Mount Kenya
Interesting facts
- Before ice wore it down, the volcano may have stood around 6,000 to 7,000 metres high, taller than Kilimanjaro is today.
- A volcanic rock called kenyte was first described here by the geologist John Walter Gregory in 1900 and named after the mountain.
- Batian, Nelion and Lenana honour a Maasai family: the laibon Mbatian, his brother Nelieng and his son Lenana.
- Johann Ludwig Krapf reported the snowy peak in December 1849, but Europeans doubted snow so near the equator until Joseph Thomson confirmed it in 1883.
- Despite lying almost on the equator, the upper mountain has permafrost a few centimetres below the surface, and nightly frost sorts the soil into patterned ground.
- The mountain feeds the Tana, Kenya's largest river, whose chain of hydroelectric dams supplied about 80 percent of the country's electricity in 1988.
- Mackinder's 1899 expedition numbered about 170 people, including 96 Kikuyu porters, 66 Swahili porters and two Maasai guides.
- In 1930 Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman made the first traverse of the twin summits, crossing the notch called the Gate of the Mists.
- In 1938 Una Cameron became the first woman to stand on Batian, weeks after Mtu Muthara became the first African recorded on Nelion.
- In the 1930s the mapmakers Raymond Hook and Humphrey Slade also stocked several of the mountain's streams with trout.
Why it is worth it
Mount Kenya is the second-highest mountain in Africa and gave its name to the country. It rises about 150 km north-north-east of Nairobi and only some 16 km south of the equator, and its three main summits are Batian (5,199 m), Nelion (5,188 m) and Point Lenana (4,985 m). It is an extinct stratovolcano that probably once stood much higher; glaciers have since carved it into a ring of radiating valleys around a jagged core of volcanic plugs. About eleven small glaciers remain, shrinking fast.
The mountain is sacred to the peoples who farm its fertile slopes. For the Kikuyu it is the dwelling place of Ngai, and houses were traditionally built with doors facing the peaks; the Embu and Meru hold similar beliefs, and the Maasai, who graze cattle to the north, know it as the mountain of stripes. The name "Kenya" is thought to come from the Kamba form of the name as recorded by the missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf. Protected as a national park since 1949, the mountain and its surrounding forest reserve became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997; the slopes are a vital water source, and the alpine zone has endemic giant lobelias and groundsels.
Batian was first climbed on 13 September 1899 by Halford Mackinder with the guides César Ollier and Joseph Brocherel, an expedition also marred by violence against its porters. Nelion followed in 1929, when Eric Shipton and Percy Wyn-Harris climbed what is still the Normal Route. The most famous ascent is the strangest: during the Second World War three Italian prisoners escaped from a British camp at Nanyuki, climbed Point Lenana and then slipped back into the camp, a story Felice Benuzzi told in "No Picnic on Mount Kenya".
Today the twin summits remain rock climbs, reached by only a few hundred people a year, while most of the park's roughly 15,000 annual visitors aim for Point Lenana, the highest top reachable without technical climbing. Of the walking routes, Naro Moru, Sirimon and Chogoria have staffed gates. Naro Moru can be done in three days, with bunkhouses and a stretch nicknamed the Vertical Bog; Sirimon approaches from the north-west up the Mackinder Valley to Shipton's Camp; Chogoria climbs from the south-east through the Gorges Valley, past country the Mountain Club of Kenya rates among the best hillwalking in the country. The park is run by the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Getting there
Nanyuki, about 18 km from the peaks, is the main base on the western side, with the small Nanyuki Civil Airport (NYK) just outside town. International travellers arrive at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (NBO), about 18 km south-east of central Nairobi, and continue by road to the trailhead towns such as Nanyuki, Naro Moru or Chogoria.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Mount Kenya is the second highest mountain in Africa and the namesake of the country Kenya. Located about 150 km north-northeast of the capital of Nairobi and just 16.5 kilometres south of the equator, the mountain's highest peaks are Batian, Nelion, and Point Lenana. Historically situated in the former Eastern and Central provinces, the massif now serves as the intersection of Meru, Embu, Kirinyaga, Nyeri, and Tharaka Nithi counties. The area was officially gazetted as the Mount Kenya National Park in 1949 and was later designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 for its outstanding natural beauty and ecological significance. Today, the park and its surrounding forest reserve are managed by the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Kenya Forest Service as a critical sanctuary for endangered species and a primary water tower for the region.
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