News....news....news....

July 2009 -  it’s been a great fundraising month for us...

Home-baked cakes and treats went down a storm one Friday at Ashurst, raising £380;

We’re delighted to have the support of five competitors in the Zurich Ironman 2009. The justgiving site remains open if you’d like to register your support at www.justgiving.
com/2cc-zurich2009;

..and coming up, another bring and buy clothing night, this time with our very own stylist!

April 2009 - special thanks to Gemma and Nick who nominated the Rwenzori Trust for their wedding list.

February 2009 - the start of a new school year in Uganda and we’re delighted to be able to continue our sponsorship of 35 secondary school kids. Seven of the children from last year have left the project (due to poor exam results) and a new seven have joined the project.

January 2009 - the community trails in the forest land have been repaired and upgraded thanks to a generous donation from the Rwenzori Development Foundation. If you’re in Ruboni, go and see for yourself!

 

Guide to the Rwenzori by Henry Osmaston

“In this glorious antidote to consumer sun-rock climbing, Henry Osmaston celebrates the idiosyncratic joys of travelling amongst some of the world’s wettest, weirdest, boggiest mountains - the luxuriantly vegetated Mountains of the Moon. That nickname originated with Ptolemy, one of the first geographers to hypothesise about snowy mountains at the heart of Africa; the official ‘Rwenzori’ derives from a local name meaning, appropriately, ‘Hill of Rain’.

It is that almost relentless rain which nurtures the range’s unique ecosystem, with numerous endemic species of gigantic plants. But just occasionally the sun shines, everything glitters and sparkles, and the Rwenzori becomes a place of utter enchantment. The first serious scientific exploration was made by Alexander Wollaston’s 1906 expedition, followed later that year by the Duke of Abruzzi, whose team made first ascents of nearly all the major peaks, including the highest, Margherita, named after Abruzzi’s aunt, the Queen Mother of Italy. To mark the centenary of those pioneering expeditions, Osmaston has revised extensively the original 1972 guide which he wrote with another former colonial officer of Uganda, David Pasteur.

Much of the original material remains: meticulously researched climbing history, route descriptions, excellent sketch maps, clear topos and informative monotone photos, along with copious notes on the area’s natural history. New to this edition are extended historical notes, including fascinating material on Uganda’s troubled post-colonial history, lots of enticing new colour photos and updated details on huts and climbing routes. It is the latter which have changed most drastically and that change is highlighted in four photos of the highest peaks, Alexandra and Margherita, dated between 1906 and 2005. Each view is almost identical, apart from the snow and ice cover. Should anyone doubt the reality of our current, accelerated, global warming, let them just see these photos.

The meltdown has been particularly rapid during the last decade and it is depressing to see how drastically Margherita has altered in just the 20 years since I was there. The landscape of the highest summits has altered, perhaps irrevocably, and many snow and ice routes have become rock climbs. The nature of many approaches has also altered. Osmaston has recorded these changes meticulously. Both he, Pasteur and Andrew Stuart, a collaborator on this new edition, lived and worked in Uganda and returned repeatedly to the Rwenzori, also visiting the western Congo side of the range when that was politically possible. At the moment the Congo is off limits, but with Uganda enjoying reasonable stability, the eastern approach is currently accessible and anyone wanting to explore those extraordinary mountains should take a copy of this new definitive guide.

Available from West Col Productions: 01491 681 284”

Text by Stephen Venables, Pres. Alpine Club, in The Climber, August 2006.