Climbing Mt. Cameroon: Day 2

Woke up at 6am very sore but to good weather- not too cold or windy. Our guide, Useless Peter, as we had dubbed him, promised to tell us more about the ecology and history of the mountain, and therefore began our climb by telling us about how there was the dead body of a teenager on the next ridge and that a plane had crashed in the mountain last year. Charming.

After a short, extremely steep and rocky portion, the ground became slightly more level, and the climbing easier, but the weather became cold, windy, and misty. Two hours later we arrived at a huge cave, where we took shelter from the wind for a bit and chatted with Francis, the other guide, who told us about the god of the mountain and how his mood determines the weather at the summit. That day it seemed like the god was feeling blustery.

From there it was another hour to Hut 3 in the wind and cold, and the hike seemed never-ending. By this point we were all cursing ourselves for choosing to do this god-forsaken climb and were angry, frozen, wet popsicles. After resting, exhausted, in the hut for a while with the porters, who were also beat, we set out to brave the storm and climb the last 45 minutes to the summit. The path, although not very steep, was extremely difficult because the land was sandy/gravely and the wind was so bad that it was hard to stand up, let along walk in a straight line. In a determined haze I dragged myself, practically crawling, to the summit where it was so windy that it was difficult to breathe and we had to cling to the big rock there just to keep from blowing away. (If this had been a mountain in the U.S. there is no way the mountain would have been open to climbers. The guides said they had never seen it so bad and estimated the wind was blowing at about 80mph.) It was also so misty that we could barely see the hand in front of our faces, let alone any view of Cameroon. Because of the miserable conditions it was hard to enjoy the achievement of reaching the peak, and we just wanted to get the hell out of there.

After taking the obligatory pictures (which are too misty to really make out anything) we crawled back down over a different route. Useless Peter went ahead and didnt look back while the three of us struggled to navigate between the two huge craters on the other side. I was kneeling farther down the slope trying to direct Sophie so she didnt fall into one of them while Berit yelled at Peter to slow down, which he didnt do. For about 20 minutes more we struggled through these conditions as we slipped and fell down the very rocky, very windy steep slope. It was like trying to stand still during a rock slide. Eventually the weather got slightly better, the visibility improved and we moved into an area of fine black sand/gravel surrounded by brown tundra. Rather than try and walk down it, I realized that it was easier to 'ski' it and had a great time slalom-ing down the huge hill.

At the end of the hill we started to walk through the endless lava flows which seem to reach the furtherest point of the horizon. These particular flows were from the last erruption in 2002 and were just starting to bud with plant life; I'm sure after the rainy season the whole land looks lush with vegetation. We had to go quite slowly through this portion as Berit wasnt feeling well and the ground was really uneven and unsteady. (However, Useless Peter wasnt too thrilled about this and kept going ahead until I told him to stop and slow down.) After a couple hours we finally, finally made it through to the savana. The line between the savana and the flows is very distinct, as are all the transitions from one environment to the next. The contrast between each of them is extreme.

We thought we only had 40 minutes to go until we reached Mann's Spring, our camping point for the evening, but it turned out that it was 40 minutes until the 12 craters and then another 1 hour to the site. The savana was barren, stark and very windy and we were pretty tired, having already done 12km, including a lot of uphill. Unfortunately we needed a lot of energy to navigate between the craters (which we think were caused during the volcanic eruptions- it was hard to get an answer out of Peter) as they were very unstable, and the trail was just loose pebbles in along a narrow ridge. Beyond the craters we could see green rolling hills, which was quite the contrast to the black 40 foot deep craters we were trying not to fall into. After the craters we emerged into a huge, vast black desert made of very fine volcanic rock. It was truly beautiful and the scope of it was amazing- it just kept going and going. (For those of you have have been to White Sands in New Mexico, think that but with pitch black sand.) I ran and skied through this part, going quickly so I wouldnt notice how badly my legs hurt. Finally out of the desert and into the greenery (although the soil was still made of volcanic rock), I ran down the hill towards a mountain, and eventually to our campsite on the far side. Peter and the girls eventually arrived in one piece as well, although we were all, including the porters who met us there, exhausted and barely able to walk to the latrine around the corner.

After resting and chatting with the Cameroonian girl who also made it to the Spring, we made some more spagetti and then talked with the porters about the local history and culture of the SW Province. After eating the porters did a traditional blessing of the ground, and performed a native song and dance with palm fronds that they asked us to join them in. It was a great experience, although we were so sore that it was hard to dance at all. At long last, at 8:15pm and after 22km that day, we crawled into our tiny tent and went to bed.