On arrival you’ll be met and transferred to your hotel for 1 night including lunch and dinner.

Breakfast at hotel or lodge. You will be picked at 06.30 for the 4 hour transfer to the Sirimon Gate where your guide will register with the Kenya Wildlife Service and pay the park fees. The cook and porters will organize the distribution of the packs and provisions and then set off for the first camp.

This is a four hour trek up a fairly steep vehicle track through the forest where you will see evidence of elephant and buffalo and possible sightings of bushbuck and baboons. If you are setting off around 11am, you will have a picnic lunch on the way, weather permitting. If your departure is delayed, you may have an early picnic lunch at the gate. This walk takes you up to 3,300m to Old Moses camp.

After breakfast, you leave at around 7.30am. An early start is advisable for the best views, as the weather can close in during the afternoon. The walk crosses two ridges and several streams and in 3 io 4 hours, you reach the beautiful valley of Liki North dominated by the peaks of Sendeyo and Terere. This walk takes you from the moorland to the Afro alpine zone with its giant groundsel and lobelia, evoking the imagination the Jurassic age. There is a small mountain hut for preparing dinner and you camp overnight.

After an early breakfast, you climb out of the Liki North Valley, crest and ridge and descend into Mackinder’s valley, dropping down to pick up the trail on the valley floor. You then climb up the other side of the valley to reach Shipton’s Camp at 4,236m. This 6km walk can take about 5 hours. Shipton’s Camp has a large bunkhouse and campsite. It is one of the main bases for summit attempts, mainly by trekkers but also by mountaineers.

This is a rest and acclimatization day at Shipton’s Camp to prepare for the ascent of Point Lenana. It is well worth walking up to the Hausberg Col from where you get spectacular views of the peaks including Point Peter and Point Dutton. This is a good dry run as you reach 4,591m, only 394m lower than Point Lenana. You then have an early dinner and get some sleep before the next day’s very early start.

You leave Shipton’s Camp between 2.30 and 3am for your early morning ascent of Point Lenana at 4,985m. This 4 km trek takes 3 to 4 hours due to poor light and high altitude. The aim is to reach the summit by sunrise. Then it’s a steep descent down a scree slope towards the spectacular Gorges Valley. Dotted with giant groundsel, this is the most extraordinary landscape. Breakfast is near Hall Tarns, a distance of about 4.5 kms, then continue to the Meru Mount Kenya Lodge, a simple mountain lodge near the Chogoria Gate. This is a long day as the walk covers 14 km and takes about 6 to 7 hours, but the rewards are a hot shower and dinner in front of a log fire.

After a leisurely breakfast, you walk about 10 kms down through the forest to meet a 4 wheel drive vehicle to take you down the rest of the track and to Chogoria town. From here you take an onward road transfer of about 4 hours to Nairobi.

On arrival you will be met and transferred to your hotel in Nairobi on a bed and breakfast basis

Breakfast at hotel or lodge. You will be picked at 6.00am for the transfer to Chogoria via Meru, which takes about 4.5 hours. Then you continue to the Chogoria Park gate at 2,950m and the Chogoria Bandas just near the park gate where you will be staying overnight. This transfer takes about 1.5 hours and covers 32km, including 22km up a steep track through the forest. On arrival, you have a late lunch followed by a gentle stroll in the surrounding park land. You have your own room with attached bathroom, and hot showers are available in the early evenings. Supper is served in front of a log fire in your sitting room.

After breakfast, you set off along the Chogoria route towards the conical Mugi Hill. Then you turn off the main route and walk to Lake Ellis at 3,405m, where you’ll be camping overnight. This walk takes 4 hours and covers 10km. One option is to take a detour to the Nithi waterfalls for a picnic lunch, or alternatively have lunch by the lakeside.

You walk to Lake Michaelson at 3,900m, and camp overnight. This walk is 8km and takes about 6 hours as you are now climbing steadily, although the last section of the walk is a steep descent down to the lake.

You walk to Shipton’s Camp where you’ll be camping overnight. This is a lovely 3km route via the Simba Col at 4,620m. If the weather is good, you can aim for a daytime ascent of Point Lenana at 4,985m, a 2 to 3 hour detour from below the Simba Col. If you didn’t make a daytime ascent, dinner and bedtime will be early, in preparation for your night ascent of Point Lenana.

If you didn’t walk via Point Lenana on the previous day, you make a very early start at 2.30am, with the aim of reaching the summit by sunrise. This walk covers 4km and takes 3 to 4 hours. You descend to Shipton’s Camp for breakfast and then continue down to Old Moses Camp. This walk is 14 km and takes a further 5 to 6 hours, depending on your pace. You arrive at Old Moses Camp by mid-afternoon.

If you made the ascent of Point Lenana on the previous day, you walk down to Old Moses Camp after breakfast, arriving around lunchtime. After a snack lunch, you transfer from Old Moses Camp back to Nanyuki via the Sirimon Gate, which takes just over an hour. You stay overnight at Royal cottages on full board.

Breakfast at camp. Later in the morning, transfer to Nairobi.

You leave Nairobi at 8.00am and drive through the Central Highlands to arrive in Nanyuki by 11.00am. We allow sufficient time to have lunch and then get to Sirimon Park Gate by a comfortable 4 wheel drive vehicle. Check in and start hiking through a beautiful rain forest to Old Moses Camp at 3,300m.

Early breakfast at 7.00am. You hike through the Liki Valley via Mackinder's Valley to Shipton's Camp at 4,200m. Have lunch served en route. At Shipton's camp, you enjoy a splendid wiew of the north faces of Nelion and Batian peaks. Dinner and overnight at the camp.

After breakfast you start the peak circuit to help acclimatization, ascending to a steep ridge through Kami Hut, Hausberg Tarn and Two Tarns Lake. It will take about 4 hours hike through some of the most spectacular sceneries . Return to Shipton's Camp. Dinner and overnight at the camp.

You wake up at night at 2.30am for hot tea and biscuits. Ascend to Point Lenana at 4,985m for about 3 hours to arrive for sunrise. From here you can view Mt. Kilimanjaro's highest peaks, Kibo and Mawenzi visible to the south, Indian Ocean to the east and Mt. Elgon to the west. You start your descent back to Shipton's Camp for a full breakfast. Leave at 10.00am for Old Moses. Dinner and overnight at the camp.

After breakfast you leave camp to reach the park gate via the Sirimon route. Drive to Nanyuki for lunch and then to Nairobi arriving in the late afternoon to celebrate your success.

The traverse of Mt. Kenya combines an ascent on either the Sirimon or the Naro Moru route on the western side to Point Lenana and a descent through the Chogoria route on the eastern side of the mountain. In total, it takes five days and reaches a high point of 4,985 metres over a trek distance of about 50 kilometres. It is not a technical climb to Point Lenana, but there is some high altitude walking and scrambling just below the summit which is sometimes on snow and ice.

The Sirimon route is considered to be a more gentle approach with its slightly longer path gaining altitude from the northwest of the mountain more slowly than the Naro Moru route. However a huge forest fire recently means that the first day is no longer through a beautiful forest, but on an open track through a recovering landscape to Old Moses Camp. The path then follows the line of the long classic glacial MacKinder Valley up to the Shiptons high camp under the summit spires of Batian and Nelion. The summit itself is reached on scree and rocky paths (leaving in the dark at about 2am), which eventually become snow covered as they edge alongside the Lewis Glacier. The final few metres requires a bit of a scramble to reach the shapely summit from where dawn shows the plains of Kenya far below and the amazing silhouette of the two main peaks of the mountain just close by.

The ascent by the Naro Moru route starts from the west side of the mountain near the market town of Naro Moru. There is a track that can be driven upon from the local hotel. We use (Blue Line) up to the park gate which passes through farmland and small villages on the lower slopes of the mountain. From the park gate, we continue on foot up to the Met Station which is just at the top of the dense bamboo forest and offers a much better chance of seeing some wildlife than the Sirimon route. The campsite here has huts and is a perfect place for even a short overnight weekend trip to Mount Kenya if you don't intend to summit. From Met Station, the path continues up the notorious Vertical Bog, which is not vertical at all but can be quite boggy, particularly in the afternoon! It opens out onto open alpine heath with beautiful views of the summits from Picnic Rocks on the edge of an escarpment that drops down into Teleki valley and a few hours walk up to Mackinders Camp. The final ascent to Point Lenana requires a 1am start and a short trek to reach the start of the scree slope that leads to the Austrian Hut. From here the ascent has an exposed path on the summit ridge but they’ve recently put in fixed lines (making Mount Kenya the highest current via ferrata route in the world) to give people that confidence to reach the summit without any issues.

The descent by the Chogoria route, generally considered to have the most spectacular landscape and geological features of cliffs cirques and lakes, is long but worth it (especially on the descent) for far reaching views of high lakes and glacial tarns, deep gorges and unusual rock formations. One particular enormous amphitheatre of cliffs called The Temple holds the beautiful Lake Michaelson. Camp is further down near Nithi Falls and past Lake Ellis from where you can climb to local high points to see back to the peaks and strange volcanic formations such as the "giant's billiard table". The next day is a glorious descent to the forest and it's possible to get picked up at a small road head for the last few kilometres to the Meru Bandas at Chogoria gate (this pick up needs to be organised in advance). From there, the 4x4 takes you down the muddy track to the town of Chogoria and on to Nairobi or to your onward safaris to Meru national park or Samburu.