How to get there:
There is a pretty good road that provides access to this peak. This road climbs
the terrain directly south of the big river Omo. One can reach this area from
the town Ameya driving directly south and cross the river Omo very near a dam
that was under construction (2025).
Alternatively, one may start from the town of Sawla and travel north towards the same river.
In both cases, identify the road that may take you all the way to the trailhead
located at N06.53823, E036.69640, elevation near 2470m.
Route description:
A track is posted on Peakbagger. One should follow my descent track.
This route stays on nice trails all the way. First, follow trails to
the main crest directly. Here,
you see the ridge and the peak
from a new perspective.
Next, follow the trail as
it descends to a key col.
The trail continues, first bypassing a hump on the ridge on hikers right hand side.
Finally, after another brief descent, the trail will take you up the final slopes
to the summit area.
Note that there is a competing summit
a bit farther along, it is a
short extra trip to also visit this hump.
Comments:
Stayed at Elephant Paw Lodge,
quite new, a few things still fixed.
This is a large and pretty fancy resort
once all in good order.
I was the ONLY guest.
Elephants were actually
walking around near the resort.
We arrived at what looked (to me) as a reasonable trailhead around 1120.
Asking the locals for possible local guides quickly produced more than one and
>fter a brief discussion, it was decided to hire the two. They claimed they knew the mountain
and the route since they lived right here, near the base of the mountain.
My driver, Ayu, was not feeling well and we agreed that he should stay with the car.
After a bit of organizing, we started uphill at 1145. My guides certainly seemed to know
the local trails as we shifted across a couple of times, then contouring towards the mountain.
My plan had been to first hike up to the main crest, then follow this to the summit.
However, the route they took went more
directly towards the summit,
thus it looked like it
might be shorter.
Soon, we started descending, a pretty deep valley separated us from the peak. We lost more
than 100 vertical meter before finally again going uphill. A bunch of kids had been following
us down into this valley, also in the beginning of the ascent. One slightly older kid had
followed us from the very beginning. We ascended steeply, the leaves and the sand combined
to make it very slippery. Indeed, my 2 guides slipped and decided to carry their flip-flop
shoes and proceed barefoot as this provided better grip. My trailrunners with studs worked
just fine on this surface, I clearly had better footing than the other 3.
A bit higher, this trail entered a bamboo forest.
In fact, it looked like the main reason
for this trail was accessing the bamboo.
A man with an axe was working here. My guides talked
to this man, then informed me that the rest of the wy would be extremely difficult. Hmmm?, we
continued, but the team now strenghtened by the axe man. As it turned out, the trail completely
vanished, confirming my theory of this being a bamboo forest access trail rather than a
summit trail. The axe man took the lead and his axe was useful in trying to cut the
worst obstacles.
However, the bush quickly turned into a 5-star bushwack, no easy way uphill could be found.
My guides admitted that they had never been here before and that the axe man only knew the
terrain up to the bamboo forest where he had been working. I pointed to the skyline
ridge on our right and mentioned that that was where I had planned to go. However, there
was no way of getting across there now, thus our only option was to carry on uphill.
We continued the struggle and after a pretty epic bush-wack,
we finally emerged onto
the north-west shoulder. From here,
it was somewhat easier to complete the final part
of the ascent and then arrive at the summit.
The ascent had taken us 3:45, the 2 last hours a steepish bushwack.
After a brief rest, I told my friends that I needed to also visit the next hump to the east
as it looked very similar in elevation.
Thus, we soon headed across there. My GPS indeed showed
the same elevation. We turned back and went back to the first summit, to take some more photos
and a few more minutes of rest.
When it was time to descend, my native friends all told me that they had never been here
before, where to go?
I immediately replied that we should descend down to the main crest.
Just as expected, we quickly discovered a big trail that could be followed down.
This trail continued nicely on the left side (when descending) of the main crest, there were
several huts a bit below us on the left.
Before long we arrived at a key col, nice with a short rest.
My friends now knew where they were, agreeing that this route was indeed much better to use.
After ascending the ridge from this col, we crossed over, the completed a final descent
to arrive back at the car 2:15 after leaving the summit.
It was getting late, the time was already 18:15, we decided to find lodging in the town Laha.
