Oldonyo LenGai

I wrote this in August, thought I'd post it:

Last Monday morning, Chase, my dad, two friends named Jeremy and James, a visitor named David and myself went on a trip. We were going to some very dry, desert country. The reason was to climb Oldonyo LenGai. Oldonyo LenGai is maasai for the Mountain of God. The reason it is called that is because every once in a while it rumbles and smokes and shoots up ashes and sometimes lava. It is an active volcano. Our mission was to climb it.

We arrived at about 4 o'clock and tried to get some rest. Now it may be hard for you to believe this, but we were going to be leaving the campsite at 11 o'clock that night to start our climb. Why? Well, for a couple reasons: 1: I mentioned that the area is desert country. Very very dry, dusty and hot with little vegetation. We did not want to climb this mountain, with an average slope of 45 degrees, during the heat of the day. 2: We estimated the hike to take 6 hours. We wanted to get to the top for sunrise. Also we heard that if you get to the top at night you can see lava glowing.

So we got about an hour and a half sleep that night. We got up at 11, got in the car and drove to the base of the mountain (about an hour from camp).

It was actually very fun climbing in the dark. It was a quarter moon, not too bright, but the stars were dazzling. The Milky Way stretched its arm across the whole sky: glittering, shinning, twinkling as we hiked. You could look up and see the pitch black silhouette of the peek with stars lighting up the sky behind. We would be climbing for a couple hours, I would look up and the peek was still there: it hadn't moved, it hadn't got closer, it still seemed miles away. How long would this take?

Oldonyo LenGai, is a very very difficult climb. I mentioned before that it's average slope is 45 degrees. If you don't believe my look at the picture. Another thing: the path we take up (there is only one path up the whole mountain) is straight up. NO SWITCHBAKES or anything. The reason why is because there are huge gully running down the mountain. At times we had to walk in between two of them with drop offs on both sides. It was a very tiring climb, that just wore you out. Our visitor Dave (who actually paid for all of us to climb: very very nice) said: "if I had known how hard it really was I wouldn't have climbed it."

If the top were not so rewarding, the climb would not be worth it. We had to book it to get to the top by sunrise. ...And OH WHAT A VIEW. The mountain is so steep that you seem to be just standing on a pinpoint. As Chase said: "the mountain doesn't get in the way of any of your view." We were blessed with the most beautiful, clear skies. As the sun rose over the clouds and everything changed from black to blue to pink to red to yellow we could see for miles upon miles. A blanket of orangish yellow clouds was laid out across the landscape, with mountains breaking through it everywhere you looked: Longido, Monduli, Gelai, Meru, and even Kilimanjaro could be seen as bumps on the land. Lake Natron below us reflected the suns glare. The sharp side-lighting of the sun peaking over the horizon accentuated every crevice, valley and gorge of the rift valley escarpment, where upon you could see the stunning shadow of the very mountain we were on top of.

Now, let me describe the mountain itself for a bit. On the top there is a crater where all the lava comes out of. Throughout the crater there are huge spires. They are formed when lava is excreted and it builds up on itself. They just get bigger and bigger. (In some pictures you can see people at the bottom of them for comparison. You won't believe how big they are). You can also see huge holes where lava resides deep down. The lava actually only looks like mud. It is only sometimes in the dark that you can see it glowing (which we didn't). ...And there are lava flows quite frequently. There was a big one that occurred just three weeks before we were there. You could see the cooled lava, and imagine it dripping over the edge of the crater, oozing down the side of the mountain. Another cool thing was the steam. There was steam coming up everywhere: our of the spires, our of the ground, out of rocks. We were pretty cold at the top and we would warm up by putting our hands in front of the warm steam.

The whole thing just seemed out of this world. We seemed to be on the moon or Mars. Everything was so mystical. So elegant. It all pointed to God and His handiwork. It truly is the Mountain of God.