Mount Kenya Climbing Tours

09/05/2024

Climbing Mount Kenya Routes
Mount Kenya Natural History
Mount Kenya is Africa’s second-highest mountain at 5,199m (17,058 feet) and the highest of all Kenya Mountains. Mount Kenya is roughly circular, about 60km across at the 200mm contour, where the steep font hills rise out of the gentler slopes of the centered highlands. At the center of the massif, the main peaks rise sharply from around 4,500m to the main summit of Batian 5,199m, Nelion 5,188m, and point Lenana 4,985m. Other major summits on the mountain include Point Piggott 4,957m, Point Dutton 4,885, and Point John 4,883m. Of the three main peaks (Batian, Lenana, and Nelion), point Lenana can be reached by climb Mount Kenya trekkers and the other two being only for technical climbers.

Mount Kenya is the second highest peak in Africa and stands somewhat unjustly in the shadow of its taller neighbor Kilimanjaro, which lies some 320km away in the south and is visible on a clear day. Mount Kilimanjaro may see much more traffic - due to the possibility of summiting via several non-technical trekking routes and due to the sometimes dubious honor of being one of the Seven Summits - but Mount Kenya climbing routes offers a wealth of excellent and diverse climbing possibilities on rock, snow, and ice.

The rock climbing Mount Kenya can be of variable quality but is at its best high on the mountain where the syenite rock is similar to granite. It is rough, hard, and well endowed with features.

Apart from the superb climbing potential on Mount Kenya, its tarns and alpine meadows; exotic, equatorial, high-altitude vegetation; sunbirds, hyrax, and soaring eagles make the walk around the peaks one of the most beautiful expeditions in the East African mountains.

After the cultivated farmlands on the lower slopes, the trails pass through the rain forest, rich in trees of many species but noticeably camphor, then onto a bamboo zone growing to heights of more than 12m or more up through open moorland before reaching the moonscape of higher slopes. The forests are rich in wildlife including elephants, buffalo, and monkeys with even the moor lands offering a long list of mammals including the rock hyrax, the nearest living relative of the elephant.
Mt. Kenya is an ancient volcanic mountain much older than Mt. Kilimanjaro. It’s believed to have once reached well above 600m. What is left today is a volcanic plug which erosion has fashioned into the complex jagged outline of the central peaks.