Kediet ej Jill – Mauritania Highpoint

Kediet ej Jill – Galb Seyala Peak (3,002 ft/915m), Mauritania Highpoint

March 21, 2022

Matthew and Eric Gilbertson

March 19 – Depart US
March 20 – 2am arrive Nouakchott, drive to Zouerate
March 21 – Get permission from SNIM, hike to summit and bivy
March 22 – Hike down, drive to Nouakchott

Background

I had a week off for spring break and Matthew and I decided to climb some country highpoints in west africa. This area makes sense to visit in the winter or spring time before the temperatures get too hot in the summer. We wanted to maximize the number of new country highpoints we could get, and that’s a bit difficult for several reasons. First, we’re actually starting to rack up enough country highpoints by now that the remaining ones tend to be getting more difficult and time consuming. Second, basically all countries now have covid testing requirements to enter, which makes visiting multiple countries on the same trip logistically complicated. Of the countries in Africa that I hadn’t yet climbed the highpoint of, all required PCR tests for entry except for one – Cape Verde. Cape Verde just requires an antigen test.

I’ve found that it can be challenging and uncertain to get a PCR test for use in travel in foreign countries. Testing centers can be unexpectedly closed, results can be delayed, and tests can’t necessarily be scheduled in advance. So we ideally wanted to avoid taking any PCR tests outside the US. Antigen tests, however, are less problematic. I’ve discovered I can bring antigen tests from emed with me and, if taken in the presence of a tele-med doctor, I can get results in 15 minutes that are valid for travel to countries that just require antigen tests. The US is one such country. So these tests could allow us to enter Cape Verde and re-enter the US. Unfortunately, as far as I’ve researched, there does not exist a self-administered PCR test that is valid for travel.

Within the US it’s relatively easy, though expensive, to get a PCR test for travel with same-day results. So it made sense for us to first visit a country that required a PCR test (which we could get in the US), then visit Cape Verde, then return to the US. Mauritania was close to Cape Verde and sounded fun to do first.

A few years ago Matthew had driven from Morocco into western sahara, and had seen SUVs continuing south into Mauritania. Apparently it’s common for Mauritanians to fly to Itally, buy SUVs, then drive them back to Mauritania and sell them for a big profit. On that trip Matthew didn’t have time to continue to Mauritania, but he heard the highpoint, Kediet ej Jill, was an interesting mountain made mostly of iron sticking out of the Sahara Desert. So Mauritania was high on the list of countries to visit.

We spent a long time optimizing itineraries, trying to minimize connections on flights. Many countries have covid testing requirements for transiting passengers, even if you don’t leave the airport, which makes direct flights much more appealing. Also, covid restrictions seem to change by the week, so we had to redo our optimization problem a few times. By late February we were confident enough in restrictions staying unchanged that we settled on an itinerary and bought flights. We would take a PCR test in the US, then fly through Morocco to Mauritania, then climb the Mauritania highpoint. The PCR test would cover us for tranisiting Morocco. We would then take a self-administered antigen test to leave Mauritania, transit through Senegal (which only required a vaccination card, though I’d already climbed the highpoint) and go to Cape Verde to climb the highpoint. Then we’d take another self-administered antigen test in cape verde to let us travel back to the US.

We spent some time researching the highpoints, and the Mauritania highpoint sounded potentially challenging. The mountain, Kediet ej Jill, is made mostly of iron and is owned by SNIM (Societe Nationale Industrielle et Miniere). Interestingly, SNIM sends iron from the nearby town of Zouerate to the coastal town of Nouadhibou on trains up to 3km long, which are some of the longest trains in the world. Locals often ride on top of the iron chunks in the train, but I hear it is a difficult trip.

Because Kediet ej Jill is owned by SNIM, permission is required to climb to the summit. This is not a peak that is climbed often, though. I’m only aware of two foreigners who have climbed it. In 2005 Ginge Fullen climbed the highpoint. In Zouerate he was able to find the mine director, who granted him permission to climb the peak. Then in 2019 peakbagger Greg Harris reported asking around in Zouerate and eventually getting permission from the mayor to climb the peak.

I communicated with a local hiking guide in Mauritania who said he’d heard permission was no longer needed, but I was a bit cautious about trusting this. Another local in Mauritania said he’d heard we did need permission. I really didn’t want to show up to the peak and get turned around. With our tight schedule it was unlikely we’d have a full spare day or more to ask around town to try to find permission. Ideally we could somehow get permission in advance.

I tried contactging SNIM from their website, but didn’t get any response to my email. So next I looked up SNIM employees on LinkedIn, and found quite a few. I signed up for a free month trial of LinkedIn Premium, which allowed me to message people I wasn’t connected with. I then sent messages to a few employees to see if they knew who I could ask for permission. I hoped that me being a mechanical engineer might be enough of a connection that they would be interested.

Matthew then discovered that there was a new university – IS2M – that had started in Zouerate and was affiliated with SNIM. I messaged a professor at IS2M, and hoped that maybe since I was also a professor they might be able to help out.

It turned out everyone I messaged was extremely helpful. The professor at IS2M said they would contact SNIM to request permission for us, and they invited us to meet them at the university. One of the SNIM employees connected me with Mohammed, the administrative attache in the exploitation department at SNIM. After I explained our plan and sent some documents, Mohammed said we could meet him when we got to Zouerate and disuss the details.

This was all great news, and it sounded promising that we could indeed get permission to climb the peak.

We then had to decide how to get to the peak. Ideally we would fly directly to Zouerate, but flights were only a few days per week, and wouldn’t work with our schedule. So we planned to fly to Nouakchott and drive to Zouerate. In developing countries in Africa I’ve found it generally makes sense to hire a local driver and vehicle. This is overall cheaper and safer than renting a vehicle and driving on your own, if there even exist rental car companies. The local driver will know which areas are safe and which should be avoided. They will also know a fair amount to bribe at checkpoints, and there will not be any gringo fees at police stops. Also, the driver will be able to stay with the vehicle to keep it safe while we climb the mountain.

Matthew contacted several companies and we decided on Mauritania Best Tours. They could provide us a 4×4 truck and driver. The truck was important because the road to Zouerate can become drifted over with sand from the desert and a 4×4 may be needed to get through the drifts. The driver only spoke arabic, and the primary languages in most of Mauritania are French and Arabic. Our french is kind of rusty, and we figured we’d need to do quite a bit of talking with SNIM representatives to officially get permssion. That would potentially require speaking arabic and french. Luckily Mohamed at Mauritania Best Tours said a translator, Cheikh, could also join us, and he spoke english, french, and arabic. So finally all the cards were in place for us to attemp the peak.

March 17

On Thursday morning I took a PCR test at US Biotek in Seattle, and got my negative test result emailed to me within an hour. I took the bus in to campus and proctored a final exam in the morning, graded it all day, then proctored the last final exam in the evening. Immediately after the exam I took the train to the airport, then finished grading the exams in the airport. I got on an 11:30pm flight to new york city, arriving Friday morning.

March 18

I had an all-day layover in the airport, which I had done to give myself time to finish grading the exams if needed, and to log in to a work zoom meeting in the middle of the day if needed. By evening Matthew arrived and we got on our flight to Morocco.

March 19

Saturday morning we arrived in Casablanca, and had another all-day layover. It turns out it takes a while to travel from the west coast of the US to Mauritania, and this was the most efficient itinerary we could do. We booked the Onomo hotel near the airport and took a taxi there. We were pretty tired from all the traveling and the 9-hour time change, so ate breakfast and then took a long nap in the hotel. By evening we woke up after eight hours of sleeping and went back to the airport to take our final flight to Nouakchott.

March 20

We landed in Nouakchott at 2am, then spent a bit over an hour getting our visa on arrival and clearing customs. Matthew had arranged to have a the Al Khaima City Center hotel have a shuttle driver waiting for us. By 3:00am we were finally driving away from the airport. But the airport is still a 45 minute drive outside of town. Finally we arrived at the hotel and were asleep by 4:30am.

We needed to get started reasonably early on the drive to Zouerate, so we just had a 3-hour nap before we got up and met our driver Mokhtar and translator Cheikh outside. I was happy to have gotten a lot of sleep in Morocco to make up for the lack of sleep in Nouakchott. We spent an hour driving around town looking for an ATM that worked (this seems to be a common problem in west africa), and then drove over to fill up gas. Mokhtar had a big spare drum in the back of the truck that he filled up with extra gas just in case. Finally, by 9am we were ready to start driving northeast.

We soon encountered what looked like true Sahara Desert terrain. Sand dunes loomed in the distance on both sides of the road and occasional sand drifts encroached on the road. Camels roamed on the sides, and there were occasional traditional square tents erected. The temperature was comfortable but soon got hotter as the day progressed. I was happy to be here before the heat of the summer.

We passed through frequent checkpoints, and interestingly only one officer asked for a bribe. I think it helped that we had Mokhtar and Cheikh with us so the officers stayed honest. To ease our passage through all the checkpoints Mohammed had advised that we each bring about 20 copies of our passports. This ended up saving a lot of time.

Cheikh would write his name, phone number, and the truck license plate number on the back of each photocopy and we would hand the copies to the officer. The officer would look at us, talk to Cheikh and Mokhtar for about 30 seconds, then waive us through. If we hadn’t had the photocopies we would have needed to hand the officer our passport each time and he would have had to go back to his car and write down all our information. Over the course of ten checkpoints this actually saved us a lot of time. Interestingly, this is the first country where I’ve encountered this phenomenon of officers accepting the photocopies of passports at checkpoints.

We made it to Akjoujit three hours later and took a tea break. Tea breaks are very important in Mauritania, and it is required to drink three small glasses of tea. We also snacked on some tasty cookie snacks while sitting on large cushions on the ground.

We continued a few more hours north to Atar, and stopped for lunch at a Spanish woman’s small restaurant. Inside she had a stuffed jaguar that had apparently been shot in the forests of southern Mauritania.

We pushed on farther through the desert, and finally by a bit after sunset we passed through Fderik, getting our first glimpse of Kediet ej Jill. It was too dark to make much out other than a huge massif sticking out of the desert. We made it to Zouerate to a small hotel – Dar Apartments – by 8:30pm, and gave Mohamed a call that we’d arrived. He wanted to meet with us that night to discuss our plans. After an important soccer match finished Mohamed came over to our hotel.

Cheikh was translating and we tried to describe where we were going and point it out on a map. We were hoping to be able to camp on the summit, but would be ok with doing a day trip also. In order to fully understand our route and whether it would be permitted, Mohamed wanted to see the starting point in person. So we all piled into his car and drove back about 13km west out of town.

For the intended route we didn’t really have any beta on the exact route other climbers had taken, but we thought based on satellite images that a long valley northeast of the summit would be a good access point. Satellite images showed a faint road going into the valley, and no active mining operations or buildings, so we figured it might work.

Mohamed confirmed that that route should be permitted, but we would have to double check with his boss the next morning to be certain. The situation sounded promising, but we couldn’t quite celebrate yet. We returned to the hotel and went to bed late that night.

March 21

In the morning we met up with some professors from IS2M for breakfast at the hotel, then drove over to SNIM headquarters at 9am. Luckily we had brought some fancy clothes for such an occasion, and I think that made us look more professional.

Mohamed soon met up with us and in english said the magic words “No problem.” That was great news. I was at first a bit nervous because “No permission” and “No problem” start out sounding very similar, but luckily SNIM was giving us permission. Mohamed/SNIM were very interested in our project to climb all the country highpoints in the world, and I get the sense very few mountaineers like us come to Zouerate to hike Kediet ej Jill. So they were planning to send some journalists from the local newspaper to take pictures and film when we started.

We would need to start hiking at 3pm, and Mohamed and the journalists would accompany us at the beginning. Then we were allowed to camp on the summit and return the next morning.

We had a few spare hours to spend in Zouerate, and we visited IS2M and met with professors there for lunch of camel-meat pizza. They were very friendly and welcoming. By 3pm we were packed up and drove back to the starting point.

Soon after, Mohamed and the journalists arrived and started interviewing us and taking pictures. We then all started walking up the road. This was definitely not how I expected to be climbing Kediet ej Jill, but it was a very interesting experience. The road soon got washed out, and we continued up a talus creek bed with intermittent signs of an old road.

On the east side of the road we saw mining trucks at the top of the hill dumping rocks down the hillside. I think they do 24-7 operations up there. One journalist told us the west side of the valley was mined decades ago, but is not currently being mined. The walls of the canyon were steep cliffs and I was a bit nervous we wouldn’t be able to find a way out. The journalists were surprised we knew where we were going, having never been there before, but in fact we didn’t exactly know. We still acted confident that it would work out.

After a few kilometers I saw a low-angle exit at the head of the canyon, and breathed a sigh of relief that the route would in fact work. The old road bed ended and at that point the crew joining us decided to turn back. I was surprised they had joined us so far. I hope they had fun hiking in there.

We waved goodbye and then picked up the pace a little bit. There was actually a faint trail leading up out of the canyon, and it appears locals, perhaps goat herders, occasionally take it.

We crested the col at the head of the valley and then the terrain got much easier. The ridge to our right was smaller rocks and travel was fast. Our plan was to follow the ridge west to gain the north-south ridge leading to the summit. Based on what I had researched I thought there might be a bit of uncertainty for the true location of the highpoint.

Greg Harris on peakbagger had entered a summit location as the northern tip of the ridge. Most topo maps show the highpoint as the southern tip of the ridge, about 1km south. SRTM measurements are not definitive. Ginge Fullen went all the way to the southern edge of the ridge, but reported it was hard to tell for certain which point was tallest.

We planned to hit all points, and I brought a surveyors sight level with me to definitevely measure which point was highest. I had actually purchased a fancy 5x sight level just for this purpose, but shipping mysteriously got delayed by 2 weeks and it didn’t arrive in time. So I just brought my regular 1x sight level and hoped it would be sufficient.

We were a bit concerned about getting caught by sunset before we hit the summit, so we jogged a bit on the ridge to the northern summit. There was no cairn there and it seemed obviously shorther than the southern summit. We then proceeded south, jogging on the easy sections, and by 6:30pm reached a cairn on the southern summit.

I took out my sight level and measured all surounding peaks significantly shorter. The northern peak was 17m shorter and the others even shorter than that. So we were definitely on the highpoint of Mauritania.

We were about an hour before sunset, and had plenty of time to admire the views. Interestingly, we were far enough from the mine that we couldn’t see any signs of civilization in any direction. Just rolling black hills, and desert in the distance. There was a small thorny bush near the summit but otherwise essentially no signs of life.

We soon got to work picking out a campsite. We had brought bivy sacks instead of a tent, since we were concerned the airlines wouldn’t let tent poles on the plane, and we had traveled with only carry-on bags. The top was a bit windy, but there was a small flat col nearby. We decided to make a wind break, and carefully piled up rocks into a knee-high 10ft-long rock wall. It actually worked pretty well.

By sunset we laid out our bivy sacks and went to bed. Interestingly, a lone mosquito somehow managed to buzz around our campsite, but it won’t be bothering anyone anymore. I’m not sure how a mosquito would survive in the desert so far from any water.

We got up around 4:30am and soon headed down by headlamp. This time we took a more direct route, dropping down a fun scrambly canyon and then back up a gentle slope to the col at the head of our entrance canyon. We then hiked back down as the sun rose, and met Cheikh and Mokhtar at the end of the dirt road.

We quickly threw our bags in and started back. Everything had gone as well as could be expected, and we were very satisfied with our ascent.

We drove back through the desert as before,  making a lunch stop in Atar. This time we had a traditional meal of rice and goat, where we sat on the ground and ate with our bare hands out of one big communal dish. It’s kind of difficult to eat rice with a bare hand, but somehow Cheikh and Mokhtar were skilled enough to not spill a single grain. Matthew and I were much messier, though.

By evening we made it to Nouakchott and checked in at a hotel. The wifi was good enough that we were able to take our antigen covid tests with tele med doctors on the phone, and we rested up for the next leg of our journey, the Cape Verde highpoint.

Later we learned the journalists had published a story about us at http://zouerate.info/node/7614 . They said they were also working on a story that would run on Mauritania national news.

 

 

 

 

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