Four days up, one down – although the one down is a very long day
Day one was mostly driving from Nairobi to the park, when we got there after lunch we had around 3hrs to walk to ‘Old Moses’ camp at a measley 3300m. The camp itself was a collection of tin huts that became very cold when the sun went down. We took a number of porters with us who had to carry our food and any extra equipment.
The next day was a long hike up to the Shipton camp at 4200m where we spent the second and third nights. On the third day we had an aclimitisation day where we took a short walk to 4500m before coming back down to rest before the final ascent begining at about 3am.
The morning of the final ascent was clear and a full moon guided the early part of the path. We went up the second highest peak ‘Lenana’ which gave us great views of the highest peak and dawn creeping slowly over africa. After more than 12hrs being up and walking, we reached the bottom lodge at around 5pm, where we could finally have a beer.
The final day consisted of a two hour walk to somewhere near the park gate where we were picked up by the most ancient Land Rover imaginable who proceeded to drive us down the worst road I had ever seen finally making it to the park gate where we almost lost one of our porters to the park police for not having his ID on him; we paid off the police and made it out into town without any more incidents.
