Post Images and Terrains of Mt. Kenya-(Africa's second highest) and Surrounding Areas.

I'd been thinking about starting a central Kenya thread. Will post some pics later.

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By scandleriv-flickr.

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By scandleriv-flickr.

nice...is there any time during the year the snow falls big enough to support winter sports like skiing, etc...

nice...is there any time during the year the snow falls big enough to support winter sports like skiing, etc...

I guess it would be possible if only the air up there wasn't too thin for sports. That after taking days to hike to the top.

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by TonyKRO-flickr.

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Flickr-davis.travels

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By Safari Partners-Flickr.

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By Safari Partners-Flickr.

^^I remember climbing this mountain three years ago. It was very tough but exciting, the greatest moment being reaching the Lenana peak and touching the replica Kenyan flag that was planted there on the independence day in 1963. I don't think that winter sports would be advisable there as the air up there is not sufficient for normal breathing, apart from the winds and other factors.:cheers:

Mt Kenya @ Sunset.

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By dranujkiran-Flickr.

^^I remember climbing this mountain three years ago. It was very tough but exciting, the greatest moment being reaching the Lenana peak and touching the replica Kenyan flag that was planted there on the independence day in 1963. I don't think that winter sports would be advisable there as the air up there is not sufficient for normal breathing, apart from the winds and other factors.:cheers:

I hope I'll get the chance to climb it one day.

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By Tel!-Flickr.

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By saragoldsmith-Flickr.

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Just thought this would be interesting.

Skiing on Mt Kenya? Yes... once upon a time

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/-/434746/856934/-/14hercnz/-/index.html

The year is 1936. Mount Kenya’s peaks and slopes are covered in snow and ice and a motley group of men are preparing for the first skiing championship on Kenya’s highest mountain.

Among them is the only female contestant, Nancye Kennaway, a dashing young 26 year-old from Britain, recently married to Noel Kennaway in what was then Fort Hall (modern day Murang’a) in Kenya’s Central Province.

“My mother was a keen skier,” recounts Kennaway’s son Tony as we go through the photo album meticulously put together by his late mother. A sepia photograph shows her in full skiing attire smiling at the camera.

Of course a visit to the mountain today will bring out a different story, since the glaciers have all but disappeared today and the snow caps have receded to only the tips of the high peaks.

The idea of holding a skiing championship on Mt Kenya was mooted by Bill Delap and P.V. Anson, keen skiers themselves, and when the Kennaways agreed, the competition was ready to go. The event was reported in the Kenyan press in December 1935 with the headline “Skiing Championship in Kenya.”

The plan to hold the first African Ski Championship had much to do with Delap, who was a regular on Mount Kenya and pioneered skiing on Lewis Glacier in 1933.

The championship course had two disciplines — downhill and jumping — hoped to become an annual event.

The article in the newspaper read that “snow conditions should be excellent at the glacial levels after these very plentiful short rains and it’s hoped that the snow will extend to levels below the glaciers, thus making a good long course for the downhill race and for skiing generally.”

The group of men including the hardy porters and the sole woman contestant held the competition at Lewis Glacier, doing a slalom race which is essentially a zigzag because there was not enough space for a downhill competition, and judged themselves.

Needless to say, Kennaway emerged the winner in the female category.

Delap was the winner in the men’s category with Kennaway’s husband was runner-up.

But Kennaway wasn’t the only person making history on Mt Kenya.

The head porter, Mtu Mathura, and his team of porters, highly amused at the wazungu on skiis having fun sliding downhill, asked if they could have a go.

“So they were put on the skis and set down the slope upon which they crashed into each other,” Tony retells the stories heard from his parents. Nevertheless, the porters almost without a doubt became the first Africans to ski.

But the porters made news on another front too — and this time in the British parliament, since Kenya then was a British colony.

The London Illustrated News covered the story with pictures of barefoot porters plodding through the snow covered only in blankets, obviously shivering by the glacier.

Questions were asked in the British parliament as to why the Africans were forced to walk barefoot on Mt Kenya’s freezing snow.

“It was not normal for the porters to be barefoot above the snowline,” says Tony. “What happened was that the team were caught in a sudden snowstorm. Mathura was an expert hiker on the mountain and there had not been a snowstorm on the mountain for years.”

Fortunately the porters including the wazungu suffered only mountain sickness and no frost bite.

Vanishing snow

The 1936 annual skiing competition on Mt Kenya was the only one that ever happened, partly due to the lack of participants and partly financial constraints.

But even if it had taken off, climate change would have put an end to the annual competition by now.

The snow and ice on the volcanic peaks of Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro (the world’s tallest free standing mountain and Africa’s tallest at 19,340 feet) are melting away so fast that scientists estimate that in the next two to three decades they will have completely disappeared.

Twenty years ago, there were 18 glaciers on Mt Kenya. Today seven of them have completely disappeared.

Lewis Glacier, where the 1936 skiing championship took place, as Tyndall, Gregory and Cesar, have shrunk some 60-92 per cent.

According to research funded by the British Department for International Development, global warming has also caused a seven fold increase in malaria around the Mt Kenya area due to a two degree centigrade increase in average temperatures around the mountain in the past 20 years.

Average temperatures reached 17 degrees centigrade in 1989 and today it are 19 degrees centigrade.

The local population of four million people has little or no immunity to malaria.

The meltdown on the massifs of both Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro is of huge concern as both are also vital water towers in the semi-arid areas they straddle.

As the temperatures around the world rise from the effects of climate change, mostly blamed on the increase in carbon in the atmosphere (a major problem in the developed world) and the depleting of natural forest covers (a developing nations’ dilemma), the ice-fields cannot be replenished as fast as they melt.

It’s estimated that developed countries need to cut gas emissions by a minimum of 40 per cent from the 1990 levels and 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Perhaps then, a repeat performance of the 1936 skiing championships can take place on Mount Kenya and malaria on “God’s mountain” will become history.

In 1962

http://www.ewpnet.co.uk/kenya/ski-kenya.htm

SKIING ON MOUNT KENYA

Mountain Club of Kenya 1962
by Annemarie Weber

"The Christmas programme for the Mount Kenya group includes a slalom from Point Lenana to the Curling Pond on Christmas Day and, if sufficient interest comes forward from both sexes, a 'He and She Run' on Boxing Day. For the evening the Ski Committee plans a punch party in the Arthur Firmin Hut. Entries should be made to the Functions Organiser not later than 1st December, 1963."

It would be nice, wouldn't it?

Not that skiing on Mount Kenya was a novel experience. The battered pair of skis over our bar, and another pair in the store - real old-time laminated hickories, made in Norway - plus two skiing sticks a la Rosa, latest fashion, give sufficient proof that several people here have been extremely interested in this sport in the past. Yet the writer could only get one Club member to admit that he had once used the skis. No trace was found of the kind donors.

With so much of the way paved already, we decided last July to follow suit and take a skiing holiday on the mountain. Our little group consisted of Barry Cliff and myself as 'the skiers', Peter Campbell, I carrying a brand-new camera (coupled with a determined grin not to let us get away with anything) and Tony Carr (professional cameraman) to secure dividends from the adventure - not yet arrived.

When we started off in pouring rain from Nanyuki, we felt still very uncertain as to what snow conditions to expect. We needn't have worried - they were excellent! Since our trip fell in the beginning of July, a usually dry month, I think it is fair to conclude that skiing on the Lewis Glacier may we quite good during perhaps eight months of the year. It certainly will always be fair on a sunny day. The sun melts the hard surface layer thus creating 'firn', a well-known and much liked snow formation in the Alps. It has the one disadvantage that it freezes again very quickly and then becomes extremely fast.

I also noted that the Lewis glacier possesses a series of gentle slopes which form an admirable ski run for the not-so-expert. The top part is, of course, rather steep; but in new snow an average skier would have the whole length from the summit down to the tarn - an approximately two mile run, and comparable with almost any high altitude skiing in Europe.

Crevasses do present a certain problem. Prussiks may be one answer, and the other would be to first practice emergency brakings on the hut slope. Although very much out of training, neither Barry nor I landed in a crevasse; but this was perhaps luck, because crevasses are not easily discernible from above. Although they yearned down on us all over the glacier on the way up, they seem to vanish miraculously as soon as one's skis point downwards.

Another aspect of skiing on the mountain is, of course, the altitude. Unfortunately, we did not have sufficient time to wait for acclimatisation. The carrying up was therefore a rather slow process - at least as far as I was concerned. With his usual zeal, Barry proved a treat for the photographers, indefatigably moving up and down. My most frequently recorded pose was the strictly classic one. Fortunately there are so many views to admire on Mount Kenya.

Our holiday was limited, and Barry and Peter had planned to do some climbing. So we had only three pleasant days on the Lewis during this first Kenya skiing holiday. But the skis are still waiting in the bottom bunk of Arthur Firmin Hut (the second shorter pair belongs to Barry), and whoever wants to try the art or pass a few idle days between climbs will only have to carry up bindings and sticks.

And perhaps next Christmas .....

In 2004

The snows of Erukenya

http://articles.cnn.com/2004-03-02/travel/sprj.ski04.mount.kenya_1_ski-warren-miller-entertainment-kilimanjaro?_s=PM:TRAVEL

Is this really a place to go skiing?

The Masai call this peak we're on, Africa's second-highest, "Erukenya" -- mountain of clouds. And true to its name, it's obscured by weather more than nine months out of the year. For the Masai it's a sacred symbol of strength. To the rest of the world it's simply Mount Kenya.

Situated almost directly on the equator, the mountain endures scorching days and freezing nights. Weather comes in from all directions, usually with little warning. A torrential rainstorm can be followed by a spectacular sunset that leads into a raging blizzard. The massif's two highest peaks, Nelion and Batian, rise to more than 17,000 feet, with 1,000-foot-vertical walls leading to their summits and the famous Diamond Couloir in between. Just beneath these twin towers is Point Lenana.

We are preparing to ski the Lewis Glacier, one of the last permanent snowfields in Africa. The glacier starts just below the summit and extends for some 2,000 feet before giving way to huge boulder fields of volcanic rock. Like the snowfields of Kilimanjaro and the ice in the Diamond Couloir, the Lewis Glacier is shrinking at an alarming rate because of global warming. Some experts predict that if it continues to melt at the present rate, it may be entirely gone in little more than a decade.

We figure we'd better ski it before it disappears forever.

We step into our skis and begin our descent. The wind-deposited snow is variable, and the skiing is tricky. Miles below, another low-pressure system is brewing. Thunderheads creep toward the mountain. But up here the sun shines on the glacier, and fresh snow glistens in the intense, equatorial light. Most important, we're skiing in Africa. This is what we have lugged our skis halfway around the world for.

Gorges Valley

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris-murphy/4406177314/sizes/l/in/photostream/

awww this is breath taking, that's gorgeous Eddeux

edit.

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by star tours (http://www.flickr.com/photos/startour/sets/72157626835318257/)

yatta and kilimabogo

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AROUND MACHAKOS

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^^ Nice pics Nairoberry.

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Bic used to be popular!

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By wvantill, Flickr.

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Beautiful view.

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By wvantill, Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wvantill/6809585758/sizes/l/in/photostream/

WOW! makes me miss shags. The mountain is usually visible early in the morning and on clear days :)

Hi

Sorry to do this to you guys.. did Mt kenya 2 months ago and have posted th epics on Flickr but too lazy to link them here.

Please feel free to link the best ones through

http://www.flickr.com/photos/56068286@N04/

Will be doing the 2 peaks 2 weeks challenge later this year if the elections dont mess things up (Kenya and Kilimanjaro in 2 weeks back to back) so look out for pics on that.

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I read that article on page one showing that wazungus used to ski on Mt.Kenya which i think is still possible if people cared to save the mountain. There are snow machine that are used all over the world to ensure that a mountain can make its own snow supplies during the winter massive snowblowers are used to dump tons of snow onto mountains forcing the air around it to freeze causing precipitation if the same method can be used in mountain Kenya we might finally get the snow white capped mountain from the past

I read that article on page one showing that wazungus used to ski on Mt.Kenya which i think is still possible if people cared to save the mountain. There are snow machine that are used all over the world to ensure that a mountain can make its own snow supplies during the winter massive snowblowers are used to dump tons of snow onto mountains forcing the air around it to freeze causing precipitation if the same method can be used in mountain Kenya we might finally get the snow white capped mountain from the past

Dont think so man. There is hardly any snow left up there. the terrain is also not ideal for skiing. and btw, hakuna stima so those expensive machines would not be a worthwhile experience. Most ski slopes in europe are a lot lower than 5,200 m

^^ but people used the ski there back in the day we just got find the right place to set up the equipment... It is true the systems are expensive but they are getting cheaper every year they even have some built with solar panels etc.. But this will not be a longtime solution we would try and force it to snow by creating a lot of moisture because of the mountain height the moisture will freeze and fall back down as snow all we will be doing is jump starting the system