Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo – Mt Stanley

Mt Stanley Margherita Peak (16,762ft)

Eric Gilbertson and Travis Greiman

August 7-16, 2018

Aug 7 – Fly to Entebbe, connecting flight to Kasese, stay at hotel in townma
Aug 8 – hike to Kalalama camp 10kft
Aug 9 – hike to Bugata camp 13,500ft
Aug 10 – hike to Hunwick’s camp, 13,100ft
Aug 11 – hike to Margherita camp, 14,800ft
Aug 12 – summit Mt Stanley Margherita Peak, return to Hunwick’s camp
Aug 13 – summit Weisman’s Peak, hike to Kiharo camp 10kft
Aug 14 – Hike out, drive to Kasese, spend night in Kasese
Aug 15 – Travis flies out, Eric visits Queen Elizabeth National Park
Aug 16 – Eric flies out to Entebbe, then on to Saudi Arabia

Mt Stanley is one of the rare places on earth where you can encounter snow very close to the equator. Even though Mt Stanley is located at just 0.4 degrees north, on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is tall enough to harbor multiple glaciers and regularly receives snow. Unfortunately the glaciers are receding very quickly in the face of global warming, but they will still be there for at least several more decades by most estimates.

Mt Stanley is also one of the few two-for-one country highpoints on earth. That is, it is the highpoint of two countries, DRC and Uganda. (The other two-for-one country highpoints are Mt Korab in Macedonai/Albania, Mt Blanc in France/Italy, and Mt Everest in China/Nepal).

Mt Stanley was first climbed by the Duke of Abruzzi in 1906, and now sees almost daily ascents throughout the dry seasons of July to mid September and January to March. Most ascents are from the Uganda side, given the political instability on the DRC side. Mt Stanley is located in the Rwenzori National Park and a guide is required by law for all ascents.

There are two major licensed guiding companies for the mountain in Uganda – Rwenzori Mountaineering Services and Rwenzori Trekking Services (RTS). Travis and I decided to use RTS because they were slightly cheaper, had good reviews on Trip Advisor, and were more responsive on email communications. I would consider this trip a luxury mountaineering experience. All trips have porters included in the price, and the porters carry everything. This means hikers only need to carry a small daypack of food and water.

Also, all campsites are huts with bunk beds and mattresses, so hikers only need to pack their own sleeping bags. The kicker, though, is that the guides cook all breakfasts and dinners and provided all lunches and snacks. They also provided crampons, ice axes, and helmets for the glacier, and rubber boots for the hike. There really is not much gear you have to bring on your own, which is good because Travis and I planned to travel on all flights with just carry-on luggage.

We had just climbed the highpoints of Burundi and Rwanda, ascending up to 14,800 ft, so had a good head start on acclimation. We flew from Bujumbura, Burundi to Entebbe, Uganda on the morning of August 7, and then took a connecting flight to Kasese, arriving in the afternoon. It would have also been possible to take a bus or car from Entebbe to Kasese for a much cheaper rate, but given that our schedule was pretty tight, and the ride would be at least 8 hours on rough roads, we chose the flight because it would much more reliably get us to Kasese the day we wanted to be

there.

A driver from RTS drove us 10 minutes from the grass landing strip to the middle of town and dropped us off at the Sandton Hotel in the middle of town. Our trek would start the next morning, and the rest of the day was buffer time to make sure we arrived on schedule. I made good use of this time, taking a nap until dinner, then going to sleep immediately after dinner. We’d had to wake up at 12:30am that morning to catch a 3am flight out of Bujumbura, and appreciated the half rest day.

Aug 8

In the morning a driver from RTS picked us up to the headquarters in Kilembe. There we met our fees and met our

guides Robert, Nelson, and Rogers. A solo hiker, Rebecca, was also looking to climb Mt Stanley on the exact same dates, so RTS combined our groups together. They assured us that on summit day it would be possible to split into separate groups so everyone could go at their own speed, so I was ok with combining groups. It actually reduced the price by $100 per person.

RTS provided us with rubber boots for the mud, ice axes, crampons, helmets, and other standard glacier gear. A group of 11 porters would accompany our team, and this was included in the standard price for the trip. We each had one porter devoted to carrying our personal gear and the other porters were carrying food, glacier gear, and the guides’ gear. I had packed so light, though, that I only gave one of the porters about 10 pounds of gear (a light sleeping bag and some extra clothes). It looked like the other porters were making fun of him, and they eventually loaded him up with another 40 pounds of other stuff.

RTS has a great system of employing locals from Kasese and Kilembe. Everyone starts out as a porter (carrying food), then after a year they advance to special porter (carrying gear for clients). Then after a year they can train to be a level 1 guide, which means a hiking guide. Every year there is a 3-week training

course where guides learn glacier travel and technical rescue skills, followed by a rigorous test. If the level-1 guides pass the test, they can be a level 2 guide, where they can guide clients on the glacier. Level 3 is the head guide, who is the one in charge of each group.

We hiked up the road with our three guides while the porters followed behind. At the end of the road we reached the start of the jungle, and stopped briefly at the park boundary to pay the park entrance fee. The trail soon started  ascending steeply through the jungle, with occasional views east down to the farmed hillsides outside Kilembe.

The hike lasted a few hours, and by evening we reached Kalalama Camp, at around 10,000ft. A group of a dozen Ugandan soldiers were

at the camp, and we learned they make rounds throughout the park to discourage poaching.

The camp had a nice wooden dining hut, and a Quonset structure with bunks and mattresses for us to sleep on. It

was very luxurious. We had a fancy dinner of soup, potatoes and chicken cooked up for us in the evening, and we looked out at our last view of city lights that night before going to bed.

Aug 9

The next morning the guides told us the remainder of the trail was very muddy, and they gave us rubber boots (“Wellingtons”) to hike in. I’d never hiked in rubber boots, but soon understood the need. The trail ascends out of the jungle, through bamboo forests, into boggy areas at the edge of treeline. The boggy areas are

filled with mainly three types of vegetation – grass tussocks, giant lobelia, and giant groundsels. The giant lobelia

look a lot like yucca plants and the giant groundsels like Joshua trees.

Even though we’d come at the end of the dry season, it had already started raining and snowing in the mountains during the previous week, and the ground was saturated. At least half of the steps were into shin-deep mud, and it would have been nearly impossible to stay in the dry-foot-club without rubber boots. Even with the boots, I once sunk in up to my knee and got a soaked foot.

The muddy trail made progress slow, and we probably only covered about one mile per hour. By the end of the day we were well above treeline, and reached Bugata Camp on the edge of Bugata Lake. We had excellent views here up to the snowy mountains shrouded in clouds above us. Bugata camp was high enough that it got below freezing at night, and the dining hut was equipped with a wood-burning stove.

That night a snowstorm rolled through, punctuated with claps of thunder, and a fresh 3 inches fell by morning.

Aug 10

We ascended from Bugata Camp, hiking through the fresh snow and frozen one. I envied one of the guides who had a special insulated pair of rubber boots that must have been designed for the arctic.

We climbed up to a 15,000ft pass that was very cold and windy and covered in snow. This was an acclimation day, because we would climb high, but then descend back down to sleep low again. From the pass we descended back down below snow line into a dense forest of giant groundsel. We passed by a few alpine lakes, and when the clouds parted I spied a view of a village far down in the distance.

Robert told me that was the DRC, and we were very close to the border. Apparently some groups occasionally climb from the DRC side, but the security situation is not great now, so it is not too common.

By evening we reached Hunwick’s Camp, at the base of a large valley separating Mt Stanley and Mt Baker. The summits were in the clouds, but we could see fresh snow covering Mt Baker, and long waterfalls shimmering across its steep rock faces.

In the dining hut we met a British trekker who’d summitted a few days ago, and said he’d had enough with mountains and would pick up a new hobby back home. Later two swiss men hiked back and said they’d summitted that morning. Unfortunately the summit was socked in with clouds, but they made it nevertheless. This was heartening for me to hear. I was concerned that RTS had only given one summit day for the trip, when it seemed like there was a good chance of bad weather, given the weather we’d already experienced. It appeared that it’s not a problem to summit in marginal weather, so RTS still has a pretty high success rate. Nevertheless, I’d built in some buffer days after the official trip ended in case we needed to stay longer to summit.

We also met an Italian climber (Sergio) and a Russian climber (Constantine) heading up the mountain just like us. They had taken an extra day to get to this hut, though Constantine was complaining of symptoms that sounded like altitude sickness. Multiple people suggested he not go higher until it improved, but he was reluctant to miss his

summit window, so decided he would tough it out and continue.

Aug 11

The next morning we hiked around the Kitandara Lakes, and passed an RMS hut on the lake shore. The RMS route starts at a valley north of Kilembe and is slightly shorter than the RTS route, but the two routes converge at the Kitandara Lakes.

From here we continued up the valley, with Mt Baker on our right and Mt Stanley on our left. We soon reached snow line, and had to be careful scrambling over tricky snow-covered talus in several places. Constantine and Sergio had left well before us, but we caught up to and passed Constantine in the snowy boulders. He was moving slow, obviously affected by the altitude, but was still pushing higher.

That evening we reached our highest camp, Margherita Camp, just at the edge of the treeline for the giant groundsels. We could barely make out the toes of a few glaciers above camp through the clouds, though were still too far away to see the summit of Mt Stanley, Margherita Peak.

After dinner the guides took out the ropes and glacier gear, and gave us each crampons and went over glacier travel skills. This seemed really awkward for me to be being taught skills I was very familiar with, but I knew the guides had to assume we knew nothing and try to teach us everything.

Constantine made it to camp after dark, and had trouble breathing when he laid down. Travis noticed tell-tale signs of HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema), and Constantine ended up descending in the dark all the way back to Hunwick’s Camp that night to recover.

Unfortunately for Constantine, it snowed hard and thundered much of the night, with a few more fresh inches of snow falling.

Aug 12

We woke up at 3am for summit day, hoping to reach the top during the optimal time of day for dry weather in late morning. The was Rebecca’s first time using crampons or being on a glacier, while Travis and I were pretty experienced, so we broke up into two groups. Rebecca went with guide Robert, and Travis and I went with guides Rogers and Nelson.

The route up from camp was a bit treacherous with the snow-covered talus and third-class terrain. In one spot we used ascenders to ascend a short section of fixed rope (which would probably be rated classs 3+ in Washington).

Shortly above the fixed rope we reached the first small glacier, the Stanley Glacier. We roped up and crossed in the dark, reaching rocks on the other side in about 20 minutes. The guides said a decade ago the snow was continuous from here to nearly the summit, but now so much has melted that there are two glacier crossings to do.

On the edge of the Stanley Glacier we took off crampons and scrambled down some steep rocks, using fixed ropes

with prussik backups in two places. At the bottom of the last fixed rope we traversed over to the base of the Margherita Glacier, the last glacier before the summit.

The toe of this glacier we quite steep and icy, and I wished I’d brought my rigid boots so I could frontpoint into the ice. I just had my shoulder-season flexible hiking boots, which I had to be careful with. Rogers tried to short rope me on the icy parts, but I was actually more nervous about him slipping and knocking me over than of me falling (since I didn’t really know how experienced he was, while I knew I wouldn’t fall). So I convinced him to let out about 20 ft of rope, so it would mainly be helping in case of a crevasse fall.

It was still dark at this point, and we were socked in a whiteout of clouds, but the light from dawn was starting to filter through. Travis was roped to Nelson, and they started slowing down, so Rogers and I just powered up on our own.

We passed several crevasses large enough to fall in, then eventually reached a col. At the col we turned right, traversing under some steep chandeliered ice cliffs, to a fixed line on a steep rock/snow gully. I attached my ascender and jugged up the rope, and from there we scrambled up third class terrain all the way to the summit.

It was still a whiteout when we arrived, but within 5 minutes the clouds cleared to give a spectacular undercast. The jungles of the DRC spread out to the west, a bright glaciers flowed down to the east. I could see Mt Baker across the valley and Mt Albert to the north. I carefully tiptoed past the summit sign along the ridge and took a quick leak into the DRC, officially marking that country as visited.

Rogers and I hung out for half an hour, then Travis and Nelson joined us on the summit. We took some group shots, and I sent a satellite text to verify we’d made the top.

The sun stayed out for the rest of the descent, and we met up with Rebecca as she was climbing the last fixed rope.

It’s amazing she got up to the summit, even though she’d never worn crampons before!

Back on the glacier we rappelled off a few ice screw anchors on the icy parts, while Rogers downclimbed with his rigid boots. It was amazing in the daylight to view how much the glaciers have receded based on pictures I’ve seen from expeditions a decade ago. I noticed ladders hanging off the summit pyramid into thin air. This was the old route, and the ladders must have reached the glacier at some point. At the base of the Margherita Glacier there are lots of blue lines painted on the rocks, marking the edge of the glacier in previous years as it recedes. There’s a time-lapse camera placed between the Stanley and Margherita Glaciers marking the recession, and Nelson said he’s heard the glaciers will be completely gone in 20 years. I feel lucky we got the chance to see them.

We made it back to camp by 11am and had a big lunch of omelets and tortillas. That afternoon we hiked back to Hunwick’s camp for the night.

Aug 13-14

Over the next two days we hiked back out, following a different, more direct route. On August 13 we hiked over Weisman’s Peak and down to Kiharo camp, then on August 14 we hiked all the way back to Kilembe and spent the night in the Sandton Hotel in Kasese.

Travis flew out on the morning of Aug 15 to go gorilla trekking, but I still had a buffer day to use up, since we weren’t delayed by bad weather. I hadn’t planned exactly what to do, but from looking at a lonely planet book I decided to visit Queen Elizabeth National Park nearby. I hired our same driver to take me down there in the morning, passing across the equator on the way. I took a river boat cruise and saw tons of elephants, hippos, crocodiles, and water

buffalo. It was totally worth it. The next morning I flew out of Kasese to start my next trip, climbing the highpoint of Saudi Arabia.