Ascensiones en Mt Ololokwe area teniendo Beta

Unexpected and very smooth ascent done while shooting with Sender Films.

First ascent. Lemayan was present. He proceeded to complete this boulder on 7th Jan. A perfect end to this trip.

First ascent

Guiding a client. Rock was loose as usual. She led the second pitch and was able not to pull anything off and was delicate enough to onsight the climb.

siku hizi, njia hii ni panya route 🤷

Some serious unprotected sections, otherwise a very fun day out.

Epic climb! (especially if you like cacti)

Guiding a client.

We spent the night on the summit with Peter Lemayan and the client. At the break of dawn, we abseiled into the wall to the start of pitch one and climbed up from there. Quite an experience doing it that way.

First route I ever bolted. Done with Ian Lekiluai and Gabriel

FFA. What a lovely feeling topping this one out. It feels very hard. Would like more people to get on it for better idea of grade. I'd say its between 5.11b and 5.11c in my estimates

A long and beautiful route

FFA. Felt about 6a+

A solid day out with Taipi

The FA

The FA

Onsight solo FA. This route gave me the strength to complete Apocalypto

no crash pads

no crash pads, so more or less a free solo.

First ascent free solo into the unknown with young, samburu herder as the witness

A jolly good time

Black mambas are certainly aggressive snakes

Snagged the first ascent of the standing start on the attempt following Peter's first ascent of the jump start variation.

It's a pretty good one. So far I haven't been impressed with the bouldering around Ololokwe. But this one had some excitement to it.

The plan was to rehearse the moves and do more cleaning on this day, but dark clouds indicated the arrival of the rains, so the final decision was for me to run up the route rope less on that day. On pitch 6, the rain begun to pour and by the time I summited, the sky completely let loose. It was a powerful moment. Bottom to top was about 40 minutes with a few long stops on the route as I had to wait for the drone batteries to be changed and for the drone to locate me on the large wall. All in all, a very significant ascent for me personally and the growing community of Kenyan born climbers.

Documentary filming with Gabriel and Ian. We worked and cleaned the route, dropping huge loose flakes while at it.

Documentary filming with Gabriel and Ian. We worked and cleaned the route, dropping huge loose flakes while at it.

Documentary filming with Gabriel and Ian. We worked and cleaned the route, dropping huge loose flakes while at it.

First guided ascent of the route with one client and Ian Lekiluai.

We started the climb too far off to the right and had to negotiate a horrendous blank slab with no gear before rejoining the main route. I broke off most of the crux holds on pitch 4 and had to find a new way around the section of crumbling rock. After a number of scary leads, and Ian dislodging a massive loose flake. We finished the climb and hiked off the back with the Client's family. The route wasn't as kind to us as it had been on the first trip up.

Would be significantly harder for the vertically challenged.

Barefoot

Good fun.

A great route. a total of 3 hours from base to top. This was the 3rd ascent and saw the party add their own finish to the climb by climbing directly up the tree roots to the roof on the last pitch. All in all, the route is insanely run out between bolts and one can easily climb past the odd bit of gear if not very keen. Traditional placements are scarce. As far as difficulty is concerned, I'd place the most technical cruxes somewhere in the 5.9 YDS range. Route could benefit from one extra bolt per pitch, but perhaps more so one rap ring or bolt directly above the route at the finish, to simplify access from above. Still, I personally had a blast leading this one.

Darkness caught me near the end of the route where any hope of an onsight ended. Half an hour later I'd be forced to re-ascend the route with my head torch to retrieve a stuck rope from the anchor. What a day.

Fun route that is very flaky, aided quite a bit not to affect the route.

A few notes:

1. The anchor point is past the grassy area, you have to walk all the way to the top

2. We left two non locking carabiners to rappel down

It's a great route climbing wise, but Ididn't find it well protected and quite flaky.

A few notes on the experience:

1. The anchor at the top is a big boulder. We left a cordelette and a locking carabiner to rappel down.

2. You want to descend on the right, you will end up on a big ledge for your first lowering pitch and the walk down to a tree area ( you can't see the tree from up there but it's obvious when on the lower ledge), you will end up 3min walk down from where you started.

3. Some rocks are kind of loose so don't always trust the boulder, there's not a lot of great protection on the way up so you should be comfortable with a bit of a run out and because there are of ledge it wouldn't be a clean fall.

Very chossy, throwing big blocks off, but still many left. Nearly pulled a few blocks onto my belayer, and there are a few sections where you have to run it out as you can climb on the rock, but you wouldn't trust any gear on it.

Fun outing especially for those that enjoy more crack climbing. Protects fairly well (with both cams and nuts - just a couple of flakes to watch out for). Did in two pitches with anchor under the off-width corner. Bring at very least a #4 BD (ended up using a #5 BD also) for the anchor. Or if belaying from the below tree, a #4/5 may be your only protection on the corner. There is a little chockstone in the off-width corner you can slot a nut in, but a #5 will give peace of mind. Corner is fun fun fun then easy climbing to the top-out.

This is now a sport climb. Would be helpful to change it.

Classic climb made much easier and safer with new bolts. There is quite a bit of loose rock but when I climbed it, NOTHING came out. So an appeal to future climbers to be very gentle and balancy on this route and to avoid pulling too hard on the loose stuff as it can hit your belayer

and more importantly - It will drastically increase the difficulty of the climb.

Treat it like a chossy unprotected run-out trad climb !

Spent a very windy night on the summit after a frigid 4 hours waiting for my partners and belaying in the pitch dark, wearing nothing but shorts and some Samburu beads. What a climb.

Epic ascent, half of which was completed in darkness