Mount Kenya gave an entire country its name, yet the peak itself is a ruin. It is the eroded core of a volcano that once stood perhaps 6,500 metres high before it fell extinct around 2.6 million years ago; what survives is the hard rock that plugged the vent, weathered into jagged spires. These are the second-highest summits in Africa after Kilimanjaro — Batian, the top, reaches 5,199 metres and, with its twin Nelion, can be climbed only on roped rock routes, while walkers aim for Point Lenana at 4,985 metres. Strangest of all, the summits sit almost exactly on the Equator and still carry glaciers, a dozen shrinking ice fields that scientists expect to vanish by around 2030 — which would make Mount Kenya one of the first African mountains to lose its ice for good. UNESCO listed the peak and its forests as a World Heritage Site in 1997.
The climb passes through a stack of worlds. Rainforest gives way to a belt of bamboo, then to open moorland where the mountain's strangest plants take over: giant groundsels that grow taller than a person and giant lobelias standing like furred columns, an Afro-alpine flora found only on East Africa's highest peaks. The eastern Chogoria route, the quietest and most scenic, threads the Gorges Valley past Lake Michaelson, a tarn cupped beneath 200-metre walls; the busier Sirimon and Naro Moru trails climb the western side to high camps below the peaks. Most trekkers leave camp in the dark to reach Point Lenana for first light, when the sun comes up over a sea of cloud and the glaciers glow beneath the twin summits.