Before we began our climb, we stopped in the park office in Mbale to chat with Sam, an information officer, who told us a little bit about the mountain we were about to climb.

Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano, is the lowest of East Africa's four major volcanoes. Its surface area is the one of largest of any extinct volcano in the world, indicating that it was once much taller than its current height, perhaps even taller than Kilimanjaro. A massive 40-square-kilometer caldera supports a large Afro-alpine moorland, with some unique endemic plants and more giant senecios (also called groundsels) than are found anywhere else in East Africa. On the Kenyan side, there are salt caves that are frequented by elephants.

Uganda's Mount Elgon National Park was established in 1992 with the hope of attracting enough tourists to help support the local economy and encourage the preservation of the ecosystem. Farming and poaching are the biggest threats to the mountain, Sam told us, pointing to exhibits and photos in the office that tell the story of an exploding population that each year moves farther up the mountain in search of arable land. New plots of maize and casaba appear. More acres of forest are lost. The black-and-white colobus monkeys retreat a little further up the mountain; fewer duikers, dik-diks, and buffalo are seen.

Sam also told us that the Porters and Guides Association was working hard to develop the mountain as a tourist resource. Guides spend one to two years as porters, then train for three months before becoming guides. The Porters and Guides Association contributes equipment and labor for trail work; the park contributes money. Hiring a guide costs $8 a day; porters earn $7 a day. He suggested we hire a guide for the group and a porter for each of us.

I've got to admit a certain reluctance to pay someone else to carry my pack up a mountain. As a red-blooded American long-distance backpacker, how would I ever explain that in our slide shows? But now I was being told that the conservation of an entire mountain depended on whether I, and others like me, were willing to fork over a few bucks. With an environmentally sound reason to not have to haul my own pack up a 13,000-foot volcano in the middle of Africa, I cheerfully agreed.

Move on to Starting to Climb

Return to Top