May 4, Nyiragongo Summit Shelters – Democratic Republic of Congo
After a relaxing couple of nights doing precisely nada at Mikeno lodge in the heart of the Virunga National Park, we roused ourselves early this morning to prep our gear for the climb up Nyiragongo summit (3470m), home of Africa’s largest lava lake. The volcano last erupted in 2002, wiping out a significant portion of the nearby town of Goma as well as killing all of the tourists who were camping at the summit. Apparently things have improved since then and there are now volcano experts monitoring the situation so we shouldn’t expect an eruption overnight.
We met our hiking fellows, the wonderful Alexei, Sergei and Dimitri from Moscow (who had all left their ladies at home), and the amazing Heather and sardonic Billy from San Francisco (more about them later). And of course, our whole troup of rangers, guides, cooks and porters who were going to accompany us to the top. Steph and I felt a bit low key as we only had a cook and one porter (as while we carried all our own gear, I didn’t want to carry the extra 8kg of water we needed), whereas our Russian colleagues were fully prepped with a support crew of five.
The climb was actually pretty easy (relative to my recent Ironman training). We ascended 1600 metres over 8km with some steep, rocky and muddy sections, with the DRC rain storms pelting down on us for the last two hours. Dear hubby had a rough time of it, as he was hit by a bout of altitude sickness relatively early on, with fluid on the lungs, a fever and a pounding headache. He soldiered on like a good stubborn french man, and the fantastic Heather (conveniently an ER doctor) dosed him with some diomax, and we all eventually made it to the top, albeit with frozen fingers. The view at this point was non existent, and we were surrounded by pea soup fog, so we were all crossing those frozen fingers hoping that the fog would clear so we could see the lava lake.
Our glamorous accommodations for the evening were small huts with comfy plastic mattresses, and an extremely luxurious outdoor loo with an epic vista over lake kiva (or at least out into the fog…. yes that is the roof of the loo you can see down the slope in the mist).
Unfortunately reaching said loo required scrambling down a step rock face holding onto a rope, so most of us figured out how to discreetly pee between the huts. The wonderful Joshua (our deeply christian and delightful chef) warmed us up with homemade biscuits and coffee, and then whipped up a three course meal of soup, chicken and veg, and cake around the fire. He even decided to feed Heather as he felt sad that she had only bought some sandwiches with her. The fog finally cleared by the time we finished dinner, so we all sat by the crater edge checking out the view until we were too cold to stand it anymore. We were collectively proud of the sardonic Billy for making it out of his hut and sleeping bag to check out the lake….. he was so cold at one point, he told Heather that he would be happy checking out the pictures on wikipedia and youtube when he got home (he wins my prize for the driest sense of humour I have ever found in an American).
After a huge breakfast at 6am the next day, we ambled back down. I won the award for falling on my butt the most, in spite of having two hiking poles rather than the single wooden sticks which everyone else had. It was sunny the whole way, and the porters were all clearly keen for a drink as we only stopped twice for ten minutes each. It was definitely worth the trip, though next time I would take even more wet weather and cold weather gear!!!!
Note I found out a few days later from a guy at the British embassy in Kinshasa that they don’t advise anyone to climb the volcano – not because of the danger from the volcano, but the likelihood of being kidnapped on the road between Goma and Kibati. We had no problems, as we had booked direct with visitvirunga.org and were accompanied on all road trips with armed (but friendly) rangers. If you are interested in checking out Virunga, it is worth checking out the film Virunga on netflix