Ain’t no Africa mountains high enough for them…
THE Seven Summits Africa Challenge in which KwaZuluNatal adventurer Thommo Hart is taking part has become political.
But there’s no controversy: Kenya’s Tourism Minister Najib Balala has joined the Mt Kenya leg of the expedition, which is climbing seven peaks above 3 000m in seven weeks for seven causes.
“I’m excited,” said 50-yearold Balala, a former mayor of Kenya’s second city, Mombasa, at the beginning of the six-day challenge that will take the party to an altitude of 5119m.
“We are introducing a new tourism asset to the world. It is, of course, an asset that is already there, but Mt Kenya has long been underutilised and under-promoted.”
They were to come down the mountain yesterday as scheduled.
Mt Kenya is the country’s highest mountain and Africa’s second highest after Kilimanjaro, which will be the expedition’s final ascent.
They already have under their belts the active Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda’s highest peak, Karisimbi, also a volcano but dormant. It’s also where gorilla woman Dian Fossey was laid to rest along with her beloved primates.
“Mt Kenya is an extreme technical mountain and I am still contemplating if I will do the last technical summit to the top of Mount Kenya, which is a 100m to 200m climb on ropes up a cliff face peak,” Hart, who is the expedition photographer, told The Independent on Saturday by e-mail.
Hart’s companions on the Seven Summits Africa expedition include conservationist Carel Verhoef; Sibusiso Vilane, the first black African to scale Mount Everest; and East Africa’s most experienced mountain climber, Ake Lindstrom.
The cause for which they will climb on Mount Kenya will be for Africa’s elephants.
“One in every three elephants that walked Africa just a decade ago has since been illegally killed,” he said on his departure earlier this month.