Joe's World Backpacking Trip Stories and pics from my travels.

I'm back in Nairobi after my 5 day Mt. Kenya trek.  I signed up at my hostel here in town and let them take care of everything.  Guide, transport, park fees, etc.  I got a good deal because I signed up for my Mt. Kili trek with them too.  Mt. Kenya was a nice hike.  Not as hard as The Simien Mountains, and not as much wildlife to see but it was pretty challenging on summit day.  The camp before the summit was called Shipton Camp.  It was inside the main crater of Mt. Kenya, which is an extict volcano.  On summit day we started at 3 am.  Scrambling up frozen and loose rock screes up the side of the crater to reach the rim.  It had hailed the day before in camp, and snowed on the route up to the summit so everything was either frozen or covered in snow, which made scrambling up steep screes a little unnerving but we did it.  After we reached the main rim of the crater we followed it to another point which required some more scrambling to reach Pt. Lenana, the summit.  We reached the summit(16450 Ft.) about 0545 AM in time for sunrise.  It was a long way down, we stopped for breakfast(where I got food poisoning), stopped for lunch(where I passed out in the shade) and finally arrived for dinner at our camp where I passed out for the night at about 6 PM.  I'm starting to get better today, I went to the chemist and got two huge horse pill antibiotics.  I'm pretty sure after taking them now I can drink the tap water and hug a leper.  Wish me luck.