Traveling in Uganda and the Congo

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Outside Magazine January 2005

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The Hard Way
Making It Real (Cont.)

FIVE DAYS OUT from Kampala, we cross the Bujuku River in Rwenzori Mountains National Park, hopping from one ice-fringed boulder to the next. We pull ourselves up through a stunted, moss- webbed forest to gain the lower Bigo Bog, a narrow defile between two walls of dark, wet granite. Beneath the floating hummocks of frost-glazed sedge lies a lake of mud.

In addition to our Ugandan trekking guide, Joel Nzwenge, 34, an armed national-park ranger, and 18 Ugandan porters, our team consists of Steve, me, Nelson Kisaka, and six other members of the Mountain Club of Uganda. The demographics of our group resemble those of the present-day MCU: Of the seven members, only Nelson and 26-year-old electrical engineer Eric Mugerwa are Ugandan. The rest are expats: Kenyan Ngoki Muhoho, 40, who owns her own management consulting business; Greg Smith, 24, a British economist for Uganda's Ministry of Finance; Mike Barnett, 59, an Australian project engineer in Kampala; and two Yanks—Glenda Siegrist, 42, nurse for the U.S. embassy in Kampala, and her husband, Loren Hostetter, 43, an agricultural development consultant for USAID. Greg and Loren have mountaineering experience; the rest are enthusiastic novices.

It has been raining for days. Two nights ago, at the Nyabitaba hut, it was pouring so violently, the tin roof was shrieking. But when I asked Joel how the weather would affect the alpine moorlands, he said, flatly, "It is not raining." He wasn't joking. To the Bakonjo—the people who live in the foothills of the Rwenzori and farm cassava, bananas, beans, and coffee—it is raining only when the air is so full of water you literally can't breathe and must stay indoors.

Above the lower Bigo Bog lies the upper Bigo Bog, at 12,000 feet. When Rwenzori Mountains National Park was declared a World Heritage Site by the UN in 1994, a boardwalk was built across this swamp. Dilapidated now, yet still largely above water, it allows us to chug across the quagmire like engines on a narrow-gauge railroad, entering a landscape I have imagined since childhood.

A forest of hypertrophic plants surrounds us—giant groundsel and giant lobelia and giant heather. The giant groundsels, 25 feet tall, with their enormous, artichoke-like balls atop their furred branches, resemble Joshua trees. The giant lobelias, purplish spires of hair, stand like solemn, bearded trolls; giant heathers hover to either side like plants that have morphed into enormous mammals. It is like Little Shop of Horrors. At any moment I expect a giant groundsel to reach out and grab me, or a three-foot rosette to spread its labial leaves and speak.

This surreal terrain, as much as the summits themselves, is what drew me to the Rwenzori, and I'm in no hurry to leave. Still, it takes us only two more days to reach our alpine high camp, the Elena hut, at 14,900 feet.

It is like LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. I expect a giant groundsel to REACH OUT AND GRAB ME, or a three-foot rosette to speak.

That night, before our dawn attempt on Margherita, the highest summit of 16,763-foot Mount Stanley, we're all zipped up in our bags on the blackened hut floor. Due to altitude sickness, Eric, Ngoki, and Nelson will stay in the hut while the six of us make the final push.

"We should split into two roped teams," whispers Steve. "You, Loren, and Greg. Me, Glenda, and Mike. How far did you recon today?"

"To the Stanley Plateau, I think," I say.

"Couldn't see the peaks?" chuckles Steve. The fog, sleet drizzle, and flurries of snow have been so incessant that we haven't even laid eyes on the summits yet. We are climbing in the summer dry season, but the Rwenzori gets eight feet of precipitation a year.

The next morning we set off into an ocean of fog, as usual. Following cairns up recently deglaciated granite slabs, we reach the steep nose of the Elena Glacier, where our two teams separate.

"See you on top," I yell to Steve, a blue ghost in the pearly opacity.

"I doubt it."

Loren, Greg, and I make short work of the Stanley Plateau—a flat, diminishing ice cap—then cut northeast across a rock ridge to gain the Margherita Glacier. Although it is heavily crevassed, meltwater has filled in the cracks. A generation ago we would have been able to climb ice all the way to the top. Today the peak is a shattered helmet of dripping rock.

We summit before noon, eat lunch in swirling clouds, then descend to the base of the rock to find Steve's team arriving. Some swift belaying and Steve, Glenda, and Mike top out.

We're all grinning ear to ear as we crampon back down the glaciers together. At the hut, Mike confides that he's been dreaming of climbing the Rwenzori for the last 30 years. Dreams are contagious, and dreamers sometimes, serendipitously, find each other.

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