Mountain Madness

I'm pretty mad about mountains. I go crazy without them. I miss them like family. So when the opportunity arose to go up to the only serious Liberian mountains and climb Mount Nimba, the highest point in the country, I didn't hesitate.

Yekepa is a mining ghost town; the leftover of a huge iron ore mining operation by Lamco. It used to be called "mini-New York" because it is probably the only town in all of Liberia that has a complete power grid. Nestled in a lush valley surrounded by mountains, it lies just minutes away from the boarder with Guinea. Lamco left in a hurry when the war started up in 1990, leaving behind skeletons of giant warehouses and machinery as a memento.
Mining has just begun again, this time under the world's largest steel company, Acellor Mittal. They are already half a million dollars in debt on the project.

We whisked through the town on our way to bigger and better things. The winding road led us to the site of the orginal iron ore pit mine. What was once the tallest point around is now a massive layered pit with an emerald lake at the bottom (which is called Emerald Lake).
We left our faboulous driver Solomon with the car, and started our trek. It was the early afternoon and slightly overcast. A cool breeze nipped us we climbed along. We got to higher plateau and were awarded with a breathtaking view of the Ivorian forest stretching for miles. A brief rumble in the distance went unheeded.
We carried on fueled by our quest for reaching the peak. We didn't realize the situation we were in until, after an hour, we reached the top. The distant rumbles were getting to be quite regular and they were increasing in volume. A flash of lightning toar through the sky over Ivory Coast and a huge thunderstorm started marching towards us. Another one was coming from over Liberia. We abandoned all thoughts about the bottle of champagne we had dragged with us to pop at the top, and started the speediest decent known to man. We weren't fast enough.

The two storms met us simoultaneously. Devilish whisps of cloud whisked around us and the thunder burst above our heads. That fact that we were standing on top of a mountain famous for its iron ore was not lost to us. The rain hit us heavy and hard; each drop puncturing our clothes and leaving a sting. Within a minute I was absolutely drenched. I felt a river of water fall down my back and into my shorts. Not one inch of fabric was saved. What had been a mountain of dust turned into a waterfall of mud that we picked our way through with our hearts beating fast.

We made it to the car in less then half an hour. Solomon was waiting for us, headlights on and cutlass ready, scared not for our safety but for whatever might come out of that cloud at him. He'd never touched a cloud before.

Climbing to the highest point in Liberia during a thunderstorm may not have been the brightest idea, but it was definetly one of the more thrilling experiences I've had in my life.