METHS

MULANJE EXPATRIATES THREEPEAKS SOCIETY

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Mulanje, Malawi – Mini-METHS August 2-4, 1996

Participants: John (König von Mulanje) Killick, Sally & Rupert (West Face) Roschnik, Dave Cornelius, Mike (Mad Mike) & Verena (Műesli) Petzold

From the ten members who booked, numbers dwindled to six, but a famous and powerful six they were. Killick, Roschniks and Corneliarse climbed the Elephant’s Head to Tuchila Hut on Friday, in daylight. The Petzolds followed by torchlight and arrived around 9 pm, somewhat dehydrated.

A later than planned start on the Sunday morning saw us en route to Mt. Khuto by 8.30 am. With Petzold still leading from the rear, we promptly lost Killick in the forest. Half an hour later, he emerged several hundred feet to the south, on a parallel ridge, with a resounding. “Hey-Ho” rather like one of the seven dwarfs – Dave reckoned Killick had been in the forest looking for Snow White! Corneliarse now set a cracking pace up the dried-out Khuto slabs, but not too fast to prevent Sally spotting some flowering Vellozia and Crassula. Apart from that and us, nothing else seemed to be alive on the steadily heating granite – it was warm, windless and deadly silent as we sweated up to the rock wall where we found Killick sitting by a cairn.

With the party together again, Petzold now re-established some discipline over the proceedings and led into the gully. On the peak (9.047ft), Petzold realised he had not reminded the party to take on extra water at the bottom stream. This effectively removed Mt Dzole from our plans that day. To stay kosher, however, we had to climb 3 peaks and did not want to leave 2 until Sunday, so we nipped across to Khuto’s twin, in case we needed it. The all-round view was spectacular, marred only by a line of dust and smoke at the 6,000 ft. level – only the top of Zomba Peak showed above it, Chiradzulu and the Blantyre peaks being totally obscured. We were amazed at how quickly the mountain had dried out and dust accumulated after the recent week of wet Chiperone weather. Later the muck in the air contributed to a brilliant red sunset behind Chambe Peak.

Back in the hut, Corneliarse won the Rude Scrabble with highly questionable words like ‘ob’ & ‘qat’ (sic). Later he admitted that he had been practising twice per day in preparation for the trip and had memorised all the words in the official Scrabble wordlist. Unfortunately, he couldn’t define any of them! Rupert won the Dirty Limerick competition with the foulest, most disgusting rendering I had ever heard (and that includes Paul Fenton’s masterpieces). Strict censorship precludes its publication here, but if I happen to meet any readers above 5,000’, I could be persuaded – for a small fee, and a percentage of royalties to West Face. Verena broke the club’s rules by abluting on the first AND second days. She ignored Rupert’s advice about where to put her boots while scrambling down the Khuto West Gully and paid the price with some nasty grazes and bruises on her leg. She also suffered a fall descending the Elephant’s Head but insists she still enjoyed the weekend! For these misdemeanours, she was duly awarded a “down-down” at Monday evening’s Hash run. (Poor Verena)

Early Sunday morning, we scrambled up Nandalanda (8,560’) and took in Castle Rock on the way down, to make a genuine Three. A magnificent pair of Verreaux’s eagles was seen circling the peak at 9’000’, hunting for dassies. Lanner falcons and an early yellow-billed kite were other memorable sightings. It was noticeably cooler and hawk-eyed Killick spotted smoke on the plain drifting nor-westwards, indicating a change in wind-direction from the south-east, so we didn’t hang around. Sure enough, half an hour after we returned to the hut, Nandalanda was covered in cloud.

We shared the hut and enjoyed the company of four young graduates from Newcastle University, who were spending 6 weeks on the mountain (lucky people) researching cedar regeneration and small mammals. It is encouraging to find visitors doing something useful on the mountain for a change. An exceptional weekend on Mulanje with fine company.

Mike Petzold