In Just over 4 days of trekking, we had made it to the tallest point of all Africa, which is an entire continent if anyone needs a reminder. I hadn’t even seen anything of the Africa before I had arrived in Ethiopia 5 days earlier, and just like that I was looking as far as the eye could see, over all of it. It was the most demanding and sobering thing I had put myself through in a long time, and the result was an enlightening experience that words or images can’t convey.
The extreme temperatures at the top of the mountain made our visit short, and after just 30 minutes of sitting atop our perch, we began our descent back to reality. This is when I realized how awful walking down all the hills we just hiked up was going to be, and it was horrible. You’re dead tired, and at this point, are only looking forward to making it back to camp for some rest. The sun had come out, so it was kind of nice to see what we had walked up earlier that morning, but it also turned the mountains surface into an oven, leaving us scrambling through melted snow and dark frozen clops of earth for the next few hours.

We make it back to camp at 10:30 in the morning, and passed out. We woke up after a short nap and began our decent that took us down 75 percent of what we had climbed up the previous four days. We followed a riverbed the whole way until the start of the jungle (where we ended up after our first day of hiking).The next morning we made our final descent, and arrived at the entrance gate’s around 12pm.

In 5 days we had hiked over 75km, climbed a range of over 19,000 feet in elevation, trekked through rain, snow, hail, winds and blistering sun. Without any electricity, running water, or any of the other modern comforts we’re regularly accustomed too, we had the opportunity to experience nature in a truly raw form, and it was incredible.
Caca Emara Coma Simba - “Brothers Strong Like Lions”

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