Felo Barkere – Senegal Highpoint

Felo Barkere (648m), Highpoint of Senegal

Dec 23 – 25, 2021

Eric, Serge, and Kahler

We were in West Africa for three weeks trying to climb and measure elevations for country highpoints. Interestingly, as far as I researched there had never been accurate enough surveys conducted to definitively determine the highest points in three West African countries – Togo, Gambia, and Guine-Bissau. So I had borrowed a survey-grade Trimble GeoXR with zephyr 2 antenna capable of 3cm vertical accuracy that Compass Data very generously lent me. Our plan was to climb and measure all the highpoint candidates for these countries, and tag on some nearby country highpoints while we were at it.

We had climbed and surveyed the highpoints and highpoint candidates for Ghana, Togo, Benin, Gambia, and Guinea over the previous two weeks, and next on the agenda was the highpoint of Senegal. There is very little information publically available about this peak, and as far as I’d researched it was officially unnamed. The peak is on the Guinea-Senegal border, and the only records I could find were from Francis Tapon and Ginge Fullen. Francis Tapon didn’t write a report, but he published a rough track on his inreach page showing that he accessed it from the Senegal side. But the track didn’t reach the summit, so it’s unclear if he summitted.

Ginge Fullen wrote that he encountered a big boulder on the summit that he had to lean a log up against to scramble up. I couldn’t recall which side he accessed the peak, though. Our schedule worked out that we would have to climb the peak from the Guinea side, so we would basically have to figure that out the details on our own. There was a lot of uncertainty given the lack of information on the peak, so we added in a bit of buffer time. In hindsight I should have taken Ginge’s description more seriously and brought a rope and rock gear for the boulder, but I figured I could make it work like he did.

Our plan was to drive to Mali City, Guinea and continue driving from there to the village of Barkere. This was the closest village shown on Google Maps, and was just 2 miles from the summit. However, Cellou had told us he had recently tried to drive to Mali City and the road was in such tough shape that he couldn’t make it. Apparantly roads in Guinea had received very little maintenance since the Covid pandemic started.

On other country highpointing trips (Philippines and Cambodia) I’d been able to hire motorcycle taxis, and I knew motorcycles are capable of making it up pretty much any road or trail. So our plan was to give ourselves a few extra days for the Senegal highpoint. We would drive as close as possible to Mali City, then hire motorcycle taxis to get us to Barkere village. I figured the towns and villages need to be resupplied with food somehow, so at the very least motorcycles must be making it in.

Dec 23

We had finished climbing Mt Richard-Molard, the Guinea and Cote D’Ivoire highpoint, on Dec 22 and made it to Nzerekore that night. The next morning we left town at 6am heading northwest on route N1. We were riding in a Toyota Landcruiser 4×4 with Mamadou as our driver. In Guinea it’s not possible to rent a vehicle to drive on your own, so we arranged for the rental plus driver.

The roads were in good shape to Faranah, but then deteriorated to roug

h broken pavement for the next five hours to Mamou. We got one flat tire that day, but quickly got it switched out and patched at the next town, Macenta. We arrived in Mamou in the evening and stopped for the day before it got too dangerous to drive at night. We were told at night outside of towns sometimes people dress up as police and wave you to stop, but when you stop they rob you. Mamadou said he thought the road would actually be driveable to Mali City the next day in the Landcruiser (he had friends that lived there). So we started strategizing about our plans.

Previously when we were in Senegal going for the Gambia highpoint candidates we were able to drive on terrain that just looked like foot trails on satellite images. This gave us confidence that perhaps we could drive all the way from Mali City to Barkere in the Landcruiser. There was at least a trail on the satellite images, so it might work. Mamadou hadn’t been there before so wasn’t sure, but he knew it was a 5 hour drive from Labe to Mali City (a distance of 70 miles). We figured if we could maintain that average 15-20mph speed we could perhaps make it to Barkere that day and maybe even summit. Then we would just camp out and head back the next day.

Dec 24

We drove north from Mamou on broken pavement roads, and took a break in Labe. I had read that there were black mamba snakes in southeastern Senegal, which was where we were heading. The best footware to prevent snake bites is rubber boots, but unfortunately I had forgotten to pack any. We definitely didn’t want to get bit, so we asked around in town and found a guy that sold rubber boots for $5 a pair. They had my size, but I think not quite the right sizes for Serge and Kahler unfortunately. They also only went up mid shin, so not ideal, but better protection than regular hiking boots.

We then continued north and the road quickly deteriorated to dirt and rock. There were plenty of other vehicles making the journey. The bush taxis were interesting – they were renault cars with the back wheels jacked up an extra foot. I think this was both to add clearance and to allow the suspension to handle a lot of extra weight. They generally cram the bush taxis full with a dozen people (it would usually hold about 4 or 5 in the US), then stack a 6-ft tall heap of luggage on top. Then one or two people might ride on top of the luggage and one or two stand on the back bumper and hold on.

We drove cautiously, and eventually reached a small turnoff just before Mali City about five hours later as expected. The turnoff appeared from our satellite images to be the road going towards Barkere, so we turned off. But it very soon got extremely rough and narrow. We only had one full-size spare tire and Mamadou thought it was too risky to proceed. With that quality of road/track we were only moving about 5mph anyways, which was not a practical speed to reach Barkere.

So we reformulated our plan. We would stay in Mali City that night, and try to arrange motorcycle taxis to take us to Barkere and back the next day. Mamadou expected it would be easy to find people to go since it would be a much more interesting and fun day for the drivers than taxiing people around town. It was over 75 miles round trip on rough trails, though, so we knew it would be a big day. I was originally concerned that the town would be shut down on Dec 25 since it was Christmas. But I hadn’t quite done my homework enough about this area. This part of northern Guinea is primarily muslim, so fortunately for us everything was operating as normal on Christmas day.

We got to Mali City and Mamadou was able to find three guys interested in the trip the next day. They even had three extra helmets for us, which was unexpected. One of the guys had actually been to Barkere before and said it would not have been possible to drive a Landcruiser there, but a motorcycle could make it. He knew a shortcut from Mali City that could save some time, and he expected about a 3 hour ride to Barkere. We told him we would take 2-3 hours for hiking the peak, and they were ok with waiting around in the village for us before returning.

I really wanted to bring my survey equipment for this peak, but unfortunately it didn’t make sense. There’s no real controversy about the highpoint in Senegal and it is accepted that this unnamed peak near Barkere village is the Senegal highpoint. The benefit of bringing the equipment would be just to get a very accurate elevation measurement of the summit. The problem is that it requires a one hour measurement to get the most accurate results. We knew the motorcycle drivers would not be happy to have to wait around an additional hour for us. Also, the equipment is a bit bulky and would be difficult to carry in my backpack over a rough 3 hour motorcyle ride each way. So I reluctantly agreed to leave the equipment. I would still bring my small handheld GPS and sight level just in case.

We asked around and found one hotel in town, in an old mansion undergoing renovation. The electricity and water didn’t work, but the rooms were really nice and only $10. We were fine taking bucket showers and using headlamps. We ate spaghetti bolognese at a restaurant next door and went to bed early that night. Interestingly, locals told us Mali City occasionally gets snow! This kind of makes sense to me. It’s at high elevation, 5,000ft, and is in the northern part of the country where it is drier and less jungley. It actually was a little chilly at night, and I could imagine if it got a little bit colder it could snow. But this is still very suprising for Guinea.

Dec 25

In the morning we met our three motorcycle drivers at 6am and took off into the night. This would be the third time I’ve ever ridden a motorcycle. The others were in the Philippines riding to the base of Mt Apo, and in Cambodia riding to the base of Phnom Aural with Katie. It’s not clear what the best way to hang on is, but there was a rack on the back so I generally just held on to that. I was wearing all my layers (two long sleeve shirts and a rain jacket), while the drivers were bundled up even more. I think the locals in Guinea are not quite as cold tolerant as Americans, since they’ll were sweatshirts when it’s 85F in the middle of the day.

We road south for 10km, then turned right on a small trail. This appeared to be the shortcut. We crossed a creek on a small bridge and then started a huge descent. The trail basically went straight down the side of the hill for many kilometers. This was apparently a standard motorcycle route to the next village. In a few steep places concrete had been poured on the trail to hold it together, but it was mostly loose jungle dirt and rocks.

It was kind of difficult to hold on and the drivers were working very hard. I kept getting pushed up against the driver and having to readjust, but I’m sure any time I moved it made it difficult for him to balance. So I tried to minimize moving. At the bottom of the hill we connected back with a rough double track and took a break in Lebekere village. I saw one landcruiser parked there, so apparently there was a route we could have taken. But the motorcycle drivers said it wouldn’t be possible to drive a landcruiser much farther.

We soon got back on the motorcycles and continued a little bit farther on single track trails that it looked like a truck had forced its way along. But the truck tracks soon disappeared and it looked like only foot or motorcycle traffic could go farther. A few times we had to dismount to get across deep creeks with steep sides, or to descend a steep rocky slope. We passed through several villages on the way, and Serge was in the front directing the driver. French is the main language in Guinea and Serge speaks fluent French.

I think it had been a while since the lead driver had been to Barkere, and the trails between villages can be confusing. At one point we stopped to ask directions and then continued on.

We crossed a long open area full of weird termite mounds. In Gambia the termite mounds look like little steep mountains, but in Senegal they look like pancakes stacked up into mushroom shapes. It was actually kind of tiring riding the motorcycle, and I had to delayer down to my base layer. We pushed deeper in, occasionally passing villages full of circular mud huts with conical roofs made of tree branches. We passed by a few other people on motorcycles, and this is definitely how the villages get resupplied.

Finally by around 9:15am we reached the end of the trails at Barkere village. A woman was filling a bucket in a well and there were a few huts next to a small corn field. We stopped there and started hiking. Serge led the way bushwhacking up towards the highpoint. We soon stumbled across another trail and followed it a bit farther past one last hut, but then diverged. We bushwhacked through an area that was recently burned (probably to clear the undergrowth), then made it into the denser forest.

We pushed through bushes that left us covered in small spikey balls, but it cleared out a bit as we ascended. After 45 minutes we started cresting the highpoint, and I saw the boulder that must have been what Ginge Fullen scrambled up. I started scrambling up the boulder and it looked difficult. It was a ~20ft tall boulder balanced on the edge of a 20ft cliff and rubble pile. I had to scramble up the broken rubble, then got to the base of a 20ft off width with a tree branch wedged in the bottom. It looked tough. I scrambled all around the base and the off width climb was actually the easiest way up.

I looked over and there appeared to be a point of equal or higher elevation just a little bit farther along the ridge. But there was what sounded like barking coming from that area. It turned out to be a pack of about 20 baboons! The boulder looked risky and possibly not even the highpoint, but where the baboons were looked like an easy walkup and potentially taller. So I said we should check out the baboon location first, then I could use my sight level from there to measure if the boulder was higher.

We each picked up some sticks and scared the baboons away by yelling and swinging the sticks. I noticed there was a depression in the rock full of water near the highpoint, and this is probably why the baboons were there. It was the only water we had seen on the peak. The top was a slab of rock and I layed down on the top point and took out my surveyor sight level. Interestingly, I measured the top of the boulder was almost the same height as the baboon summit, and perhaps slightly shorter (~0.1 degree declination). It was at the edge of the resolution of my measurement, which I calculated at that distance was on the order ~5cm. So, to the best of my measuring capability, I would say the boulder is a few cm shorter than the slabby baboon summit.

I put my Garmin 62S handheld unit on the slabby summit for a few minutes and it stabilized at 648m. This is exactly the same as the spot height from a 1983 1:25 000 topographic map [1] that used US-flown aerial photogrammetric methods (according to wikipedia) . SRTM shows 638m [2], but has errors up to 16m [3]. I would trust ground measurements and measurements from an airplane more than SRTM. Thus I would say the most accurate summit elevation is 648m.

It wouldn’t be possible to determine the boulder is shorter just by looking with no measuring equipment, so I can see why Ginge Fullen went and climbed the boulder. I assume he probably also walked over to the baboon summit to be sure. But unless someone takes a more accurate measurement, I would say the baboon summit is the true summit and it’s not necessary to climb the boulder.

Still, I felt that since Ginge Fullen scrambled up the boulder I might as well try and give it a go. Serge and Kahler weren’t interested and waited down below. I scrambled back up to the offwidth and looked it over. The branch was wedged into the bottom with a rock and a limb stuck out a little bit. I balanced up on a pointy boulder on the side, then gingerly stepped on the branch and pulled myself up into the offwidth. I was nervous trusting the branch, and it looked like there was still 10ft above me of no-fall-zone to wriggle up in my rubber boots. A fall out there would have been disastrous, with such a bad landing zone and so deep in the bush, and I decided it wasn’t worth it to get the second highest point in Senegal. So I scrambled back down before committing.

In hindsight if I had brought a 30m rope it would not have been a problem to get up the boulder. I would just throw the rope over the boulder, tie it to a tree on one side, then prussik up the other side. I scrambled back down and the three of us started bushwhacking back. Serge led again, this time finding a more direct way down, and we met back up with the motorcycle guys in Barkere by noon.

It was hot by then and they were lounging under some shade. A few villagers were walking around and we asked them what the name of the peak was. They said it was “Felo Barkere”, which means Mt Barkere. I guess that wasn’t too surprising. I bet the villagers on the Senegal side have a different name for it, but Felo Barkere sounds about official as you can get since that’s what the locals call it.

We soon loaded back up, said goodbye to some villagers, and headed off. I kind of wonder if the villagers had seen white people before. I doubt tourists ever make it in that far.

We retraced our route back, this time avoiding any wrong turns. We took a short break in Lebekere to eat some rice and beef. By now the village was bustling with a market. A huge truck had made it to the village, and it was probably bringing supplies in. From there we headed back up the steep trail towards Mali City.

The trail was quite difficult to go up since it was so steep and loose and we were two people on each motorcycle. We had to lean way forward so the motorcycle wouldn’t tip, and one time Kahler’s motorcycle spun out and flipped over. Luckily he and the driver were ok, just dusty and rattled. We ended up walking the steeper sections after that, then finally remounted at the top of the hill and rode back to Mali City by 3:30pm. We paid the drivers $30 each plus $10 tip, and everyone was happy.

Mamadou had been visiting friends in town and made it back to the hotel by 5pm. By then it was a bit late to be making the long drive back to Labe, so we decided to spend another night in Mali City. I was able to get off a short zoom call home to wish everyone merry christmas, and then we started strategizing about our next peaks, the two candidates for the Guinea-Bissau highpoint.

References

1. Senegal-Guinea Organization for the Development of the River Gambia, Map of Senegal, sheet 2049I SE. [ca. 1:25,000]. 1983
2. Google Earth 7.3.4 (2021). [Online] Available at http://www.google.com/earth/index.html [Accessed December 2021]
3. SRTM Mission Statistics, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, [Online] Available at https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/statistics.html [Accessed December 2021]

 

 

 

 

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