Remembrance of an old account on Steemit – Cameroon Photo Blog - #07 Mount Cameroon - Struggeling through the woods of Buea

holgerwerner (59)in #travel • 7 years ago (edited)

Since my old account @holgermarkgraf is lost and the photographs with it, I do some repostings of my posts of last year.

So please enjoy my new/old post:

Hi Steemit,

today I tell you of my most fascinating hiking trip in Cameroon, if not my most exciting trip at all.
In September 2014 I had the chance of climbing Mount Cameroon, the second mountain in hight after Mount Kilimanjaro.

When Alim and I arrived in Buea, the city on the foot of the mountain, there where only clouds and rain. No mountain in sight. In fact the city, which lies on different layers of a mountain slope, already 1000m above sea is always covered in clouds. Therefore I called it always "Cloud City".

We tried to depart early in the morning, to reach intermediate hut in the early afternoon, which is the 2nd hut out of 4, but we got delayed because of some stuff we had forgotten in the hotel. The path led through some backyards and some fields close to the outer quarters of the city.
Alim, who is very slim, smoker and not used to mountain climbing got already tired and always needed a rest. So it was clear from the beginning, that he would slow us down. But that was ok, we had enough time and the landscape invited us to use the breaks to get in touch with the incredible nature and to take some pictures.

There were lots of plants, unknown to me, Farns curling in spirals and growing like trees. The forest was deep, calm, foggy, wet and apart from the rocky path, which went up up up, there was no way into that deep-rooted forest.

When we arrived at hut one it was raining again. But it was a solid building, where some backpackers already had checked in. We where supposed to move on up to intermediate hut. But we took a rest, and found two lovely ranger ladies at the fire in the kitchen. For me the smoke was too pungent to stay inside.

After we had finished our lunch of fruits, avocado and some bread, we moved on up, up, up the mountain. After hut one it hot already very steep, but we didn't know about the steep slope we had to climb up next morning. Fortunately the rain stopped, the clouds broke up and I got a first view of the monstrous mountain we where crawling on. It was so huge and large, you even couldn't tell if the top I got a glimpse of was the summit or not. In fact, which I figured out later, it is never the summit you can see from down-hill side, except the distance. You always climb layer by layer and the next time you get above another escarpment, you get another view of the mountain, another impression, but still you don't see the summit.

Then suddenly, shortly after we passed the forest line, the clouds broke up completely for about ten minutes and I got an impression of the hugeness of this massive. There where so much green gras, you couldn't see it from down there, because everything was grey and covered in clouds.
Shortly afterwards, after a couple of breaks we had to take for Alim, we arrived at intermediate hut.
There was a priest living there, who was praying and chanting all night, and lots of beautiful birds who where feeded by him with spaghetti with tomato sauce or whatever he had for left over.

In the evening, the clouds broke up again and we had a beautiful sight down-hill, on the city of Buea and the ocean line. Exhausted and stuffed up with spaghetti, we went to bed on a hard plate of wood, only with our sleeping bags. But we where grateful for this first stage on the mountain.