we were quite tempted to hang here. At least have a second thermos of hot tea. We had kept the option open to climb Mt. Baker. We even had a spectacular clear day. However, we let it slip away because we felt it would just leave too many loose ends and would make our last day too hectic.

The day's major obstacle was 14,000' Freshfield Pass. Since we were already at just over 13,000,' it wouldn't be much of a slowdown.
By the time we arrived at the pass, I had hopelessly stuffed both my camera's memory cards. Each day, I would trash any image that was not crisp, well composed or photoshop-able. As a dear teacher-photographer-friend I had in high school always told me, "You can never hurt a slideshow by editing it." I suspect he meant it more energetically with my presentations than with others.

Regardless, I did not have the will to edit any more images away. I pulled out the little Flip video camera. I handed it to Vittorio, figuring he was ripe for Hollywood. From the way his posture changed, he agreed. My partner hung his head, knowing our personal photographer's days were now numbered. Vittorio, always the professional, knew he would have to double up and shoot both formats.

Anyway, at the pass, I wanted to get a shot and had to settle for video, even though it really complicates a show.
I instructed Vittorio on the golden rules of video:
1. 10 seconds of footage at the beginning and end, to edit with.
2. every scene tells a complete story.
3. Any motion needs to be slow. The audience should not even realize there is a camera.
4. Watch the lighting on the subject. Plan out the shot, camera location and subject movements. The camera should not move.
I spewed in his direction until his ears started bleeding. At that point, I figured there were diminishing returns to me using up breath, especially here at 14,000.'

It must always be tough to watch budding videographers. Vittorio's pans were fast. He walked with the subject, rather than let him get out of range. One time, when the porter he was filming was at a loss for the English word he was searching for, Vittorio finished the sentence, from behind the camera. To cap it off, every scene he shot, did a full 360 degree circle around him, Sound of Music fashion. All we needed was the song.

It was during this phase in Vittorio's rapidly developing career, that I was just admiring the view into the Republic of Congo, just to the west of us. I was looking for guerrilla activities coming up the valley below, when I heard, "There used to be snow here. Now its all gone. It used to be so beautiful. Its so dry now. Now its all gone. And, I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't understand. I don't understand." He went on for several minutes, not repeating himself.

Out of the fog I had slipped into, I bolted back to consciousness.
"Do you mean in your lifetime, there was snow here?"
He was too distraught to acknowledge my question.
Knowing the microphone on the Flip video camera couldn't possibly be picking up the audio from this far away, I had to step into the scene and get the shot re-done.

This time the 58 year old porter would carry a digital voice recorder. I did not care if it was visible to the audience. This was too, too important to lose the audio. I walked up behind him, as if we were having a conversation.

The porter could have easily been the elder statesman of the village. His community mindedness was impressive, with significant concern for the long term ramifications climate change will have for this area.

The area surrounding us was the final slope leading to the pass itself (they have a habit of putting a sign at a pass, then we walk to a significantly higher height-of-land, so I was mostly confused where the passes actually were). Vittorio chimed in, stating that there was permanent snow here, even 20 years ago. Looking around, I would have guessed I was surrounded by a century's worth of plant growth. I would not have guessed this area had seen permanent snow in my lifetime.

The descent off Freshfield Pass was quite steep and slabby. We spent seeming hours descending steeply. Yet, still unique, pretty, varied and another bell ringer of a day. We ended the day in our last hut for the trip, the Guy Yeoman Hut.

Elisha, our cook, is no fool. The last two days of food was the best. This guy had been around the block before. Tips can more than double their wage here. Frequently, tips were handed out at the end of today, or in the morning. As our little band would be doing.
Wages are $10.00/day for porters, of which there are likely to be $3.00/ day expenses (rentals). The Cooks get $12.00/ day. We found that surprising, with the responsibility they take on and the critical contribution they make to a trip. Guides get $20.00/day. If they can get their wages, again, in tips then the trip is making them money.

 We had a business man, a couple of teachers, a couple of kids in school and a few full time porters. It is beneficial enough for men to leave their jobs to porter.

Educating their children is expensive everywhere. We were told it costs $150.00/year through primary school years. High school cost $250.00/quarter and they go three quarters a year. Even though we pay high school costs at home, I will refrain from barking next time the town gets all riled up over the latest levy. How these folks get a kid through school is beyond me. Elisha has 4 kids.

Mount Baker

Descending the rock slabs on Mt. Stanley is just a slow process.

90% of my time anymore seems like I am driving to some worksite. Long drive, usually not too long a job. When I was climbing all the time, a slower pace was second nature. I am too used to a faster pace. It took a conscious effort to accept reality. For here, in the Ruwenzori, walking is the speed. These guys have all ridden in cars. I would think they will occasionally rent one. But, down, down, down, ever so slowly, is a challenge to my 'making peace with it' department.

Just keep in mind, "And, this too, shall end."

Eventually, there is the Elena Hut. We took 45 minutes there and continued on our way down. Our night's resting place was the Kitandara Huts, on the shore of the lakes of the same name.
For a place with such a fierce rep for rain, we have seen a tremendous amount of good weather. Not southern California good weather. More like Glacier Bay, Alaska good weather. Still, good enough weather to consider doing some rock climbing here.

The west wall of Mt. Baker is no slope you would ever think you could walk up. It is closer to a big wall, than it is to a crag. There may be a route where you would be scrambling after 600' of steep rock climbing, but not many.

Vittorio really had me going, when, in an 'aha!' moment, I asked, wide eyed, if the waterfalls we were surrounded by ever froze? A thousand foot waterfall is ordinary here. There are plenty of bigger ones. Imagine ice routes on the Equator! I found out later, from the boss of the Ruwenzori Mountaineering Services, that, no, they don't freeze. Just atmospheric ice- rime ice. I'm not going to fly 18 hours for patches of rime.

But I could be encouraged to throw in a pretty good rack for a climb on the W. face of Baker. And a traverse of Speke. And a long ridge traverse of Margherita and Alexander.

So, you Ruwenzori vets out there, (I know there are none- nobody goes to the R. and, then,  nobody reads this. The odds would be astronomical. I can tell all the lies I want.) I hope I may be excused for considering rock climbs on the large West Face of Mount Baker. I can only imagine what it would be like in rain. The gear list would require wetsuits and a chisel and hooks. There would be plenty of features routes would follow where a guy could drown. The slabs on the southern end of the wall, towards the lakes, would be pretty tough in the wet. On the northern end of the 2mile(?) long wall is steeper terrain, better suited to climbing in the rain.

However, I really like the idea of coming home to a hut after a day on the crags. Considering how wet everything would get in a tent, after a week in a wet basecamp. Maybe the next trip should include a clothes dryer, one of those salad shooter style rigs.

Needless to say, my time between The Elena Hut and the Kitandara Huts passed very pleasantly, considering the tactics needed to climb the routes I saw before me made for pleasant amusement.

The hut is spectacularly situated well within view of the lake, right off the front porch. The lakes are beautiful, yet still at 13-some thousand feet. Again, every day is a bell ringer.

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.

On the trail

 The Ruwenzori Circuit, first camp- Nyabitaba Hut. 16:30, sitting in a dry t-shirt, not hot, not cold, just right.
I had the impression these huts were small, uncomfortable buildings. The old hut here has a front and back 'apartment' and probably 12 bunks. There are foam mattresses, covered with a cotton cover. No guessing when the last time it was changed. Then there are pillows for each bed. I'm thinking I'll sleep with my head on my pack instead.
We had a pleasant five hour walk. There was maybe an hour of flat ground, followed with a couple of hours more of gently ascent.  

(On the descent, eight days later, I was rather impressed with how much of the day was fairly steep uphill. Obviously, there was still the 'glow' of a new place distracting my judgment when I wrote this.)

A lunch stop is reputed to be half-way through the day. Like many statistics, such information inspires heartbreak and inspiration, depending on one's mood, how it is presented and the experience with/of the subject/statistician.

There are at least four measurements 'halfway' could be referring to: distance, elevation gain, energy, and finally, time.
Distance is nearly useless in the mountains and with increasing altitude. It just isn't a realistic representations of a day for this scenario; unless there is, far and away,.more of it than elevation gain.


Energy is a bit esoteric,
but, at least, I can prepare myself mentally and nutritionally.
Time, is skewing the focus towards pain. Or hardship. With a perspective on 'time,' it almost begs the participant to focus on, "How much is left." I don't even want to go there any more. "Transcend time, Grasshopper (after the Master of th TV show of my youth, Kung Fu). There is plenty of it, yet you shouldn't waste any of it. But, in the end, it does not matter any way. Trying to measure, or project, time.
We are left with elevation gain. The knife stab here is, yet again, how much is left to go. Looking up. The same outcome, measurement and projection amounts to pain.

A well traveled high altitude climber has a particular expertise and insight into this issue, having spent seeming lifetimes wrestling with the slope above.

By far, the least painful attitude is to enjoy walking. If simply walking is pleasant, there is no pain. Each step can become an alignment and centering of your soul. It is best to not use two ski poles, for they insulate the participant from the pleasure of balance. OK, one is a good compromise. The process of sustained uphill walking requires a rest step. The single most valuable technique on any mountain of this planet. There should be flow from one step to the next, where there is a pre-cognition of where I want to be in the next moment. Looking at the immediate ground ahead, I know what I need to do to get there. Each transition is founded on the easiest step from here to there.

This can be a very easy substitute for meditation. And, that, will get us up a hill.

If only making a decision was as easy.



At Nyabitaba, there is a new hut under construction. Being the closest to the trailhead, Ruwenzori Mountaineering Services wants a larger, even more comfortable structure for two day programs, Nearly complete, it promises to be a very nice night out. These guys are laying the groundwork for an excellent program.