The Hardest Hike of My Life – Tanzania 3.0

There’s a mountain that rises sharply out of the ground in far Western Tanzania. To the east lies hundreds of kilometers of miombo forest and to the west lies Lake Tanganyika, Africa’s longest and deepest lake, and one of the largest freshwater lakes in the entire world. There is no other montane habitat for miles and miles. Nkungwe Mountain, the highest peak in this isolated mountain range, is host to several endemic bird subspecies. At the base of the mountain, in the miombo woodlands and lowland forests is the largest remaining population of Chimpanzee in the world. To see the chimps is one thing, but to get up in elevation to see the endemic birds is another. I thought we had already done “remote Tanzania” but here we were going even more remote.

In 2005, David C Moyer and a team of researchers worked with the Mahale Mountains Ecosystem Management Program (MEMP) and a full mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile, and plant survey went underway. This study is how Ross learned about the various endemics. I don’t think any birder has been there since 2005 but we decided to go. If you have the time and/or interest, here’s a link to the 69-page report on the biodiversity of Mahale Mountains National Park. Clearly this ecosystem is quite unique.

Getting to these remote areas of the world is an adventure in and of itself. We were already in far Western Tanzania exploring away so why not climb to the apex of the most recognizable mountain in the area? Just to get to the starting point, the park headquarters, we needed to drive for ~10 hours with our drive culminating on what was quite possibly one of the worst roads we have ever been on in our entire time in Africa! (Although we later learned of a better road that would have saved us a lot of anxiety and taken significantly less time. Oops..) Once we arrived in the village we were told we needed to leave our truck behind and take a boat because the road to the park headquarters was no longer passable. Except, the boat was exuberantly expensive so we opted to take a motorbike instead which was 15x cheaper but definitely way more uncomfortable. Eventually we did arrive at the park headquarters and pay the exuberant prices for entrance, activity, and camping that we’ve come to loathe regarding Tanzanian National Parks. (It came out to be ~$200 per person per day, and would have been higher had we not done a bit of bargaining.) We then started on what must be one of the hardest hikes we’ve ever done. Our ranger was late, so even though we arrived at the headquarters before 0800, we sat around waiting for the next four hours and didn’t get to leave until 1200. As a result the hardest and steepest section of the hike was done after dark.

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It was 16 kilometers (10 miles) of repeatedly going up and down. In the end we climbed over 1,800m (6,000ft) in elevation!! Let me tell you, I am in very good hiking shape by now thanks to many of Tanzania’s previous mountains and I still found this hike to be a doozy. Mentally it’s a bit frustrating to climb steeply up one peak only to drop down in elevation to do it all again. To get to where we were sleeping we had to climb over four peaks! Thankfully the absolutely beautiful views from the top and along the way were worth it.

The ranger’s post sits just below the radio tower on Nkungwe Mountain and it was here that we based ourselves. Having access to a small shelter under which we could put our tent was a luxury we are not used to. At 2000m elevation it can get quite cold at night so we were thankful to have an extra layer to contain the heat! Even though our legs were quite tired from the previous day’s exertion, we woke up early and climbed up the side of the mountain to get into the only patch of forest we would be able to access. We noticed on the walk in that the topography for the area in our maps was incorrect. What we thought would a steep but accessible slope that we could access forest from, turned out to be a sheer cliff. There seemed to be cliffs on all sides save for a piece of forest intersected by the trail up to the radio tower. We didn’t have a lot of real estate to work with and hoped this small patch of forest would be enough.

Prior to our journey we had poured over the research paper by David Moyer. We made a target list of what was listed in the paper as “endemic/near endemic birds” and used this as our main focus. One by one we crossed these birds off of the list.

Without making this blog post too long and overtly scientific, just know that the endemic subspecies found here have unique morphological differences. Lately Ross has been under the impression that just because it’s not listed as a full species now, doesn’t mean it won’t be elevated to one in the future. Once scientists and researchers do the work, several of these birds are almost guaranteed to be elevated to species status. We were here to see them now in hopes they could be what birders lovingly refer to as “armchair ticks” someday in the future. For example, the Gray-headed Nigrita found here has a fully white crown and nape whereas the ones found throughout the rest of Eastern Africa have a gray head with only a white supercilium. Yellow-bellied Wattle-eyes found everywhere else have green wattles but here at Mahale they have bright blue wattles. These birds are clearly different and we are splitting them now with hopes that someday they really will be.

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Anyway, just in birding the forest patch up from the ranger’s post, we climbed 200m in elevation from start to finish. When we would reach the end we would walk back down to the start and walk back up it again. It was a steep section, but the only section that wasn’t a sheer cliff so we walked it over and over. By the end of the day I’m sure we climbed over 1,000m in elevation by repeatedly walking the small forest patch! In the end our efforts paid off and we saw every endemic subspecies save for ssp of Pink-footed Puffback and Brown-chested Alethe. Ross managed a single Yellow-bellied Wattle-eye during the day but I missed it. Somehow we found a pair sleeping in the middle of the night that I got to see or else I may have missed one of the coolest endemics in the area!! It wasn’t easy, but it all seemed to be worth it and in just one full day we felt confident enough to start on the journey back down with plans to stop in a much lower forest patch we had passed on the way up.
The following morning, on tired legs, we began the descent down the mountain. Except in order to “descend,” we needed to climb up and down, up and down, up and down, before going down, down, down.

We were a bit ahead of schedule so now we could get a chance to appreciate what the park is best known for, it’s Chimpanzees. Tanzania’s National Park Service protects the area because Chimps can be found here and have since become a major tourist attraction. But don’t worry Tanzania has found a way to make seeing them very complicated and as it turns out we were not able to see these primates during our visit. We came down and were told that in order to get to the chimps we would need to take a boat. Except the park doesn’t have a boat so we needed to pay an additional $200 (!!!) to a private researcher with a boat to be taken to the forest area with chimps. First of all, we had just paid $900 in our three days and were dumbfounded that the park couldn’t provide this basic service to high-paying customers. Second of all, what private researcher, likely here on grant money, is allowed to make money like this on the side?? It turned into a huge fiasco and we left sorely disappointed that we could not actually see the chimps! (Thankfully we had seen them previously in Uganda!) Believe me, I am extremely happy with what we accomplished, but ending on a note like this tainted the whole experience slightly sour.