Unspeakable Beauty

One of the problems with my time trekking in the mountains was that I’m having trouble putting the experience into words. It was truly spectacular – an experience that was powerful and majestic and difficult and incredibly rewarding. It’s hard to explain what was so amazing about it, but I’ll try.

 

First of all, there was a great diversity of natural beauty. Even on the drive out of Bundibugyo I saw baboons by the road and surveyed an archetypal African plain. The trek itself started in dense jungle, passed through montane forests, bamboo forest, heather forest, alpine bogs, bare rock, glacier, and back through all of them again. There is something magical about the Rwenzoris. They feel ancient and wild. In most places, the lightly worn trail is the only evidence that humans have ever been there. The first day was spent in jungle – monkeys jumping overhead, giant tree ferns, and chimpanzees calling in the valley below us (an especially eerie sound at night). Day two was spent gaining a lot of elevation and moving into the heather forest. This is a truly otherworldly landscape, where gnarled old heather trees are draped with Old Man’s Beard and covered in masses of moss that reach up to three feet across. These hanging moss gardens are so unusual that they instantly struck me as something that could have come from a Dr. Seuss book. Day three was spent traversing two alpine bogs, places of incredible beauty and strange plant life, but that were clearly never meant to have people cross them. Luckily, we had experienced guides to lead us through them, and pretty much all of the Rwenzoris from that point on was more or less bog. Jumping from one tussock of grass to the next was fun and challenging, and carried with it significant risk as well, since the mud could be waist deep if one were to fall. I had a good time trying to land on wobbly, slippery tussocks, and by the end of the day I was well worn out from all of the jumping. Next we picked up a lot more elevation as we passed through a seemingly prehistoric alpine forest – I remarked at the time that a dinosaur stepping out into the path wouldn’t particularly surprise me there. Every day we were getting better and better views of the snow-capped high peaks of the Rwenzoris: Mt. Speke, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Stanely, whose Margherita Peak is the highest point in Uganda and was our destination. The majesty of these mountains is impossible for me to overstate, and I wish I could convey to you the feelings of wonder and awe that held me when the clouds would lift early in the morning, letting me bask in the splendor of those mountains.  By this time we were at significant elevation and the air was getting thin, making every foot gained a little more difficult than the last. By then end of day four we were scrambling over wet rocks and in sight of the snow, reaching the hut that sits about 200 yards from the edge of the glacier. Even before this, the temperature would plummet in the evening, but now it was cold all of the time. Still, Luke and I decided that this was our only chance to bathe in a glacial pool, so up we climbed to a pool above the hut and bathed ourselves is the icy water (literally) that sat just below the glacier. It occurred to me at the time that guys often do very stupid things and that this was likely one of them, but it was a fun to be there that close to the glacier, and afterwords the air felt much warmer by comparison, leaving us feeling refreshed. At this elevation, any activity, even walking to the latrine, was tiring and caused me to lose my breath. There just wasn’t enough oxygen in the air. We were all on medication for altitude sickness (two men died up there this summer from it), so no one had serious problems, but we all suffered from nausea and general weakness. The next morning started at 4:30 as we set out for the summit (all of us except Jack and Julia), scrambling by headlamp for an hour through a steep boulder field to the edge of the glacier, where we put on our crampons and harnesses and roped ourselves together. I was on a short rope with Luke and a guide, meaning that we were free to move at our own pace, but also meaning that, if someone fell, there were only two others to catch him. The glacier was fun and frightening, as we passed right over and around various openings to crevices that could have been 10 or 200 feet deep and I would have never known the difference. At one point, in a particularly steep section, there was an opening about a foot across into an ice cave, through which I could see icicles hanging down into the blackness. And we used that opening as a foothold for climbing! In the movie, it would collapse every time. But it didn’t, and I passed over it with heart racing and ice-axe at the ready to try to catch myself if it gave. After scaling a 20 foot rock face (completely exhausting at almost 17,000 feet – I couldn’t move my arms for a while afterword. However, I was roped in and being held by a guide), we scrambled for a few more minutes to the summit – all 16,763 feet of it. It was amazing looking down at the clouds, watching the wind whip them up onto the peak, and seeing how the sky looks strangely dark overhead at high elevation. Every now and again the clouds would part and we would have a stunning view of Alexandra peak, just a few hundred yards away. I would whip out my camera, but in seconds the clouds would close back in and it would be gone. I never did get a clear picture of it (my best try is the second picture above). While waiting for the second group to reach the summit, Luke and I snacked, tried to keep warm, and sang Go Tell it On the Mountain (that was the only place where it feels like the Christmas season!). Despite getting caught in a snowstorm on the way down, we made it back safely (though the snowy rocks made us use ropes to get down and it took an hour longer than it should have) and quickly made up a bunch of hot chocolate. We were all very tired but several more days of spectacular hiking awaited. One place from the descent sticks out in particular – a bamboo forest that I was alone when I entered. There was a stillness about it that felt almost sacred, broken only by the intermittent hushed rustle of the bamboo in the breeze. I was trying to catch up to the rest of the group, but I walked slowly through the bamboo. It felt like a place where one shouldn’t hurry.

 

All in all, the trek was cold, muddy, and exhausting, but incredibly fun, fascinating, and awe-inspiring. The difficultly and discomfort are a big part of what made it such a great experience for me and brought a lot of fun and adventure to it. On a climb like that, it’s usually best not to dwell on all of the times where one wrong step could send you tumbling to a rocky death, but those times were exhilarating and exciting too. Most of you probably know how much I enjoy the natural world and how much natural beauty speaks to me, and this trip gave me a huge dose of that. I saw many stunning birds, several of which are found only in the Rwenzoris. It was a place of great power. It reminded me of how Tolkien speaks of mountains having power or having a will of their own. It was like I could feel the mountains in addition to seeing them. I’ll certainly never forget it.

 

That’s a very long way of telling you that I’m back in Bundibugyo safely after an amazing time in the mountains. It is back to the real world tomorrow, as I’m headed down to the health center again in the morning. But I’m incredibly grateful for the chance to experience the Rwenzoris, and the beauty and majesty that I was lucky enough to revel in there. (I’ll try to get some more pictures up).