Climbing Icefalls and Summits

The next morning we woke up in our cabin and made a big breakfast. Over breakfast we studied the maps of the mountains to make our final assault plans. The weather did not cooperate with us as the peaks were all fogged over. We hiked up further to check out our planned trail with binoculars as best we could with the poor visibility. We found an ice fall that looked interesting and fun so I said I wanted to climb up it to practice my ice axe work. My friends thought it was too dangerous but I went ahead and started to climb up it.

I made belays about every twenty feet so that if I fell or if the ice gave way I had a better chance of not getting hurt. The rope was heavy to carry but I worked my way up. I checked the integrity of the ice often to make sure it would support me. Ice can quickly get weak when the sun hits it so I had to hurry and finish climbing before the ice was too dangerous. Of course my buddies were right about it being dangerous to climb up ice falls. They are called ice falls because dah ice falls in them and it can be really deadly when big chunks fall on your head or any body part for that matter. I dropped a few chunks down from my perch and they hit the bottom really hard. I did not want to fall or that would be it. We were two weeks away from medical care so even minor injuries could be fatal this far out in the boondocks. I looked around from the top for about thirty seconds and then climbed down quickly taking all my hardware off as I went down. My friends had sat and watched me climb and had a few comments about the ice chunks I sent down from above and how I took too many chances and trusted my skills and equipment too much. I agreed with them but what the hell I wanted to live life not sit and watch somebody else climbing I wanted to do it myself. I was glad I climbed up it because it was fun, I learned things, I got a good workout and I was kind of proud that I was able to safely make it.

The next day was also not good weather so we went up one of the lesser peaks to look at the glacier we could see from the basecamp. We hiked all the way to the top of the glacier that morning. I wanted to go out and walk on it but my buddies again thought it was too dangerous. We found some old wooden skis hidden by some rocks near the summit. I looked at them and they appeared to be from the 1940s by the look of the boot clamps and color of the wood. They were likely left here by Benito Mussolini's men who surveyed the early maps that we used. I was feeling really gutsy and I announced that I was going to ski down the glacier. My friends thought about physically restraining me when I said it. I looked at them like I was crazy and maybe I was but I strapped those suckers on my boots and using my ice axe for a pole I took off down the glacier. I was a bit worried about falling into crevasses or flying off the end if I went to fast so I controlled my speed and looked for the smoothest areas to ski over. When I got to the bottom I flipped myself into a sitting position and then rolled over onto my front with my hands wrapped around the ice axe and my fingers interlaced as tightly as I could and then dug the tip of the ice axe into the glacier and came to a well controlled stop. I retrieved the skis and walked off the side of the glacier. It took my buddies about an hour and a half to hike down to where I was waiting for them. The German did not look so good to me.

We helped him back to the cabin and laid him down on a cot. We looked up his symptoms in our medical guide we had with us and he had just what we thought, altitude sickness. We had drugs with us for this condition but they had to be injected IV and none of us had every done that. I read the directions in our guide and offered to do it for him. It went smoothly. I did not kill him or anything. We got some porters together to carry him down to a lower altitude because he could still die up high where we were even with the drugs. I tried to talk him out of going into shock by just talking very calmly and slowly and trying to explain everything to him. He was pretty disoriented but we told the porters the facts and they rushed him down the mountain.

Now there was only three of us left to climb up to the top of Mount Stanley. The next day was better but still not a good day to climb. We made a decision to climb up higher and put up our tent so that we could get an earlier start on the summit. So that is what we did. It was a good plan except for how loud the hyraxes were with all their screaming. The next morning we arose and ate our premade breakfast and went to take the tent down and we found that the tent was just one big sheet of ice and it was not going to come down. We decided to just leave it and come back for it later. We lucked out and had a very clear morning. Our climb to the summit was more of a mountaineering hike than a rope and harness with carabiners. We spent most of our time triangulating our position and making sure we were on the correct path. The summit was awesome! We could see down to the jungles on all sides both to Zaire and Uganda. We didn't stay long because the wind was already picking up and the visibility was dropping. We checked our ropes and did some practice belays before heading back down to the basecamp. We picked up the tent on the way. The days sunshine had melted the ice it was coated with. We climbed two more peaks before packing it up and heading back to Fort Portal.

We had one more problem with the porters on the way down. We ran into some mountain elephants and the porters were very afraid of the elephants. If they decided to charge we had no defense. We did not bring a gun powerful enough to stop an elephant. We decided to retreat and wait until the elephants had time to get out of our way. We made some tea and lunch to kill a few hours then we took off again for the bottom. We never saw the elephants on the way down. Just before we got down about two days hike from Fort Portal we ran into another group of climbers coming up. We talked a few minutes and then they asked us if we had any matches. They were going mountain climbing and they didn't even have matches! They were clearly not prepared for the cold and snowy icy conditions that they were heading into. My Canadian friend tried to talk them into turning around before some of them got killed by their own stupidity. We left them and made it to Fort Portal without a problem. Our German friend was not waiting for us. He was fine but went ahead to Kampala without waiting for us.

This trip was one of the most spectacular things that I have ever done in my entire life to this day. I am so happy I made the effort and did this. When people ask me where was your favorite place on your travels this is my response, "The Mountains of the Moon!"