Surviving the Mountain of Death

As I crouched down to business over the pit latrine, surrounded by a curious family of baboons a few feet away, I knew trekking in Gashaka Gumti was going to be an experience. Fortunately, given my somewhat exposed situation, I didn’t need to heed that one vital piece of advice when in the presence of primates: don’t ever smile (the sign of aggression). One baboon jumped down several branches until he was just a few feet away. He sat, staring at me, as I attempted to aim and fire. The others looked on with the casual indifference of animals without language. The philosophical question arose: should one feel self-conscious when defecating in front of a bunch of monkeys?

Gashaka Gumti National Park is the largest and most remote park in Nigeria, West Africa. At over 6,000 square kilometres, it is a feast of wildlife: civets, lions, hogs, buffalo, black-and-white colobus monkeys, as well as some 500 species of birds, including a startlingly blue kingfisher. Most significantly, the park has a population of around 2,000 endangered chimpanzees. University College London has a primate project at an abandoned village called Kwano deep inside the forest which it runs jointly with the Nigerian Conservation Foundation.

Together with eight adventurers, I had decided to climb Gangirwal (a.k.a Chappal Wadi, a.k.a the Mountain of Death), Nigeria’s tallest mountain. It lies deep inside the park, on the border with Cameroon and although not a huge mountain at only 2,400 metres, its name and remoteness held a certain allure. I had to climb it. Professor Volker Sommer, leader of the primate project, had helped with the arrangements, organising porters from nearby Gashaka village, as well as two park rangers and a tracker to act as guides. The walking-camping segment of our trip was to last six and a half days.

We set off at 5.30 am from Abuja. The trip to Serti, the nearest town to the park, took nearly 12 hours. Serti is a hot, dry place at this time of the year, so no generator means no air conditioning and sleep for foreigners. The following day, two pick-ups arrived to take us into the park (the entrance is just beyond the town). After an hour, we stopped by the Mayo Kam and trekked for two hours alongside the water. Beneath the surface, huge fish swam steadily against the current. Angling would be like shooting into a barrel here. Finally, we reached a large pool where hippos often bathe. There were no animals around, but the air buzzed with brightly coloured dragonflies. Then, we drove up on into the forest, up and down steep undulations of track, crossing small dried-up rivers along wooden planks. The vegetation grew closer the further in we drove. We forded two rivers which must be impassable when the rains arrive, eventually reaching the small village of Gashaka.

Finally, three hours’ drive from the entrance to the park, we arrived at Kwano, an abandoned village which is now the base station for the Gashaka Primate Project. Professor Sommer welcomed us with soup, rice and beans. That evening, after bathing in the nearby stream, we set up our tents next to the chalets of the station, and quickly fell asleep.

Early the next day, we set off on what turned out to be an over ten-hour trek, ending up at the Gamgam river. Mamouda, our tracker and guide, led the way. Just before reaching the river, Mamouda sighted some poachers upriver. The rangers and some of the porters gave chase, emerging a little later with a confiscated net (the poachers had escaped).

The following day was much easier – we walked just over five hours to camp by another river – I think it was called the Bam. This river was faster flowing, with a three-metre waterfall nearby. Just before the waterfall, we found a trough of rock into which the river spewed at speed, making the perfect natural Jacuzzi. Life au naturel was on the whole good.

The following day was the second toughest day of the whole trip. We spent hour upon hour walking upwards, alongside the river. What Professor Death had described as a ‘few rocks to climb over’ turned out to be huge boulders that Atlas himself would not powder his fingers to carry. Still, there were wonderful compensations for our efforts. Every so often, we would pass through clouds of small butterflies. At times, we would hear the half-fox half-dog bark of baboons as we encroached into their territory. We would also walk past the nests of chimpanzees. Fortunately, we didn’t see any green mambas, puff adders or Gabon vipers – three of the world’s most venomous snakes that live in the forest.

At times, walking by the river was impossible, so we would have to climb up steep banks at the side, joining the river yet higher up. Often, climbing these banks involved holding onto tree roots and pulling oneself up a 45%+ slope to higher ground – exhausting work even in the shade of the midday sun. Tempers were frayed by the time we arrived at camp at dusk.

We woke at 5.30 am the following day, excited and a little anxious that this day was the day of the ascent of Gangirwal. It was a seemingly endless trek upwards and upwards, with the odd vista of the mountain exposing itself between the leaves. According to the GPS unit, we were only 1 kilometre from the summit. The problem was, directly ahead of us was a vertical cliff of rock so we had to skirt around to the right. This detour involved several sections with no solid footholds, which could only be traversed by holding onto branches and roots. One mistake would involve falling many meters to almost certain broken bones.

It took us over nine hours to break through out of the tree line. We sat and rested before completing the walk to the top. The sunset was majestic – a slow burning of the day’s azure into the purple tain of the night. That night, the sky sprinkled itself with thousands of stars, like a desert night and at nearly 8000 feet up, we slept higher than anyone else in the country.

Gashaka Gumti National Park really is a national treasure for this country. Whether you want to exhaust yourself climbing the highest mountain in Nigeria as we did, or simply want to visit the base station of the Primate Project and go on an easy monkey/primate safari, you will experience a serene and tranquil side to Nigeria many will never even know about.

For more Nigerian travel, see Jeremy's blog, naijablog.blogspot.com