Volcano – Rwanda Geotechnics

It’s been a busy week so it’s taken me a while to post this. Last weekend we crossed the border into Uganda to climb a volcano called Sabinyo. The name means “tooth” in Kinyarwanda and apparently it’s named because it looks like an old man’s jagged teeth. One of the major attractions is that the summit is on the border between Rwanda, Uganda and DRC, so once at the top you can be in three countries at once!

The summit is at 3,645 m with around 1,700 m of ascent. It took us around 9 hrs (up and down) and felt like a pretty full on day. I have to say that the photos below really don’t do justice to the amazing beauty of the scenery and the outrageousness of some of the situations the route goes through. If you come to East Africa and don’t climb this volcano, you’re missing out!

First sight of Sabinyo. The mountain has 5 peaks, and the route goes up the left hand side as seen here to the top of the first peak; drops down and up again to the second; and finally up to the third and highest peak before retracing the route back down.

The route climbs briefly through bamboo forest before passing into this amazing afro-montane forest where all the trees are hung with moss.

The view across to Gahinga, which we climbed a few weeks ago, and behind it Murabura.

On top of the first summit; and looking across to the second peak. The climb up to this point felt pretty hard work and I wasn’t looking forward to losing height only to regain it again!

Much of the route consisted of ladders built from small branches, attached to the mountain by some undefined method. I tried to turn off my engineering brain and not think about the physics – which turned out to be surprisingly easy while surrounded by such stunning scenery.

Summit photo!

Looking down into Rwanda… Uganda… and DRC (thanks for pointing it out James!)

Descending the ladders was even more fun than going up. Watching people in front just disappear over a precipice into the mist was slightly disconcerting…

This weekend a group of us went to climb Gahinga, one of Rwanda’s volcanos. At 3,474 m above sea level it is the lowest and easiest. We set off on Saturday afternoon, the 10 of us crammed into two cars, to drive for about 2.5 hrs to the town of Musanze, in the far north. There we had dinner in a very tasty Italian restaurant (bizarre), and after a certain amount of driving around lost in the dark, arrived at a guest house close to the base of the mountain, where we got bed and breakfast for the princely sum of RWF10,000 (£10).

The next morning we woke up early and were at the park registration centre for 7am. Entry to the national parks in Rwanda is tightly controlled and you have to take a guide. We met our guide, Bosco, and then drove for about 45 minutes over dirt roads to the trailhead at around 2,300 m. There we met several guards with guns and machetes, who would walk with us. The guns are for elephants and buffalo, and the machetes are for the vegetation.

The first part of the walk felt hard – steep and in full sun. After about 50 minutes we entered a bamboo forest which covers the middle slopes, and all my tiredness was forgotten. It was cool and shady, and after the constant dust of the Rwandan dry season, it was nice to feel mud under my feet! We continued climbing, and as we emerged from the bamboo forest the gradient steepened. Eventually we needed to pull on trees and roots to make progress and I was glad of the bamboo walking pole that one of the guards had cut for me.

After about 3 hours of walking, we emerged onto the summit. Gahinga is dormant, and the crater is now filled with a swamp. The summit was very beautiful, lush, green and peaceful with lots of birds. We ate lunch there and then descended by the same route. On the way back through the bamboo forest we were lucky enough to see a troop of golden monkeys swinging through the bamboo above our heads. Bosco told us they are endemic only to that region.

On the descent we also had great views of Mount Sabinyo, another higher volcano which has three summits and involves ladders and scrambling on the ascent. I can’t wait to try that one!

First view of Mount Gahinga