Longonot

The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.
Psalm 89:11

It rises 2,500 feet above the floor of the Rift Valley in front of our little home. Every day, we watch the morning sun shine on the flanks of Mt Longonot, and every evening the sun sets behind it in the west. It’s been beckoning me since we arrived at Kijabe, so going to the top of Longonot was just a matter of time.

I’ve been up twice now, once with Garry, a friend at Kijabe, and once with Dustin and Kelly, visitors from the Northwest. Each time we left early in the morning and headed to the Park gate.

Longonot is really a steep hike, not a climb. We scrambled up a dusty trail through thorn trees to a plateau on the north side, then followed a slippery pumice-laced track to the crater rim. The trail goes straight up one of the hundreds of ridges that surround the mountain. In fact, the name Longonot comes from the Masai word Oloolong’ot, meaning “mountain of steep ridges”.

Along the way, we kept careful watch as small groups of cape buffalo crossed the path above or below us. Zebra, waterbuck, and giraffe made their way down the slopes to cooler areas as the sun rose higher in the sky.

Finally reaching the rim, we looked down into the caldera and across to the other side, perhaps ¾ mile away. It’s a striking scene. The immense floor of the crater is overgrown with thorn trees and other shrubs, but there isn’t much standing water, so we saw no wildlife.

Steam vents are visible from numerous places around the rim, evidence of the hot magma not far beneath the surface. The steam is a reminder that Longonot erupted only 150 years ago, and is now dormant, waiting for the next eruption.

We then followed the rim to the west, up steep pumice ridges to the summit at 9,110 feet above sea level. Along the way to the summit, Lake Naivasha shines to the north, the Aberderes Mountains rise in the northeast, and we could spot the rooftops of Kijabe across the valley to the southeast.

I love to sit on the top of a mountain or ridge and gaze across the valleys below, admiring God’s creative work. We don’t often get to see His handiwork from a perspective like this.

After a brief rest at the top, we continued on around the rim, looking back at the summit, spotting Masai cattle herds far down the slopes to the south, and gazing off to the distant reaches of the Rift Valley.

Reaching the trail again, we stopped to sit on the rim and have lunch. Then we made our way down the slopes, wandering off trail at one point to visit a small herd of zebras and to investigate an old skeleton.

It’s a beautiful mountain. And it’s fun to have it so close by.

- Doug