Mount Bintumani

I’m not sure what “Bintumani” translates into in English, but I think it’s something like “I’m never doing that again. Ever”. I made a last minute decision to climb Sierra Leone’s highest peak, and while it was one of the more rewarding experiences of my life, it was also one of the most challenging, both mentally and physically.

Mount Bintumani in the background.
Is that really within walking distance?

According to the Bradt Sierra Leone guide book “Mount Bintumani is the highest point in west Africa (well, west of Mount Cameroon)”. So I guess that makes it the second highest peak in west Africa? Dubious claims about its importance in west African topography aside, at just under 2000 meters Bintumani is definitely at least the tallest mountain in Sierra Leone. To put that in perspective, it’s just shy of Whistler's 2180 meter peak.

As an avid outdoorsman, I couldn’t leave the country without having conquered it. Skimming through the guide book the day before my trip, I discovered that this was going to present a few unique challenges. Firstly, the guide book had several sample itineraries, ranging from 4-6 days, including travel time. With limited time off to make the trek, I allotted 3 days.

Secondly, not having planned for a trip like this before I left Canada, I didn’t bring anything in the way of camping gear with me. Before departing, I went through a mental checklist of the things I would normally take on this kind of trip, and compared it to what I actually had with me:

• Hiking boots – Running shoes
• Layered hiking clothes – Shorts and a t-shirt
• Overnight backpack – A small, relatively flimsy backpack that I used in university
• Water purification tablets – Negative. This meant my strategy was to pack as much water as I could carry (about 7 litres, which on its own weighs close to 20 pounds) in my bag, and then roll the dice on water from mountain streams if I needed any more (I would)
• Proper food, power bars, etc. – A kilo of uncooked rice, a couple loaves of bread, and a mars bar that I bought from a street vendor
• Tent – An old hoodie and the bed sheet from my house (this was definitely my biggest concern)
• Proper wool hiking socks – YES! I’d actually packed a pair of Wigwams, the best pair of outdoor activity socks I’ve ever used in my life. A little bit pricey at about $15 / pair, but well worth the investment

The guide book also had a few other gems of advice that I thought were worth sharing:

• "Trying to manage an ascent in the rainy season approaches madness" – Clearly, I am.



One of the few spots on the road to Sinecoro
 smooth enough to take a photo. 

• "Only the keenest, sturdiest and most pig-headed of visitors would carry their own kit, food and water. It's easy to arrange for a porter." – Those that know me well probably already know what I opted to do.

Now for the story. Wanting to get as much of a head start as possible, I left work, grabbed my bag and headed straight to Lorry Park, where I caught a shared taxi to the town of Kabala. I arrived shortly after dark (ahead of schedule) and made arrangements for a motorcycle taxi to drive me to the village of Sinecoro (a small village located at the foot of Bintumani) at 8am the next morning (the road to Bintumani is 55 miles of some of the roughest terrain I ever been through. Only a bike or a very hard core 4x4 would be able to make the trip, and the cost of renting a Land Rover or Land Cruiser for three days was prohibitively expensive). I then checked into a local guesthouse, grabbed some food and watched a football (soccer) match at the bar, and wandered through the night markets for a bit before getting to bed early. Compared to my earlier adventures, I couldn’t help but be pleased with myself for how well this was going. With the benefit of hindsight, I now know that this was the calm before the storm.

With this river being over three feet deep,
it was time to carry on on foot.

The bike driver did show up the next day, two hours late (he’d had a funeral to attend. I’m still curious as to why this wasn’t mentioned the day before). Re-negotiating the price took another 20 minutes, after which I got on the bike are we were off! For about 5 minutes. My driver decided he had worn the wrong pants for the weekend so we had to stop by his house for him to get changed. Then we needed to get fuel. Then he realized his rear tire was flat, so another stop. By the time we were actually on the road to Bintumani, it was almost 11.

The next 45 miles of the journey were fantastic! Not even the relentless heat could ruin my mood. We drove past some truly stunning scenery, and each subsequent village became more and more rural. The tin roofed building of Kabala gave way to mud huts with grass roofs, rolling hills and thousands and thousands of mango trees. And the trip was just as enjoyable for the locals as it was for me. At home in Makeni, kids regularly approach me screaming “Apoto” (“White Man”) and try to get high fives, while older Sierra Leoneans inundate me with friend requests, and phone calls at all hours of the day. While I’m a B-list celebrity at home, in these villages I’m an absolute rock star. Each village we passed through brought out a wide assortment of people, young and old, to cheer us on as we drove through. I felt like I should have been waving from the back of a limo in a large motorcade, rather than the back seat of an uncomfortable bike worth no more than US$1,000.

Leaving the village before dawn with my guide.
Let's get 'er done!

As mentioned before, the road to Bintumani is really rough, and we crashed twice along the way (once at nearly a dead stop, while the second crash was at about 20 km/h and left a few scrapes and bruises). Then, at mile 45, it all fell apart. We arrived at a river crossing that, the week prior, had been up to my driver’s ankles. The water was now deeper than my waste, and there was no way we could get the bike across. The only option was to retreat back to the previous village, pay the chief to allow us to store the bike there for a couple days, and walk the remaining 10 miles on foot.

By the time we arrived in Sinecoro, it was nearing dark and I couldn’t find a guide willing to take me up the mountain until the next day. This left me with an interesting problem, as I had to be back at work on Monday. I asked the guide if I could climb the mountain in a day. My driver translated his reply. “Impossible.” I’d heard that a person of average fitness could do the climb in about 15 hours over two days, so I wasn’t yet ready to take no for an answer. I asked again, but again was told that it couldn’t be done.

The view from base camp.
Already above the clouds, with a long way still to go.

At this point, I tried a different approach. The guide I was taking to was old enough to be my dad (no disrespect intended to my father, who’s in great shape for someone approaching 60, but he won’t be breaking any land speed records any time soon). I managed to track down a younger guide, and made the following arrangement. We’d leave at 5am the next day, hike to the base camp, leave all our gear there, and hike the rest of the day carrying nothing but a water bottle and a few snacks. Hopefully we’d make it back to base camp with enough daylight to get back to the village, but if not, we’d make camp and finish the descent the next day. I got ready for bed while ignoring the older guide and my driver as they reiterated that my planned climb was impossible. I eventually found their persistence to be a bit comical. Could I really be the first stubborn Dutchman this little village had ever come across?

Interestingly, before leaving, I did get one piece of advice from my driver. “You need to take some of those drugs that all you Americans and Canadians have. You know, the ones that give you so much energy.” Clearly, Lance Armstrong’s reputation has made it even as far as remote villages in the jungle of Sierra Leone.

The summit is in sight!

5am came far too soon the next day, but my guide was nowhere to be seen. I spoke with the chief, who managed to find the guide fast asleep, still in bed. Within 15 minutes, however, the guide was wide awake, grabbed his gun, and we were on the trail before 5:30. By Sierra Leonean standards, this was absolutely early. Thus far into the trip, I’m feeling pretty good. That feeling lasted for about 30 minutes. The hike up Bintumani starts off with a relatively flat walk through a swamp land that lulls you into a false sense of security. Despite our aggressive walking pace, I couldn’t help but think “this isn’t so bad”. Then we hit the hills.

The hike to base camp can only be described as gruelling. Nobody in Sierra Leone has any clue what a switchback is. Whoever built this “trail” must have just taken a compass, aimed it at the mountain’s peak, and headed straight for it. An hour into the hike and I was absolutely exhausted. At one point, I literally had to pick a spot no more than 4-5 meters down the trail, hike/climb there, rest for 30 seconds, and repeat. This went on for two hours, as I struggled to keep up with my chain smoking guide (he’d actually smoked an entire pack of cigarettes by the time we made it to base camp. The man was insane!). My legs were shaking, I was starting to get serious tunnel vision whenever I stopped to catch my breath, and in several instances actually had to hold myself up using a low hanging tree for support, as my legs didn’t have the strength to support me. Not one to admit defeat easily, I seriously considered giving up at this point. 

The final ascent. It's steeper than it looks...

And then it occurred to me. Given the limited availability of food in these parts, I hadn’t eaten anything in more than 14 hours. I opened up my bag, downed a granola bar I’d packed with me, and struggled on, feeling slightly better. 

30 minutes later, I stumbled into the open field that was base camp. The first part of the challenge complete, I sunk to my knees and devoured the bread I’d brought along for breakfast. Half way through my meal, I noticed my guide with no food or water. Crap! The expectation that I pack (and carry) enough food and water for the both of us had somehow been lost in translation. I surrendered half of my food and water, grabbed a couple of water bottles, and left the rest of our gear at camp. Though still starving, I was feeling a lot better. Time to get this over with.

The rest of the hike was slightly less unpleasant. The incline reduced from roughly 89.9 degrees to something a bit more manageable, but we still had a blistering pace to maintain. Yet, after a 3 hour speed hike that is mostly a blur in my memory, we were within sight of the summit! 


Now at about 1800 meters and with thinning air, my guide’s habitual smoking started to catch up to him. I almost had to carry him up the last section of the climb, but we managed to make the summit, and right on time too! Despite the time constraint, I sat down and enjoyed what was the most delicious half of a mars bar I’d had in my entire life. We took 20 minutes to enjoy the view and take a few photos, but then it was time to descend.  

The summit. You can just see Sinecoro
(a tiny silver speck) in the distance.

The difficult part of the hike now over, I was finally able to enjoy the beautiful scenery that Bintumani had to offer. The plains and landscape at the mid point of the hike are just incredible. We saw several deer and a herd of buffalo. Apart from a 30 minute detour for my guide turned hunter to attempt to shoot a deer with a shotgun (I assume he was firing slugs, but it still seemed like the wrong tool for the job. He missed all three shots.), the rest of the hike was relatively uneventful. After a 15 minute stop at base camp on the way back, we carried on, and made it back to the village just before dark!

Just look at that happy man.

The village kids welcome back the crazy white man.

Needless to say, my driver was shocked to see me, and what seemed like every kid in the village turned up to say hi and have their photo taken with the crazy white man. After the photo op, I collapsed, exhausted, on a bench in front of one of the village huts. My driver brought me a pineapple he’d bought, which I consumed in about 3 seconds. Then he broke the bad news. We still had a 10 mile hike back to the village where we’d left the bike, that we had to do that night so as to get an early enough start the next morning. I was too tired to argue, so before long we were off. We made the next village well after dark, and by the time I made it to bed had developed a really bad cough and a pretty serious fever. The next day consisted of about 8 hours in motorcycle and shared taxis to get back to Makeni, but given my physical condition, the time flew by as I was barely awake for any of it (this despite the fact that when I got to the shared taxi, our 5 passenger sedan had 11 people crammed into it at one point. A new record for me on this trip). Sunday night came and I was home and, despite the challenges, I’d accomplished what I set out to do. There’s no greater feeling in the world.

As for the socks, they performed admirably well. I finished the hike with only a few small blisters, which wasn’t bad considering the running shoes I spent 18 hours hiking in were probably designed to be worn for no more than two.

Kalie and his water distribution business.

One last thing. Given we had an unplanned 20 mile walk together, my bike driver and I had quite a bit of time to talk, and I found out he actually used to be a client of SMT. Kalie used a microfinance loan to start a water distribution business (he buys bagged water in bulk from Freetown, and then redistributes it from his store front in Kabala at a small profit). Given that the margins on this business are quite small, Kalie took out two subsequent microloans in order to increase his shipment size and capitalize on economies of scale, and now has a profitable, debt free business that supports him, his wife and his child when he’s not off facilitating mountain climbing adventures. And he’s managed to do all this despite not even being literate. While I don’t hold microfinance up as a one size fits all solution to developing world problems, it is clear to me that it’s doing its part in improving some of the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves.