First day of trekking – Lake Ellis

This morning our Mount Kenya team lead by Garrett Madison trekked the 8.38km from the Meru Bandas trailhead on the Chogoria route up to their camp at Lake Ellis (3471m/11,388ft).  After breakfast, they packed up camp and hit trail around 8:00 AM local time enjoying spectacular views of the rolling hills along the way and catching a glimpse of the snow-capped peaks of Batian (5199m) and Nelion (5188m) high above.  They made it up to Lake Ellis just time for lunch just before 1:00 PM.  They spent the afternoon exploring around the lake with a hike up to nearby Mugi Hill to enjoy the sunset.

Tomorrow, they will continue the trek and camp near Lake Michaelson at the head of the Gorges Valley.  And the following day they should reach the first of the first high points of Mount Kenya:  Point Lenana (4985m).  Stay tuned!

[The team is without connectivity, so we will be sharing some stock photos of the general locations]

In addition to these expedition dispatches, you can also follow our teams as they make their attempts on the world’s most formidable mountains on:

– Amazon Alexa devices with the Madison Mountaineering Flash Briefing skill:

• Enable the skill and add to your flash briefing to hear Garrett Madison’s daily audio expedition updates on select expeditions

– Instagram:

• @MadisonMtng
• @GarrettMadison1

– our Garmin inReach Mini powered real-time tracking map:

• https://madisonmountaineering.com/maps/kenya-2021-01