Zambia – Mafinga South/Central

Mafinga Central and/or Mafinga South

March 28, 2019

Eric, Serge, Michel

March 22 Depart Seattle
March 23 Fly to Nairobi
March 24 Arrive Lilongwe, drive to Likhubula village
March 25 Hike to Chisepo Hut
March 26 Summit Sapitwa Peak, return to trailhead, drive to Lilongwe
March 27 Switch rental car for taxi (cheaper), ride to Karosonga
March 28 Drive to Chisenga, hike Mafinga Central/South, return to Karosonga
March 29 Drive to Lilongwe
March 30 Fly out
March 31 Arrive in Seattle

The highest point in Zambia is located in the Mafinga Hills on the border with Malawi, though the exact location is not certain. After my trip to climb the highpoint I am more convinced than ever that the true highpoint is unknown. It is either Mafinga South or Mafinga Central (names coined by hiker Mark Horrell in 2014), though they have not been surveyed carefully enough to determine which one is truly highest. Hikers have brought handheld GPS units to the summits, and after compiling the results from six different measurements plus a sight level it is still too close to call which point is the highest. Luckily the hills are within a few miles hike of each other, so it is not difficult to climb both.

Serge, Michel and I had just finished climbing Sapitwa Peak, the highest mountain in Malawi, on Tuesday morning,

and hiked back to the trailhead that evening. We piled in our rental car parked at the CCAP Likhubula Guest House and started driving down the road. It was my turn to drive, and I noticed from the very beginning the car was making some weird scraping sounds underneath. I figured this was just mud stuck in the tires from the rough road, but when we got out of the muddy section the noise continued.

I stopped and pulled off the road, then peered underneath the car. Somehow a plastic protective flap had been partially ripped off of the undercarriage and was hanging a few mm off the ground. If the road was perfectly flat it wouldn’t drag, but if there were any bumps or high centers it would drag and make a loud noise.

I couldn’t easily rip it off and couldn’t easily reattach it. Luckily it didn’t look too important, so I decided to keep driving and hope it ripped itself off. As I drove people kept pointing at the underside of the car as I passed by trying to alert me of the problem, and I just waved since I already knew the problem.

We drove on dirt roads to Mulanje village, then turned north on good paved roads. Between 6pm-7pm the driving was very treacherous. It was starting to get dark and people were walking or biking home from work. But there were no shoulders, so everyone just went in the road. I basically had to drive in the very middle of the two-lane road to avoid hitting anyone, and had to slow to a stop to let any oncoming cars pass.

We switched drivers through the night and around 1am made it to Lilongwe where we stayed at a nice hotel for the night.

The next morning I crawled under the car and hastily duct taped the plastic flap back in place, and we drove to the airport to return the rental car. Avis had unexpectedly said we would be charged 90 cents per kilometer, which made the rental car much too expensive for the rest of the trip. We were planning to drive to the northern tip of Malawi to climb the Zambia highpoint, and all those extra kilometers would add up to be very expensive.

Our plan to save money was to ride with a driver, John, that was a friend of our guide from Sapitwa peak. Surprisingly it was much cheaper to be basically taking a long-distance taxi than renting a car. This is the opposite case as in the US and Canada, which is what we were used to. John (johnwaiinkosi@gmail.com, +265996809244) charged about $130 per day plus gas and had a 4×4 vehicle that could handle rough roads.

We met John at the airport and I went inside to return the car. I was nervous when the man went outside to inspect it, and luckily he didn’t bend over to look underneath. My duct tape repair was pretty good, but if he were careful I knew he would have spotted it.

Serge expertly negotiated that we pay a cheaper rate for the car, since we weren’t told in advance about the per km fee, and that saved us a bunch of money. After paying for the car we loaded up in John’s jeep and headed north around 11am.

We drove through Kasungu, near the Zambia border, then up through Mzuzu. Everywhere the fields and forest were green and lush. It was the end of the rainy season, but luckily it wasn’t too wet that week for us.

Past Mzuzu we dropped down to the edge of Lake Malawi and made it up to Karonga by sunset. We decided to stay

there at a cheap hotel for the night, and had dinner at Met’s Pizza in the middle of town. The hotel was $22, which we split three ways, so pretty cheap. John found an even cheaper place nearby, but he didn’t think we would be too comfortable there.

We left the next morning at 5:45am and drove up M26 towards Chitipa. We turned off before Chitipa on S100 in the village of Tondola. The road was well-paved up to Tondola, but then it got very rough and rutted. I don’t think a normal car would have had enough clearance to drive that road, but our 4×4 had no problem. Luckily it wasn’t raining, or the road may have become too muddy and impassable.

We eventually made it to Chendo and turned south on M9. Just north of Chisenga we turned west on a rough dirt side road (-9.963889, 33.398211) heading towards the Mafinga hills. John drove as far as possible and decided the jeep could make it no farther after about 1 mile. From there we would proceed on foot. John turned around and agreed to wait for us on that side road when we returned in the afternoon.

The Mafinga Hills were socked in the clouds and it looked like it would probably rain, but we proceeded anyways. A german hiker Markus had just hiked these peaks in November and was nice enough to provide us with his GPS track, which was very helpful.

We followed footpaths past a few houses, then up through coffee fields and eventually into the trees. We were following a faint path which I’d heard was maintained for hikers. Either that, or it was maintained by people crossing the border into Zambia.

Before long we broke through the trees and were hiking up grassy fields interspersed with small bushes. We eventually ascended into the clouds and the visibility dropped. The trail climbed steeply up a ridge, then leveled out on the plateau at the top of the hills.

I led the way heading first towards Mafinga South. I unfortunately crossed through a swamp and entered the wet

foot club, then emerged on the other side to hike through the grass up the gently rolling hills. The trail grew more faint until we reached a small rock cairn. This appeared to mark the international boundary between Malawi and Zambia. It didn’t look very official, though.

At the cairn we turned left, roughly ascending a ridge but basically navigating by GPS in the foggy near-white-out. We passed a few rock outcrops and eventually reached Mafinga South, marked by a large cairn on a rock outcrop below a tree.

We stopped for a break and took measurements with our GPS units. I optimistically took out my sight level, but after 15 minutes on the top the visibility didn’t improve at all. I could really only see about 30ft. The most accurate way to tell which of two peaks is taller using a sight level is to sight one from the other, then backsight, and see if the results are consistent. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be possible in the weather we encountered, though.

After giving up on the sight level we retraced our route back down, then started ascending the ridge up to Mafinga Central. The clouds were beginning to roll in and out, permitting occasional views of Zambia to our left and Malawi to our right.

After crossing more rolling grassy hills we found the summit cairn of Mafinga Central. It was still socked in the clouds and fog, so the sight level was not useful. We took GPS measurements, though. My Garmin Inreach actually measured both Mafinga South and Mafinga Central the exact same height to within 0.1m. Michel measured Mafinga South 1m taller. My phone GPS measured Mafinga South 5m taller.

I figured I ought to at least measure something with my fancy sight level, so I measured all the boulders sticking up around the summit cairn. It turned out all four rock outcrops near the summit cairn are the same height within the resolution of the sight level. So to be official you really ought to tag them all (and Mafinga South’s summit).

As we were packing up Serge noticed the clouds were briefly parting and we could see Mafinga South. I quickly

whipped out the sight level and looked across. I sighted the distinctive tree sticking up from the summit and pointed at the summit rock outcrop, and measured it to be exactly the same height as Mafinga Central (within the resolution of the device). The clouds soon returned, though, and I gave up waiting for another break.

We retraced our route back down, and when we reached the col between the peaks the clouds dissipated again. It was too risky to try to run back up Mafinga South to back sight, though, since the clouds could easily change again, so we decided to head down.

We hiked back down in increasing sunshine, reaching the spot we’d started hiking by 2:30pm. John wasn’t there, so we continued walking down to the main road. Still we couldn’t find John. This was kind of frustrating, since the plan was he would wait for us on that road, and he wasn’t there.

I tried texting him on my inreach satellite device, but didn’t hear back. So Serge and I walked a few miles down the road to Chisenga Village while Michel waited at the intersection in case John came there. After asking around we found some guys to drive up another side road on a motorcycle and they eventually found John there. I’m not sure what he was doing up there, but luckily we all eventually made it back to the jeep.

We drove back to karonga that night and spent another night in town, and ate another dinner at Met’s Pizza. The next morning we drove back to Lilongwe. After a night in a hotel in town I flew out the next morning bound for the US, while Serge and Michel headed to Zimbabwe to climb more country highpoints.

Summary of highpoint elevation measurements:

Eric phone GPS: south 2317m , central 2312m
Eric Inreach GPS: south 2325.8m, central 2325.8m (exactly the same)
Eric sight level: equal within accuracy of measurement
Michel handheld GPS: South 2320, central 2319m
Markus: south 2333m, central 2331m
Mark Horrell Garmin: south 2335m,  central 2338m
Mark Horrell iPhone:  south 2338m, central 2340m

 

© 2019, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.