It is an often heard complaint that the age of adventure and exploration is over, that the poles have been conquered and the highest peaks climbed; that there is little which hasn’t been mapped or doesn’t feature in the pages of an adventure travel brochure. While the superlative goals may indeed be decreasing and while, in climbing terms, much of the UK, Europe and the United States has been discovered, a dedicated band of climbers are still pioneering new adventures across the world.
In early 2005 a team of four British climbers set out to put up new routes on some of Africa’s biggest unclimbed walls in a remote part of Kenya’s Northern Frontier District; a land of desert, scrub and Rendile and Samburu tribes familiar with warfare and drought. Although the team lacked clear pictures of the cliffs they hoped to climb, rumours of 600m (2,000ft) walls and the promise of adventure were enough to found an expedition on.
After three weeks of extreme temperatures, cobras, killer bees, lethal thicket and malaria, the team managed to put up one new, 500m route on a cliff above the village of Ngurunit. Another two weeks of effort – this time at 4,000m on the slopes of Mount Kenya – and another two historic routes were added to the expedition’s successes.
Pioneering New Climbs, Kenya