Mulanje

If my camera still existed, you would be looking at a photograph of a crayon-drawn AIDS awareness poster, a mountain valley painted with wildflowers, a brilliant blue butterfly wing, and a chalet tucked in the folds of Mount Mulanje's rolling plateau. Sadly, the camera and a number of other items were casualties* of an attempt to summit the third highest mountain in Africa during Easter break, so you will just have to imagine.

Mount Mulanje is in Malawi's southern region, near the city of Blantyre. After leading a teaching workshop last weekend, I met five friends in Blantyre and we embarked on a three day adventure on the mountain, along with our silent but trusty guide, Jonathan. If other people do this, I recommend they also hire porters. We did not. Also, I recommend they wait until someone introduces the concept of "switchbacks" here. Anyway, we arrived finally, sore and happy, above the clouds in a spectacular mountain pass overshadowed by the craggy grey rockface of Chambe peak, at a chalet where we passed our first night on the mountain.

The second day began pleasantly enough, with a three-hour hike around the plateau. We climbed through valleys of shaggy grass and brambles and wildflowers, and we danced over rocky plains. We were happy, we sang, we laughed, we felt like the Von Traps. Around 11, we arrived at a camping hut, dropped off our packs, and began the three-hour trek up to the mountain's summit, Sepitwa. The climb is what guidebooks would probably call a "rocky scramble." I would call it a "great way to break your ankle or fall quickly to your death." The trail, again, was straight uphill, but this time we had to search for footholds in smooth mossy rockface, and fling ourselves from boulder to boulder, clinging to whatever vines or clumps of grass might sustain our weight. The climbing was treacherous but exciting until the rain started, at which point it became scary. Forty minutes from the summit, Jonathan, in an exemplary display of Malawian understatement, gently suggested we turn around, considering the wet rocks, and the race with coming darkness. But the group pressed on. In an unusually lucid moment of clarity, as I slid three feet down a steep slab of rock above a craggy ledge and then watched my camera take its final great leap, I decided that continuing up the mountain would be a poor decision, and stayed behind to huddle in the cold rain below a rock with Elisabeth. It became colder and wetter. We were soaked through in the most literal sense. Our teeth chattered and hands began to lose feeling. I started thinking about John Krakauer disaster books, and all of the warnings we'd received about the Brazilian hiker who died last year of hypothermia on the mountain. Sepitwa is considered by Malawians to be a place of spirits; they do not generally climb to the summit. We started counting minutes, and discussing unfinished life business. Time slowed. It seemed silly, and inconvenient, to be dying on this mountain of all places.

The summiting group finally returned triumphant and we began the long descent down the mountain. But the mountain had turned into a series of waterfalls and the path was a stream, and our only means of fording it was by crabwalking slowly and carefully, downward, for three hours, in dusking light. We slid down on the seats of our pants, until I had no seat of my pants, or skin underneath that. Our hands were shredded by the rocks, ankles and knees pounded, and wetness prevailed. Darkness came finally, and we continued down slowly to the valley. The clouds cleared, and we saw the Big Dipper rising, Orion, the Southern Cross, a dotted sky. The hut appeared, and there was chocolate and brandy, a snapping fire, dinner… and Aleve.

On day three, we descended, ate pizza, and showered.

*Our final casualty tally included: three pairs of trousers, two pairs of shoes (one pair burned, one gone missing), two pairs of underwear (one burned, one shredded), two cameras (one engulfed in the mountain, one waterlogged by rain), and some socks.