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The expansion of Kenya's adventure tourism has come at the cost of local communities and its fragile mountain ecosystems, and the government does not have a plan to protect them.
Blue hour goes fast at Lake Ellis, one of the most popular of the 20 lakes and tarns on the eastern slopes of Mount Kenya.
It is the last of my three nights out here on the mountain — I had just summited Point Lenana at dawn, which is the mountain’s highest non-technical peak at 16,355 ft above sea level. Just moments before, the mountain’s peaks had been basked in the retreating sun’s apricot-colored glow, and now the scene looked silvery gray in the twilight. I was glad to have another quiet day without service.
Born of an ancient extinct stratovolcano, Mount Kenya is Africa’s second highest peak after Kilimanjaro at 17,057 feet. It features hundreds of cliffs, intricate ridges, spires, and peaks and despite being on the equator, even sees decent snowfall on its summit due to its elevation.
The site was declared a national park in 1949, and a UNESCO World Heritage site later in 1997, but even without those claims to fame, the sights when ascending the mountain allow for local bragging rights. It has attracted the attention of notable climbers from all over the world: Alex Honnold, Cedar Wright, and Hans Florine, just to name a few.
Yet its penultimate height means that the mountain sees half the foot traffic compared to Kilimanjaro, which is one of the world’s “Seven Summits”— Mount Kenya had just under 25,000 visitors pre-pandemic, in comparison to nearly 50,000 visitors at Kilimanjaro in 2017.
I’ve been in Kenya for nearly 4 years, not long enough to witness massive changes to Mount Kenya, but long enough to hear of how its glaciers retreat year by year.
As the mountain’s ecosystems weaken due to the loss of its glaciers, deforestation, and ecological damage due to increased tourism, its future looks uncertain. Divergent interests control the fate of the mountain, running the gamut from investors to conservationists. But as governmental bodies fail in their stewardship and investor interests steer conversations about the mountain away from conservation, the wildness that makes it so unique and tantalizing could easily vanish, as it has in so many other places.
The young evening deepens into a rich lapis blue. The air in late June, which is typically cool and rainy in the southern hemisphere, instantly chills me to the bone.
Our porters build a small fire, backed up by a mound of loose sticks and twigs which they toss in throughout the night. Campfires are technically illegal, according to Kenya Wildlife Service, the governmental agency responsible for environmental conservation and tourism safety across the nation’s parks and protected areas. But on most nights, fires can be found along the popular camps frequented by both foreign and local hikers and mountaineers.
It’s hard to fault people for doing so. Temperatures can drop to less than 20ºF (made all the more brutal by windchill) which makes it difficult to spend the night without one.
Since late afternoon, we had watched an assembly of white Kenyans (colloquially known as Kenyan Cowboys or “KCs”) set up camp from their gaggle of decked-out Land Rovers. The term is a nod to their former colonizer lineage. Even upon achieving independence, the Kenyan bourgeoisie grandfathered in English practices, from the educational system to a deep-seated faith in bureaucracy. Today, KCs still enjoy the status of elites in Kenya.
Out along the edge of the lake, papyrus reeds sway gently in the breeze and ducks paddle in circuitous paths on the water. But this calm doesn’t last. It’s shattered by booming music from the other side of the lake, a mere few hundred meters away.
The KCs are playing a weird mix of Justin Bieber and Kid Curious. I want to go over there and tell them to turn it down. What a KC move to swagger into a place, acting like you own it all.
Music isn’t allowed in Kenya’s national parks. It’s not only abrasive to the peace and disrespectful to other campers, but the sounds are also disruptive to the wildlife that inhabit the region’s valleys and slopes — tree hyrax, white-tailed mongoose, giant forest hogs and leopards, just to name a few.
The KCs are playing a weird mix of Justin Bieber and Kid Curious. I want to go over there and tell them to turn it down. What a KC move to swagger into a place, acting like you own it all.
Just a few hours north of Nairobi lies the town of Nanyuki, which has become a popular starting point for hikers and mountaineers. As you get closer, the views grow characteristically craggy, portending the afro-alpine landscape to come. Squeezed in beside ubiquitous dukas (shops) peddling mangos, papaya, and bananas, some sellers tout racks of ancient climbing gear and used ropes.
For centuries, Mount Kenya served as a shrine to those who lived near it. The local Gikuyu, Meru, and Embu people believe the mountain is a sacred place. According to oral stories, their god Ngai created Kirinyaga (which translates to “the mountain of brightness” in the local language) as his earthly home, where he could scrutinize his subjects and allocate blessings and punishments as he wished.
It is therefore customary for traditional Gikuyus to build their homes with doorways facing the revered mountain. Some still carry out rituals in sacred forests at the base of the mountain; holy men still make pilgrimages to the summit, sometimes to perform certain rituals, such as those that are meant to bring rain in times of drought.
Mountains are not impervious to the greater political dynamics swirling around them. The British settled here toward the beginning of the 20th century, taking advantage of the mountain’s strategic location in central Kenya. To this day, the British Army maintains a base in Nanyuki. There’s also an enduring KC community, many of whom reside in colonial-style mansions from that era. This divide is sharp: most locals, who generally farm, herd animals, or run dukas, live in basic accommodations.
The 1952 Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya was one of the bloodiest insurgencies against the British Empire: an estimated 100,000 Gikuyu were detained without trial. Many Mau Mau fighters sought protection within the dense forests and crags of the Mount Kenya region. After 8 years of fighting, they were ultimately defeated, but became an essential catalyst to the country’s gaining independence in 1963 and ongoing decolonization process.
Everyone knows that the rules on Mount Kenya are unrealistic. “People are going to have campfires, so we might as well have designated places for that,” one wildlife ranger told me. The rangers’ scant manpower — the mountain’s wildlife service is notoriously, perpetually underfunded — means that many issues, particularly non-urgent ones like noise control, go unenforced.
At Mintos Camp, where folks customarily stay the night before they climb the summit, the lack of facilities is evident. Toilet paper is strewn everywhere. It’s a bit of a Russian roulette situation, stepping around the mess of a place.
“Lake Ellis is so dirty now. But who made the bookings for all these tourists to come up here? If one is making money out of an enterprise, can you have a long-term plan?”
A healthy degree of risk acceptance is foundational to navigating the outdoors. But as Mount Kenya’s adventure tourism industry expands, accountability for environmental conservation and personal safety remains up for debate.
Guiding companies should shoulder much of the blame, 64-year-old Shikuku Willy Ooko said, since they receive the lion’s share of the income. Huge tourism companies such as Savage Wilderness can bring more than 400 people on the mountain during one trip, according to their head guide. (For instance, in September 2023, Savage had a party of 175 clients, 200 porters, 20 guides, and 9 drivers.)
“Very little money goes to the government, or porters. Education should come from those who make the biggest income from tourists,” he says. “Lake Ellis is so dirty now. But who made the bookings for all these tourists to come up here? If one is making money out of an enterprise, can you have a long-term plan?”
Foreign companies tend to be the most responsible since they charge enough fees to implement best practices. But some companies can be exceptions.
“When I started working with NOLs [the National Outdoor Leadership, an American non-profit], they put a lot of effort into [teaching] rock climbing and learning about the mountain,” said KG James Kagambi, owner of KG Mountain Expeditions, after returning from weeks of guiding on Kilimanjaro. “NOLs taught me that safety is really important. And that’s what I try to pass on.”
“When I'm guiding myself,” he said, “I tell clients that every person is important — the porters, guides, cooks — they all make your trip possible.” Among the participants of his 2-week course was Julian Wright, who founded African Ascents 5 years later — now one of East Africa’s most popular technical rock climbing companies.
“You cannot expect foreign tourists to come and collect trash. Believe me, some have come and tried.”
But to keep Mount Kenya more or less in its pristine state for years to come, there needs to be a far stronger sense of accountability by all who work there or visit. “You cannot expect foreign tourists to come and collect trash. Believe me, some have come and tried,” Shikuku said. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. As a visitor, you can’t tell [the porters and guides] what to do.”
After all, he points out, they’re the ones who will climb the mountain many, many times a year. Of course, by training porters on best practices, one can address the root cause, but that would be costly.
Savage Wilderness’s policy dictates that porters carry all trash off the mountain as part of their day rate. Lesser-trained freelancers at national park gates are prone to undercutting each other to as low as 300 Kenyan Shillings a day. “But not every porter carries out their trash, sometimes out of laziness,” Kagambi said.
Some years ago, conservation organization Mount Kenya Trust assisted the wildlife service with developing a waste management protocol in response to ongoing, widespread criticism about the lack of toilets on the mountain. “We developed and handed out forms to record waste removal,” said the Trust’s executive director Susie Weeks, to bolster ‘leave no trace’ practices for parties entering the national park. “But when they ran out of forms, the records stopped.”
But high turnover rates and continuity issues at the wildlife service management mean that comparatively banal, tourism-related issues are often neglected. Usually, raging wildfires or armed scuffles between rival herding groups occupy everyone’s bandwidth on Mount Kenya.
The Trust has been partnering with local stakeholders and governmental agencies (mainly Kenya Wildlife Service and the Kenya Forest Service) to address the root issues of illegal activities, from poaching to illicit logging, and to bring visibility to critical ecological issues.
“Even if you manage to get a good person [as the wildlife service warden], they might not know what’s going on and are constantly playing catch up with the big issues,” Weeks said.
The strictness of Mount Kenya’s rules is perhaps modeled after how national parks work in other countries (in Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Olympic, there are park-wide smoking and campfire bans), but so far, it is unrealistic. Denial of what transpires on the mountain has festered into cracks in the system, which will only deepen as outdoor adventure gains a stronger foothold across East Africa.
Researcher Emma Odera, who lives in Nanyuki, is concerned about the environmental ramifications of this road traffic. “When a road is put down, if it isn’t controlled, there will be damage to the flora and fauna,” she said.
Communities in Mount Kenya’s forested regions already faced chronic conflicts over land use, tensions endemic to growing populations. But now, Mount Kenya’s crucial wildlife migration corridors could be disrupted, Odera said, especially the elephants that typically move from the highlands to lowland forests with the season. Such competing developmental interests will only amplify community and human-wildlife conflicts.
As more Kenyans and foreigners ascend the slopes of Mount Kenya, it’s unclear as to what kind of ecological damage the mountain can sustain.
Kenyan native Aref Adamali has been working to facilitate grassroots initiatives to clean up the mountain before it goes the way of Kilimanjaro (where an estimated 107.5 tons of feces and 6 million liters of urine were disposed of in open, unsanitary conditions from 1990–2007).
Adamali believes that beyond its mere growing popularity, there are some uncomfortable power dynamics behind Lake Ellis’s degradation. These are mostly related to native Kenyans living on the land, versus less trafficked destinations of Lake Alice and Rutundu, which are traditionally ‘white highlands’ with large KC farms or conservancies and an entirely different setup for high-end tourism.
“White Kenyans tend to be conservation-oriented, and will get together for things like setting aside land for elephant migration corridors,” he explains. “People living around there have a sense of ownership because it’s their land.”
But these afro-alpine lakes are vital to local communities, who look to them for fishing and water sources. They also feed into major rivers such as the Ewaso-N’giro and Tana, generating an estimated 70% of hydroelectric power in Kenya. Mount Kenya is also home to one of the nation’s five “water towers,” supplying the capital city of Nairobi with an estimated 90% of its water and indirectly supporting millions of livelihoods.
Although communal land encourages more visitors, the burgeoning environmental footprint is becoming harder to ignore.
After packing up camp, we have an easy walk down, following the tracks of an old clearing smoothed into a road a few years back. The morning brings calm and beautiful light, mild but steady. A few bikers skid down the path, wobbling precariously with the steepness. Before this road was renovated, only lunatics attempted the drive.
According to mountaineering guide Peter Naituli and others who work on Mount Kenya, increased access from this road has upped pollution (for such a remote, under-researched region, pollution remains an unquantified phenomenon).
American author Edward Abbey, who is known for his scathing writings on the conservation of wild places, wrote the idea of national parks is to create easily accessible wild places for people to experience nature. This in turn should create stronger conservation interest and buy-in from the general public. But this only works with strong foundations in place.
Andrew Wielochowski, a former member of the Mountain Club of Kenya and author of the 1987 East Africa International Mountain Guide, remembers his first expedition on the Chogoria side over 40 years ago.
“It was a tortuous 6-hour drive from Embu to Chogoria,” he said. “Beyond the forest gate, the tracks completely vanished, and there was no one. It was a phenomenal experience. Back then, it was a really wild mountain.”
There’s no perfect algorithm to calculate the tradeoffs between “accessibility” and wilderness preservation.
“It may be a bit elitist to think that these areas should only be reserved for people to get there,” Wielowchowski said as he recalled how the mountain was decades ago. “In a way, it’s sad. But there are still many wild trails, a lot of pristine walks on that mountain.”
I think back to my first night camping at Lake Ellis. Before the Milky Way blankets the equatorial night sky later into the night, Lake Ellis is a pale steel gray. A small and delicate lake, it takes no more than 25 minutes to stroll around its perimeter.
“It may be a bit elitist to think that these areas should only be reserved for people to get there. In a way, it’s sad. But there are still many wild trails, a lot of pristine walks on that mountain.”
I see why people are anxious about cleaning this place up and enforcing stricter rules where the government has failed — before it’s far too late. But what’s scarier is that we don’t know where the tipping point lies, and when things will go beyond the point of no return, even as changes within just a decade have been so tangible, and heartbreaking.
