So, I spoke of mental scars. This 'mountain' (read devil mountain) would be the source of those scars. Well, this and the eastern-style toilets. This volcano was to be the pinnacle, literally and figuratively, of our safari. When we were told we would climb a volcano, naturally we were all for it. My mind wandered to the lava floes in Hawaii, where you walk on flat rock and say 'Hey! There's lava over there, cool.' As you can see by the above picture, there is no flatness on that volcano. Nor is there really any rock, as we later found out. But I digress.
On our last day at the Serengeti, we awoke at 6am to start the long 8 hour drive North to Lake Natron, a place famous for its massive flocks of flamingoes and red algae. At any time, the lake can look red, blue, green, or pink, pretty cool. We made camp at about 4 in the afternoon, and we immediately started to hike along one of Natron's tributary rivers to gorgeous waterfalls. It was so worth it. Mostly because certain people (you know who you are) had not taken a shower during the entire safari and the safari cars were beginning to develop a funk.
We made it back to camp just as dark began to fall on the lake. A meager meal of rice and lentils was served as our Maasai guides told us about the mountain. All that was required was a windbreaker, a walking stick, and two bottles of water. We would leave at 11pm. Right, PM. It would be too hot to hike during the day and this way, we could see the sunrise over the stunning landscape of Lake Natron. By 9PM, we had crawled into our sleeping bags for some sleep. Needless to say, morale was low. Who in their right mind would awake at 11PM, after two hours of sleep and a small meal, and hike a 10,000 ft. volcano in the middle of the night? Well, TIA. Everyone woke up and rallied. Climbing into the trucks in a dream-state, we began to drive to the foot of Oldoinyo Lengai, Maasai for 'God's Mountain.' (Wrong.)
As we started the hike, I felt like we were the Wise Men, going to see Baby Jesus. The stars were bright and the moon was massive in the sky, almost cloaked by whispers of clouds. My walking stick from an acacia tree brushed aside thicks patches of golden scrub. The only sound was 30 feet walking through the volcanic ash. Well, until Brock started listening to Daft Punk and singing, that kind of ruined the atmosphere I had going. He had taken some of Joanne's caffeine pills, and they were working for him. He later found a glow stick to wave around, then I felt less like a Wise Man, and more like a raver.
Around the same time Brock's caffeine pills wore off, exhaustion started to take hold of most of us. We had hiked for maybe an hour, and the guides told us we had four hours left to the summit. Everyone dug in and decided to keep going. And that's when it started to get tough. The trail went straight up the face of the volcano, incredibly steep. At many points, you were forced to get on your hands and knees to crawl up the volcano. For almost all of us, it was too much. But then we saw Angie, one of the girls in the group, pushing herself to reach the top. No one could make her stop climbing, she was more determined than anyone I have ever seen. Even when the guides told her to turn back, she wouldn't. I think without Angie, many of us wouldn't have made it to where we did, she gave us the strength to keep going up. She was simply amazing.
After several hours more of climbing, maybe it was 3:30AM by now, people began to really feel it. A few of us began to get sick and about half of the group turned around. I decided to keep climbing but I can say now, I wish I had turned around. After another hour of crawling on my hands and knees in ash, I was beat. My calves were on fire, and I had sweat through my windbreaker. At about 8,000 ft., the remaining group met and took a rest. Now, the guides told us we only needed windbreakers to climb. But it was freezing. The wind had picked up, and it was bitter up there. It was as this point that we watched in a complete stupor our pull out gloves, a sweatshirt, and a cap for himself. Hmm. Brock, Mary Rose and I decided to head back down the mountain to find some respite from the wind, and then maybe start again. We found a small crevasse to hunker down in where Brock and I attempted to light a fire for warmth. Everything in my bag was burned; old plane tickets, receipts, napkins, notebook paper, wet napkins. Nothing caught. We tried burning the golden shrubs growing on the side of the mountain. Nothing. We gave up after exploding a lighter in our faces and fell asleep on top of one another and waited for daylight.
After an hour or so, we awoke to the sunrise. And our guides were right, we were amazed at what we saw. No, the sunrise was not beautiful, but the landscape, my god. It was hideous. I've never been to the moon, but the area around Natron is about as close as you could get I imagine. Grey rock on top of grey dirt, surrounded by grey rocks. Grey grey grey. Dry rock. Dry dirt. No animals. Nothing. For miles. Grey. Moon.
We all looked at each other and asked 'Why the hell did we do this?' Unfortunately, they blamed me because I organized the safari. Bleh.
We decided to hike down the mountain as sitting up and admiring the landscape was a complete waste of time. Hiking down proved to be just as treacherous as hiking up as it was all too easy to lose your footing in the ash and slide down thirty feet. We found that walking in the crevasses was much easier as there was solid ground underneath. The more we descended, we noticed the walls of the crevasse would grow. When they were about three feet high, we all agreed that we needed to find another way down this mountain. But there was no other way to see. We continued in our crevasse, looking for paths out. Forced to jump down small ledges, the walls continued to grow. As did the ledges. Eventually, we were jumping down five or six feet to continue. At one point, we jumped off one that was a sheer eight feet and we found ourselves stranded. To continue down, it was at least a ten foot drop and we saw that the walls would only get higher. Getting back the way we came seemed impossible. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Mary Rose took a picture of Brock and me and I though to myself, 'My god, this is it. This will be the last picture they find of us. It's like Into the Wild or something.' We sat and planned our next move. Brock and I thought that sitting where we were seemed to be the best option. If we continued downwards, we wouldn't be as visible for the rescue chopper. I looked around for things to burn for a signal fire, we began yelling 'HELP!' in unison, I found a whistle on my backpack and began blowing. At one point, I think we began to imagine voices yelling back to us. Finally, Mary Rose, bless her, suggested we climb back up and find a way out. And find a way we did. Brock and I pushed Mary Rose up these rock walls and we used our non-existent rock climbing skills to climb out. After half an hour of rock climbing, we found ourselves on a shale-like face of the mountain. If we were careful, we would have slid down the face back in the deep crevasse we had emerged from. We crab-walked across and all of a sudden, emerged onto the path up the mountain, covered with our foot prints. We were marooned in this crevasse while being only thirty feet from the path. Idiots.
We walked for two more hours down the mountain and found a car parked, waiting for us. We had been rationing water the way down, so we drank the car dry, and passed out for a few hours before we were taken back to camp.
So, not God's Mountain.
