Location: South 04.26779, East 037.93152 (GPS at the summit)
Difficulty: YDS class 1
Climbed January 17. 2019.
Information:
How to get there:
A good location to start from is the nice village/community
of Chome. To get there, first locate the town Same on Hwy. T2 between
Dar El Salam and Arusha. Go about 4 km south on T2 from Same, then take
the road that forks left. Follow this dirt road about 20 km, keeping right
at the roadfork, then find the smaller road that forks left and climbs steeply
up the hillside in order to reach Chome. As this roads levels out, continue
to the next main road fork. The main services, store etc are to your right, while
our recommended guesthouse is steeply uphill to the left shortly before one
arrives at this fork.
Route description:
From the center of Chome, proceed south along the main village road (rough)
to location S04.28843, E037.89641, where a road forks left (uphill). Follow
this road to a small hilltop at location S04.29619, E037.89911. There is a big
sign here and a nice looking house on your left. The permit to climb Shengena
is supposed to be checked here. Continue along the road as it bends around a bit left,
then starts a steep uphill climb. A key waypoint is at location
S04.29584, E037.90855, elevation about 1945 meter. Here one should leave the road
steeply uphill to the right hand side. (The road continues uphill at this point.)
Pick up a trail that runs pretty straight to a campground with a picnic table
at location S04.29330, E037.92194, at roughly the same elevation. This distance is
roughly 1.5 kilometer. Proceed in the direction slightly right of the peak, follow the
trail, it will cross a creek on a wooden bridge then head gently uphill towards the
forest. You should pass location S04.29030, E037.92368, elevation about 1930 meter
along the correct trail. The trail heads more steeply uphill and arrives at a signed
trailfork. Turn left here and follow
this trail to the summit. Comments:
I climbed this peak together with Geoff (my cook) and a local guide named Joseph.
According to Joseph, a fairly large number of Swedes visit this peak
every year. He had also noticed a few Norwegians.
Pick up at my Arusha HQ at 0915, to safely make the
1000 bus departure to Same. It had been and still was raining
quite hard. Citing the
rain, our bus was
late, arriving at the
bus terminal around 1040, then delaying departure hoping for a few
more passengers until 1100. We finally got going,
with several more stops to
find customers, we finally arrive in Same at 1630. Here, we pick up a climbing
permit and buy water, our local guide shows up as well as a
landcruiser with a local driver. First home to the guide, since he
needed to pick up a few supplies, then on our way to
accommodations that are located near the trailhead.
The road was steep and now very muddy due to the recent rain. We caught up
with a local bus
and two smaller vans,
all stuck in the mud. After many
tries they succeeded in getting slightly higher before getting
stuck again. We started to hike
the last few kilometers to our
accommodation, while our driver was hopeful that he should somehow get
the landcruiser to pass. This had been much easier at the previous
problem spot. We hiked up a short-cut trail about 100 vertical
meter, as the sun was setting,
to find some houses
and indeed meet our driver again. Continuing by car, we soon arrived
at the intended place for the night. This turned out to be
quite a well kept place, dinner
then to bed in pretty descent
sleeping quarters.
The location is at
S04.25997, E037.89115, elevation about 1630 meter.
The next morning, nice pancakes for breakfast, then left shortly after
0730. The local road through the village is unbeliveably bad, so one must
hold on at all times in the landcruiser. We stop on a small hilltop
next to a house with lots of signs, the permit is checked, then we continue
only a few hundred meter and the guide, Joseph declares that we should start
from here despite the road continuing up the hill.
We start out at 0825, I was thinking that we should continue to follow
the road to get to the trailhead that Rob started from when he was here.
Possibly, we should take a route that would intersect his route since we
now came sort of from the opposite direction. However, pretty soon we noticed
that we had "lost" our guide, he just walked considerably slower that Geoff and
me. We waited, then some shouting of messages between Geoff and Joseph followed
(in Swahilli). The result was that Joseph caame up to us and told us
that we should descend back some way, then follow a road that went left. OK, this
seemed to imply that we would skip Rob's trailhead and rather intersect his route.
However, we again got a bit ahead of Joseph, waited for him as he now told us that
we needed to reverse on the road, then descend to a flat area below.
This descent was off-trail and full of bush, quite a bit cumbersome. We finally
made it down and joined what is called the UNDP trail, intersecting
Rob's route then joining it again at place with a trail sign. From here,
Joseph wanted us to go ahead as he needed a slower pace.
Geoff and I proceeded to the summit,
arriving there at 1100. The weather was gorgeous
and we had a long rest waiting for Joseph to catch up. We left together at 1135
and walked down the correct path hitting the campground that also Rob mentions
after one hour at 1235. A 15 minute break where Geoff and Joseph had a small
lunch. We continued, this time on the proper trail and hit the road where we
should have turned right on our ascent.
Back at the car at 1315, a nice hike to a forest ultra.
In the afternoon, we walked with Joseph to a cliff overlooking the flat valley
below. Joseph told about how the current Pare people had arrived from Kenya looking for
land that had water. He told about the old beliefs and how the people had
practiced killing newborn babies that somehow deviated from the normal. About how
Christianity had ended the practice. How they had been fighting the Masai people that
lived on the low (flat) land below. We walked back in the good weather, a nice 2 hour
excursion.
The previous climb on this trip was Hanang,
the next peak is Sungwi.