When all the muscles in your body ache

Every so often I say “That was the hardest thing I’ve done.” A few days ago, in the case of climbing up Batian (the highest summit of Mt Kenya), I found myself saying that exact thing. As I focused my concentration on crossing the ledge on the back side of Ferman’s tower, kicking steps firmly in the snow, holding onto little rock ledges that were wet, removing the cam or nut or tricam as needed, thinking that Karsten the best rock-star leader, and making moves up snowy and icy cracks or faces of rock, I thought it. And as I slept in my bivy sack on the small ledge above 16 thousand feet, I stretched and could feel little aches in every one of my muscles. But it felt good.

The mountain is beautiful. It is not just one mountain, but many many points. Points left over from volcanic activity. The highest is Batian, the next highest Nelion. The next is Point Lenana, which all five of us reached on an earlier day. Lenana gave us great views of Nelion and Batian, a fun scramble, and our first exposure to higher altitudes than you can find in Colorado.

The main issue we faced, other than a few small headaches from altitude or stomach grumbles from the food, was the weather. It was bad. In the context of one of the worst droughts in Kenya’s recent past, Mt Kenya itself was getting rain. Lots of it. Early rain. Not predictable afternoon thunderstorms like in Colorado. Rain that would come on our first day on the mountain by 2pm. Rain that would come on our second day on the mountain by 12pm. Rain that would come on our third day on the mountain by 10am. Rain that would catch us before we reached Mintos hut ~14,000 feet on our way in. Rain that gets past all the fancy rain gear you have. Rain that soaks the ground and then comes up into your tent. Thank goodness for good old plastic trash bags.

That rain, of course, turned into hail, snow, or ice higher on the mountain. At first, that meant that the route we first came to climb (the Standard route up Nelion, then Batian) was out of shape—too much snow. Also, the Diamond Couloir, which Brad and Tonya had come to climb, was not quite in good enough shape to climb. On to the next plan: hike almost all of the way around the mountain to the north side and climb the North Face Standard route. We hiked around one day, then did a few of the lower pitches to get our bearings and feel the route out. At this point, James decided not to come climbing with us, so it was just Karsten and me for the climb up Batian (while Brad and Tonya did their own climbs). Our trial run was great because we got our systems down, decided that rock shoes weren’t needed OR appropriate (we’d instead climb in our boots), and we were able to cache some of our gear at the start of the climb.

Recipe: Start with a rock climb. Let’s say somewhere around 5.7ish. Add altitude (15 to 17 thousand feet should do). Ditch your rock shoes and climb in boots. Add a pack. Add bivy gear to that pack. And food. And a stove. And crampons. And an ice axe. Keep going until it feels like a good 30 or 35 lbs. Put your helmet and harness on. Keep a pair of gloves handy, but try not to drop one on any scary snowy ledge (but if you do, just have your partner get one of your extra pairs from your pack). Now add melting snow to make the rock wet. Add some hail. Now add some loose rocks that might trundle down the mountain at the push of your foot. Let the mist and clouds descend upon you around 10 am to make it feel just cool enough. Now climb. Stay mostly on route. The difficulty with all of these spices shouldn’t exceed 5.10 or so. Climb the hardest stuff you’ve climbed for about 11 hours until you decide that the safest thing to do is descend. Then once it gets too dark to see, set up your bivy and relax. Sleep until the sun wakes you up and smile at the beauty of everything you’ve experienced.

Trekking out, listening to music, I spun around a few times because I was simply happy.