How to get there:
This peak is in Malawi. At the time of my visit only 4 nationalities could arrive without a visa, then
get it on arrival. This applied to Norway, Sweden, Belgium and the USA. Thus, check carefully before leaving home.
The closest airport is located near the city of Blantyre. There are daily flights from Johannesburg.
A local contact is Samuel Mathewe, his Whatsapp phone is: +265888951481.
His email address is: samuel.mathewe@gmail.com.
Another contact that was very helpful and acted as my guide on the mountain is Readson Baluwa.
His email address is: likhubula3@yahoo.com, and his Whatsaapp phone number is: +265991921858.
The location of the mountain entrance is S15.93959, E035.49820, elevation about 800 meter. A short distance
inside this gate you will locate
the local lodge at location S15.93771, E035.50335, elevation near 850 meter.
Route description:
The route can be divided into 2 parts.
From the lodge at the base to the mountain hut, then from the
hut to the summit.
From the lodge, a trail leads by some water tanks to a road. This road quickly turns back into a trail.
The trail, very nice aand wide climbs a ridge, then does a traversin ascent to reach the plateau.
This trail is nicely made and there are steps in many places. After gaining 900 vertical meter you
arrive at the plateau, a big trail junction here.
A nice peak named Chambe
will catch your attention on the left side
as you approach this junction. Looking back, you will
see the landscape on the opposite side of
the valley.
The route turns right and follows a local ridge pretty
horizontally before a short descent to a river. After crossing (big stones to step on), another short
ascent follows. The route now continues fairly flat, before ascending to a small ridge turning right and
then descending to aanother ridge that connects the terrain to the other side. An uphill follows, you now
have higher ground on your right. Finally, two more rocky downhill sections, then pretty gentle, crossing a river
that most often is dry to the hut.
The route from the hut to the summit is generally well marked with red paint on the rocks. It starts out as a wide
trail heading directly uphill behind the hut. Soon, this becomes a more normal trail. Higher up, the route crosses
uphill on long sections of slab rock.
This works well with dry friction, more care is clearly needed if
wet and slippery.
Higer up, the route becomes more convoluted as it zig-zags between huge boulders,
then sometimes crosses on top
of other boulders. There are a few places where one needs to get up short, steeper sections of slab rock, clearly
YDS class 3. The route is well marked with stripes of paint and or arrows. Be patient to look more if this is not
obvious at once. There are also a few places where the route runs through short "tunnels"
under blocking rocks.
The summit block is accessed by traversing right, then up a narrow,
characteristic friction slab rock. The final
stretch is a short easy walk to the concrete summit marker.
Comments:
We had been to Nyagani in Zimbabwe, then flew from Harare via Johannesburg to Blantyre.
We were met by Samuel and some of his team. Shortly, we were on our way to the mountain
lodge, after a brief stop to buy some soft drinks and also exchange a few dollar bills for
local currency.
Dinner should have been brought to our cabin at 1800, however with no dinner and the time
showing 1900, we walked to the lodge to investigate. Here, the dinner appeared, they said that
an elctricity black-out had caused the delay.
The next, early morning, breakfast had been promised to be served at 0430, with a planned
departure at 0500. The time-zone here in Malawi creates very early daylight with sunrise before
0500. However, there was no sign of any breakfast and we decided to leave without it. Thus, our hike
started already at 0445.
The path was nice and we gained elevation quite efficiently. This topped out at the plateau, we rested
at a trail junction with location
S15.92527, E035.52934, elevation 1750 meter. The time was 0615, so we had gained 900 vertical meter
in 1:30, that is 600 meter per hour, very satisfactory.
The walk continued in easy terrain, we then descended to the connecting ridge before a final ascent
across the last hill, before descending to the mountain hut.
We arrived at the hut shortly after 0900. A rest was called for, but Dave and I wanted to
continue with the ascent, hoping that the nice weather would last. The guide had never experienced
a part that ascended the same day. However, our forecast strongly suggested that we might have
a little rain today and that there would be significant rain the following day.
We progressed well, climbing another 600 meter in the first hour, but then the terrain got
very complex and vertical progress slowed down. We arrived at the summit around 1155. The summit was
completely engulfed in fog (clouds) and pretty load thunder rumbled nearby. The summit stay was short,
no need to stay at this highest point any longer than absolutely necessary.
We were all a bit concerned that it would start raining, making the descent more difficult on all
those steepish friction slabs.
We first descended about 50 vertical meter and had a stop with food and drink
at 1220. This location was more safe with respect to the thunder.
Subsequently, the thunder subsided and no rain caused any delays.
We reached the hut at 1430.
To our surprise, quite many hikers started to arrive. Single, young female hikers! A Dane,
a French and a Dutch woman. They each had some local supporting porter/guide. It had taken
them 7.5 hours to reach the hut and they planned to ascend the peak the following day.
We slept early. The next morning it rained by the buckets.
Very bad luck for the parties that
had arrived the previous evening. We had a relaxed breakfast. Dave asked aabout departure and
I suggested 0800. We dressed for wet weather assuming we would be soaked by the time
we were down. However, by some magic, the rain stopped at 0800 and we descended all the
way without a single drop of rain.
The only challenge was the nearby river that had been virtually dry when we arrived.
The rain had turned it into a pretty big river in just a few hours. We took off
boots and socks, the rock below the water provided stable footing and we all crossed
without any incident.
I descended with Readson. He demanded a rest when we reached the trail junction before
the final 900 meter descent. We still arrived back at the lodge by
1145, so a 3:45 descent.
Later in the afternoon, the thunder and rain resumed. We were just so lucky with
both ascent nd peak climb as well as our fianl hike out. Thanks to Dave for
good company.
