My Life in Kenya: Mt. Longonot

I survived! This sunday, a group of 30 students and staff headed out to Mt. Longonot for the first of four prep hikes for the school's Mt. Kenya trip at the end of February. There's a reason Mt. Longonot national park is the first prep hike. The gate sits at 2150m, the summit at 2780m (that's over 9,100 ft for those of you still stuck on the imperial system like myself), and there's a whole bunch of ups and downs in between! Over five hours of hiking incessant hills tends to weed out the undedicated masses.

We started down by the gate, and by the time I reached the rim (3km and two huge hills later) I was really tired. All the Canadians we met on the way up were right; the view was spectacular, but as I looked out over the crater at the huge peaks on the other side, I was more than a little intimidated. The intimidation didn't subside until I was quite a ways beyond both the summit and the halfway point. At that point, my jello legs couldn't convince me to turn back, because the path in front of me was the shortest, not to mention the only, way back to the bus.

I can't even begin to accurately describe the steepness of the trail, or the vast amounts of dust everywhere. At one point I touched what looked like solid rock, only to find out that it was very "squishy" as the dirt crumbled to dust beneath my fingers. By the time we reached the bus, some of the girls were so incredibly dusty, that their legs were starting to look like a mzungu's! (literally, it looked like they were wearing leggings!) One full day later, my backpack is still giving off little clouds of fine powder, and I'm pretty sure my shoes were once blue, but it's really hard to tell.

Well, I think I've found the answer to the question: Long or not? Definitely long! Worth it? Yes, but don't ever ask me to go again!