Just returned from 8 day ascent of Mt Kenya (followed by safari etc). After hiring 2 porters in the unfriendly village of Chogoria, walked in from the east to first camp at 3000m. Weather was initially poor due either to el nino or climate change, depending on which camp you're in. We (me and gf) then started an acclimitsation process thus: up to 3500m, down. Up to 3900m, down. Camp at 4300m. Ascent of point Lenana at 5000m.
Thus on day 6 i stayed at top hut at 4900m confident i was ready for a summit bid. The guide arrived and day 7 dawned with perfect conditions (using a guide is cheating I know but securing climbing partners in Kenya is a chore).
After crossing Lewis glacier the ascent started at 530hr and we summited Nelion at 1030hr. The SE normal route is pure rock at alpine difficile, crux pitch de graf's variation, severe above 5000m. The rest is pretty straight forward with occasional tricky but well protected pitches.
The true summit is Batian (5199m), which is reached via the Gates of the Mist from Nelion (5188m). The guide felt this was too verglassed to attempt. As I was walking out to 4300m that evening post-climb, i was sanguine with the decision. To reiterate, I got the 2nd highest point not the true summit, i can live with falling 11m short :-)
The fun started on the descent which is a series of 60m ab's and various awkward traverses. During one of the ab's i noticed the guide was about to descend with the rope caught in his krab forcing the gate open! He would have done a Tom Patey I am 100% certain. After I politely pointing this out ("Your fookin krab is open you fookin knob") the guide lost his cool a bit and started making mistakes. To be fair African guides don't get the training opportunites European guides do.
As a result on the penultimate ab he got the ropes stuck. We ended up abandoning one 60m rope, cutting a large section off the other and descending in small ab's. The final ab we did by fixing the remaining rope and not pulling through i.e. the poor guy lost 2 60m ropes. We were back at Top Hut at 1430hr, not bad seeing as we had a minor epic.
Take home thoughts? Summit day was probably the best I've had on a mountain (certainly on a rock route), but during the walk in until we got above 4000m the scenery was uninspiring. Think Cairngorms in summer. And I would also never be too harsh on the guide, its easy to fault someone else when there's no pressure on you!