Kartala – Comoros Highpoint

Kartala (7,746ft) – Comoros Highpoint

Sep 5-6, 2019

“Cette terre est la plus haute aux Comores,” I said, pointing to the peak on the far side of the gigantic 1-km wide volcanic caldera that spread before us. I was desperately trying to tell my guide, Nabhane, that I wanted to climb that hill, which was the highest point in the Comoros, but my French was extremely rusty, and I wasn’t sure I was saying it correctly. 

 

“Il n’est pas possible parce que il n’est pas une route,” I believe he replied, meaning that it was not possible to climb the mountain because there was no route to the top. It looked a little steep but didn’t seem like a big deal to me to just scramble up.

 

I was getting frustrated. The mini-peak was less than a mile away and only a few feet higher than our current elevation. We had ascended about 6000ft already and had just reached the rim of the enormous crater atop Kartala. The high point was practically within spitting distance.

 

But Nabhane wasn’t too happy. I sensed that he didn’t understand the point I was trying to make that I wanted to stand on the true highest ground. Likely the concept was too nuanced to come though in my primitive French. After all, he had brought me to the crater rim, which offered a magnificent view across the steaming caldera, and was probably the turnaround point for most of the trips he led. Most other tourists would be content to snap a few photos here and then begin their descent. In addition, it was only 1.5h until sunset and we still had 2 miles back to camp if we turned around now. He was likely concerned because he didn’t have a headlamp or a jacket. He didn’t have any food or water either – in fact, he wasn’t carrying anything at all besides his cell phone, apart from the shorts and t-shirt he was wearing.

 

Besides, it didn’t seem like the peak I was talking about was all that much higher anyhow. What was so important about standing on that particular hill?

 

I tried to communicate that I had food, water, a jacket, and a headlamp for him, and that seemed to mitigate his concerns a little. Still, he insisted that it wasn’t possible to reach the peak I was referring to. At least, I think that was what he was saying, though my French was so rusty that I comprehended only about half of what he said. 

 

It seemed that my chances of reaching the true summit were slipping away.

 

SEVEN HOURS EARLIER…

 

It was a situation that I had been hoping to avoid. My original plan had been to climb the mountain solo and camp on the true summit. In most trip reports I had read, hikers had hired guides, but in a handful of reports, no guides were mentioned. I therefore assumed

that it was a “guides recommended, but not required” type of mountain. Accordingly, my goal had been to take a taxi to the trailhead (there were apparently no car rental agencies due to the craziness of driving in the Comoros), stash my unneeded gear in the woods, then start hiking. I really wanted to avoid the leash of hiring a guide, because hiring one certainly wouldn’t enhance my chances of success. If anything, it would be a hindrance more than an enabler.

 

But my plan had been shaken up earlier that morning. Around 9:30am, my Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi had landed in Moroni. I had bagged the Seychelles and Mauritius high points earlier that week and was looking for continued success in my third Indian Ocean country of this trip. After clearing customs, I caught a pre-arranged taxi ride into town with a fellow traveler named Felix from Austria. I figured the ride would offer a chance to arrange a shuttle to the trailhead with the same taxi driver. Plus, it was headed to Felix’s hotel, since Felix had arranged it, so I could probably store my extra gear there while I hiked. 

 

As we rode the white pickup truck down the pothole-ridden road to downtown Moroni, I asked the taxi driver, a gentleman named Laurent, some questions. 

 

“Is it possible to get a ride to the Karthala trailhead?”

“Oh, you’re hiking Karthala, do you have a guide?” he replied, to my dismay.

“No, I’m planning to hike it by myself. I have all of my own gear, a GPS map of the trail, and I’ve read trip reports from others, so I don’t think I’ll have any problems.”

“Well, you still need to have a guide to hike Karthala,” he insisted.

“Is a guide required by law, or is it optional?”

“You really need to hire a guide,” he answered somewhat ambiguously. “I could drive you to the trailhead, but you still can’t hike it without a guide.”

 

It still wasn’t clear to me just how “required” the guide was. It seemed to me that Laurent simply couldn’t fathom how a tourist who had never been to the Comoros before could possibly have enough information to safely climb the mountain. In any case, it was becoming clear to me that my best chance of getting to the top without anyone turning me around would be to go ahead and hire a guide. So, I relented.

 

“OK, do you know any guides?” I asked.

 

Laurent immediately brightened and offered to arrange a guide with one of the numerous companies that led guided treks up the mountain. As soon as we reached the hotel, I stashed my unneeded gear in the back room while Laurent dialed a guide company. Then we headed the 4 miles to the trailhead, stopping along the way to grab some snacks and meet my guide, a 26 year old local named Nabhane. His English was limited, which was completely understandable since it was his fourth language; he also spoke Comoran, Arabic, and French. I understood some French, so that would be the lingua franca of the trip. Before Laurent left, however, I tried to ensure that Nabhane understood the specifics of my objective. 

 

“Would you mind telling Nabhane that I really want to stand on the highest point of the mountain?” I asked Laurent. “My goal is to be on the very top, with no ground higher. The absolute highest.”

 

With a smile, Laurent translated to Nabhane, who nodded in understanding. “He says that you will go to the very top, and there will be no ground higher.”

 

Nevertheless, it was a distinction that I was still concerned about. Based upon GPS tracks, maps, and satellite photos, it appeared that the trail ended on the west side of the crater rim, while the high point on the rim, and therefore the high point of the entire country, was on the east side. This was a situation that Eric and I had also faced on Mt. Liamuiga in St. Kitts and I had witnessed on Hallasan in South Korea. I doubted that Nabhane was even aware of the location of the true high point. In retrospect, I should have brought a printout of one of the photos from the crater rim, taken by my predecessors, and pointed out to Nabhane which peak I was talking about. 

 

We reached the trailhead, an unfinished concrete building with a smattering of dilapidated, wheel-less, smashed-window cars, and began the hike around 12pm. With 6L of water, overnight gear, camera equipment, and a day’s worth of food, my pack was heavy. Nabhane traveled ultralight, with 1L of water and seemingly no food, extra clothing, or sleeping gear. He reassured me that his overnight gear was stashed in one of the buildings at camp, since he typically hiked the mountain multiple times per week.

 

For the first 2 miles of the hike, we followed a rough gravel road that would have easily been passable by any 4wd vehicle, though it was gated near the bottom. As we ascended under the blazing hot sun, many farmers were descending carrying heavy burdens on their heads. We observed bundles of potatoes, onions, and logs – all apparently bounty from the slopes of Karthala. Nabhane told me that there was a big soccer game the next day: a World Cup qualifying match between the Comoros and Togo which would be held in Moroni. Therefore, all of the farmers who would normally camp out on the mountain were headed down so that they could catch the big game. 

 

After an hour or so of hiking, we turned onto a small dirt path in the woods, which led through some areas that had been slashed and burned to make way for a few banana trees. It seemed shameful to see the pristine forest destroyed for the sake of a few bananas, but when that’s the only way for a farmer to make an income, it’s difficult to argue with. We soon rejoined the road, then alternated between road walking and trail following for the next 2 miles. It would have been simpler to just follow the road the whole way, but Nabhane probably liked to spice it up since every trip was similar. 

 

By 2:50pm, we reached a cluster of ten corrugated steel buildings at approximately treeline, which Nabhane indicated would be our campground for the night. The original plan had been to summit early the next morning, then try to get down early enough for me to catch my 4pm flight. But since we still had 3 hours of daylight, Nabhane proposed that we go for the summit, to which I enthusiastically agreed. 

 

First, I stashed my extra gear and water in a locked room in one of the sheds and Nabhane deposited his backpack. With 2L of water, food, jacket, headlamp, and long sleeve shirt, I considered my gear to be minimal, but Nabhane was truly minimalist, with only a cell phone, which he carried in his pocket. This gave me a higher degree of certainty that he wasn’t intending to cross the crater to the high point and thought that we were going to turn around when we got to the rim.

 

As we continued the hike, I began to contemplate my options. If we get to the rim and Nabhane refuses to go any farther, how will I persuade him? Or, will I need to just make a run for it? I hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.

 

A short distance above camp, we passed the last of the large trees. According to Nabhane, the treeline was artificial and was caused by grazing cattle. The summit – well, the crater rim – was within sight, with a long, grassy slope in between. The weather was perfect – mostly sunny, light winds, and temps in the mid 70F’s. 

 

Around 4pm, we reached the rim of the crater and peered down into a gigantic caldera. On the left, about a hundred feet below us, was a vast relatively flat area large enough to fit about 200 soccer fields. It was difficult to tell what the surface was like, but it appeared to be a combination of black sand and piles of volcanic rocks, with a few dozen plumes of white smoke rising in various places. It reminded me of a mini-Mordor, minus the orcs and goblins. 

 

To the right was a gaping 800ft deep pit of similar size with walls so steep that there didn’t appear to be an easy way out – definitely not something that you would want to fall into. I had never witnessed anything quite like it before. The entire expanse was devoid of any vegetation, which was understandable because it had last erupted in 2005. In other words, much of the rock before us was only 14 years old. 

 

Straight in front of us was a prominent peak that I had spotted in the photos of other hikers and on Google Earth – the true summit. The easiest way to get there seemed to be to descend onto the plane of the crater, walk across the sand, and scramble up. It wasn’t clear from this vantage point how walkable the sand would even be. Would it be soft, like quicksand? Crusty and easy to punch through? Or firm and traversable?

 

I gestured towards the summit and attempted to express to Nabhane my desire to climb it. Unfortunately, over the course of the past 16 years since my last high school French class, having had little practice, I had forgotten much of what I learned. I could only roughly say that this peak was the highest point in the Comoros. At that moment, the way to say that I wanted to climb it escaped me. I eagerly pointed at it and hoped Nabhane would understand. 

 

“As-tu besoin escalader cette montagne?” Nabhane asked me – at least, I think that’s what he said. Critically, I didn’t

recall the meaning of the word “besoin,” so I just kept gesturing at the mountain.

 

He repeated the question with a quizzical look. I continued gesturing.

 

Eventually, he seemed to get the message. I would later learn that the meaning of his question was simply “do you want to climb that mountain?” All that I had to do was respond “oui.” So his puzzled look at my reply was understandable.

 

He proceeded towards a trail that led downwards through dense bushes towards the crater and I followed. An electrical cable had been strung between bushes resourcefully as a hand rail. When you don’t have any rope, you use whatever you can find, I guess. Grabbing the cable intermittently for support, we continued downwards about 150 vertical feet and reached the surface of the caldera.

 

I spotted numerous footprints leading off in various directions and was delighted to see that the black volcanic sand was easily traversable. I started walking across the sand towards the peak and Nabhane followed close behind. After skirting various steaming vents and pile of sharp, craggy rocks, while avoiding the 800ft deep pit, we soon reached the base of the peak. I felt a surge of adrenaline when I noticed that there was a faint trail leading to the summit through the bushes. We were going to get up this thing after all. 

 

I pointed at the rough trail and eagerly said to Nabhane, “c’est la route a la sommet” (approximately: this is the route to the summit). 

 

“Oui,” he replied. 

 

Because it was already 4:30pm, with just 90 minutes of daylight left, I wanted to convince him that we still had enough time before dark, so I said “ici à la sommet à l’ici est quinze minutes” (approximately: here to the top to here is 15 minutes), drawing a “15” in the sand in case it wasn’t clear. He seemed to comprehend what I was trying to say and nodded his head. Game on. We each took a few gulps of water and I started running towards the peak with Nabhane close behind. 

 

The trail was steep, but it was apparently traversed frequently enough that one could easily pass through the scrubby bushes. After five minutes of trail running and scrambling, I found myself standing on the summit of Kartala at 7,746 feet. There was no ground higher. The Comoros was now a blue country on our world high points map – and #94 for me.

 

The summit view was similar in magnificence to the view we had witnessed on the other side of the crater, except now I could peer directly into the maw of the gaping crater. The summit was mostly bare, save for a few scrubby bushes – some with white flowers – that had popped up from the sand during the last 14 years since the last eruption. From the summit, I had been hoping that I could catch a glimpse of some of the nearby islands, or even the coast of Mozambique, but the gigantic crater covered the entire field of view. 

 

When I was planning the trip, I had intended to camp on the very summit in order to get some awesome night sky shots, and indeed the camping would have been awesome given the plethora of flat spots I observed. Unfortunately, I was with a guide who would have none of it. During the car ride to the trailhead, I asked Laurent to express to Nabhane my desire to camp at the summit, but Nabhane replied that it was “not possible.” Well, in reality I think he meant that he had never done it before. He also probably thought it would be too cold and windy for his taste. In any case, I had made it to the summit and would have to settle for camping farther down the mountain. At least it meant I would have more time to explore the island the next day. 

After capturing the obligatory summit photos, video, and sending a victorious satellite text message, I headed down to meet up with Nabhane. He had made it about two-thirds of the way to the summit, where he began to slip on the steep scree and had turned around. We proceeded rapidly back down to the crater, retraced our footsteps across the 0.75 miles of sand, and climbed up to the other rim with the assistance of the electrical cable railing. 

 

It was now 5:15pm, so we had a full 45 minutes of daylight to descend the 2 miles back to camp. The sun was shining brightly, but the wind had picked up and I could tell that Nabhane was getting uncomfortable. I gave him some of my food, water, and one of my long sleeve shirts to keep him warm. Now I was the guide.

 

We arrived back at the small cluster of buildings around 5,200’ elevation just as the sun set in an orange blaze over

the Indian Ocean. Nabhane prepared to sleep in one of the shacks while I pitched my tent in what I later learned was a cow pasture. I hadn’t spotted much wildlife so far on the trek, but around sunset a few giant raven-sized bats flew overhead. Slowly, the sky dimmed and the distant lights of the northern outskirts of coastal Moroni popped out of the darkness. 

 

Meanwhile, a dozen or so cattle had been circling around me, apparently upset that I had erected my tent in the middle of their prized grazing ground. As I prepared to turn in for the night, I heard the clash of two large bulls only about 25 feet away. A brown bull was head-to-head with a white bull, their horns locked together. The brown bull was clearly winning the fight, and it pushed the white bull backwards. With both bulls still upright, the white one retreated while the brown one advanced, pushing it farther down the hill. Over the course of a few minutes, the pair of bulls, with ten cows in close pursuit to watch the action, made a big circle around my tent. 

 

It seemed that I had chosen a perilous place to camp. I ran over to Nabhane and urgently explained the situation

using a combination of hand gestures and primitive French. He reassured me that I shouldn’t worry about the cows – I simply needed to yell and them and they’d disperse. That proved to be correct, though it didn’t provide any guarantee that they’d stay away. Still, I managed to get a decent sleep and thankfully wasn’t trampled during the night. 

 

We got an early start the next morning and reached the trailhead around 8:15am, after about 1 hour and 45 minutes of hiking. Nabhane phoned Laurent, who drove from Moroni and soon picked us up. As we drove back into town, we were caught in a huge traffic jam – it seemed that everyone was out and about this morning, trying to finish up errands before the big game that afternoon. Many vehicles were adorned with large tree branches full of leaves. Laurent explained that the Comoros team jersey was green, so in a show of solidarity with the team on their match with Togo, everyone was wearing green and putting as much green on their cars as possible. One particularly fervent fan drove with a long green vuvuzela (the thing that soccer fans blow at games) sticking out the window – as the traffic crawled, he drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand at the end of the instrument, trumpeting every 10 seconds. It was probably louder than his car’s horn.

 

We dropped off Nabhane in town and then we continued to the north of the island. Since I still had a few hours

before my flight, I arranged for Laurent to take me on a little tour. We looped to the north shore and I did some swimming in the Indian Ocean before he dropped me off at the airport. 

 

As it turned out, I probably spent as much time waiting in the astonishingly long line at the tiny Moroni airport to check in for my flight to Addis Ababa than I did hiking. I certainly spent more time flying home too – four flights and more than 31 hours of travel from Moroni back to San Francisco. But it was worth it. I had made it to the summit of the Comoros.

 

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