Mt. Meru (aka the worst weather weekend ever)

The stats:  4 women, 2 guides, 6 porters, 1 cook, and 1 ranger.  3 days, 10,600 feet (3,200 meters) up, and almost 30 miles and 22 hours of hiking.  Sun, rain, hail, snow, and a full moon.

We made it!  And we made it back safely, which, as it turns out, was actually more of an accomplishment than making it up.  More on that later. 

Before I left the kids made me some great pictures:

From T:  Goodbye Mommy we will miss you try to get to the top!

From Ash: I hope you get to the top safely I hope it is fun

Day 1:  Momela Gate to Miriakamba Hut

The weekend started Friday morning where we picked up in Arusha and taken to the Momela Gate in Arusha National Park.  We had sort of a late start (money exchanges, picking up food, supplies and porters, etc), but weren’t in much of a hurry.  We did have 8.5 miles and 3,000 feet to cover that day, but we had all day to do it.  Despite misty rain most of the day, it was a glorious day.  The hike was gorgeous, we saw animals, and made it to Miriakamba huts by late afternoon.  There are two options for the first day and we had opted for the longer, more scenic route – mostly because it just sounded nicer, but also because the crazy Kiwi (Kirsten) in our group had just hiked Meru the weekend before and went the other route.  I think it was the right decision. 

Despite having carefully packed a backpack for the porter the night before, the pack was thrown into a very large sack with other supplies for the porter to carry (on his head).  The packs are then weighed to make sure they are under the total weight limit allowed for the porters to carry (20 kilograms/45 pounds in total, I think for their non-personal gear).

Almost as soon as we started the hike we walked past a field of buffalos.  I stuck close to the man with the gun (park ranger).

A very pretty hike where we saw a black and white colobus monkey and the fig tree arch.

After about 4 or so hours we reached Miriakamba Hut (it was only 2 days ago and already I forget).  A great spot to acclimate and spend the night.  This is where we will be picked up to be driven out.  They don’t allow you to drive up to this hut to start because they require the first day for acclimatization.  Melanie had the sole of her boot fall off exactly 15 minutes into the day; luckily there was a very talented porter with excellent needle and thread skills and also another guide (from the ISM group also there) with a roll of duct tape – the two together extended the life of her boots by a very necessary 2 days.

Hut style:

And the view of the peak and volcanic ash cone was also beautiful from Miriakamba.  We were told that we’d have a nice view of the cone from above as we were climbing to/from the summit…yeah…not so much.  The approach to the summit is along that ridge, behind the first rock section that looks like it could be the top, to the little pointy rock section that we approached from the back. 

Day 2:  Miriakamba to Saddle Hut (with add-on climb to Little Meru)

Started Saturday in a cloud.  It felt mystical and magical rather than ominous.  It was steep, but the guides forced a slow pace and kept reminding us “pole, pole” (po-lay, po-lay which means slowly in Kiswahili).  The forest basically had stairs built into it that we climbed for the next 3.5 hours – there was lots of ‘evidence’ of buffalo and elephant being there recently.  We made great time, but I think that was due to our lack of rest time during the hike which was due to the torrential rain that we encountered not long after the start.  [You’ll notice the lack of photos pretty much from that point on]

It wasn’t long before our awesome porters passed us.  Despite the bag over the backpack and some shopping bags inside the pack, much of my clothes were wet by the time we got to Saddle Hut.  I didn’t have dry chupis (underwear) the rest of the trip. 

That afternoon the clouds parted and the sun came out, so Rebecca, Melanie and I and our guide, Dickson, decided to do the hour hike up to Little Meru (Kirsten opted out because she had just done it the weekend before).  It was very nice after 2 days of rain and we felt it was a good sign for our summit attempt that night/morning.  We were up there with the group from ISM which was a trip for seven 11-ish year old boys lead by two of our good friends Mirjam (Ashlyn’s friend Simone’s mom) and Chelsea (Ashlyn’s teacher).  It was so nice to hang out with them at the huts and at the top of Little Meru (the goal of their outing – Hongera OP group!).

ISM crew at the top of Little Meru and the view of Saddle Hut from the hike up.

Day (really night) 3: Saddle Hut to Socialist Peak (the top!) back down to Miriakamba Huts.

Not my picture, but a nice view of the last day’s hike from Rhino point (mountain in the foreground) to the peak.  Now imagine doing that in the conditions described below.

 

The day started very early with a 12:30 am wake-up. We were served coffee and cookies (Breakfast of Champions) before we left at 1:30 am.  It was gorgeous out!  Full moon and stars visible overhead.  I was so excited to see the much talked about views of Kili and the Ash cone at the summit. 

At about 3 am we reached Rhino point still under a full moon.

From here on out the camera is put away almost all the time minus a quick few minutes at the peak which we reached about 7:15 am.  You are supposed to get the the summit for the gorgeous sunrise views below (yeah, right!).  Sometime between Rhino point and the summit approach it got very dark and started snowing, hard.  But we made it and were all very happy…and cold.  Leave it to the German (Melanie) to bring the schnapps to the top.   It was a long grunt up through rock, lava fields, and snow.  Little did we know how bad it would really get on the way down.  We thought that snow was the worst that we could encounter.  We were wrong.  

Update:  A few pictures from Melanie:

We didn’t linger long at the top because it was very, very cold and we still had a long way to get back to Miriakamba Hut that day.  The climb down from the summit wasn’t too bad even though it was a little slick from the snow.  As soon as we came down from the summit point it started to hail.  This hail, rain, snow, and ice mix lasted for the next several hours until we got back to Saddle Hut.  There were several times when I thought “I’d love to take a picture of this to show everyone how bad it was”, but the instinct to preserve my life (and camera) persevered.  Mostly it was just cold and wet and miserable; we were all soaked and bordering on hypothermia.  We had puddles in our boots, our underwear was wet, I had to take off my gloves because I figured the frozen gloves were doing more damage than help.  There were rock walls that were running like little waterfalls that we had to scramble our way across…scramble makes it sound like we were on our hands and knees.  It was more like rock-climbing…under a waterfall…in a snowstorm with very steep “penalty points” (i.e. if you fell, you were falling a very, very long way). I was also thinking “how the f*#! did we get across this in the pitch dark?” I was shaking from fear at points, but Dickson (our guide) was always close by to offer an assisting hand or encouraging words like “we have to hurry to get to Rhino point before that rock face freezes”.  Despite all of that we did make it back to Saddle Hut at almost 11 am.  We were cold and miserable and happy to see we all made it back safely.  We rested (if you call huddling in a sleeping bag in an attempt to get warm resting).  At about 2:00, after some nice warm porridge we headed out for the last descent to Miriakamba.  We all dressed in whatever we had that could even be considered ‘not soaking’.  Luckily, the rain stopped and we had pleasant weather for the two or so hours it took us to get back.  I must say that every ‘staircase’ emitted another groan from the group.  After being awake for 15 hours and having hiked for already 11 or 12 hours that morning, we were ready to just be done.  

We did make it back to the pick-up truck ride back to the park gate.  All of our gear, 4 women, 6 porters and 2 guides piled into the back of the truck for the not so comfortable 45 minute drive to the gate….it was still better than having to walk it.  We did see bushbuck, red diker, baboons, dik-dik, giraffe, waterbuck, buffalo and warthogs though.

Matt and the kids came and picked me up in town – I was so happy to see them.  I ordered take-out chinese food that felt nice and warm to hold (and eventually eat).  After not having showered in several days and after having been awake for 21 hours, it felt great to take a very hot shower and crawl in to bed.  An exhausting, exciting, miserable, cold, hot, wet, scary and proud weekend.  I look forward to climbing the mountain again, but next time it won’t be in the rainy season.

And finally, my very sore and swollen feet: