Elephant Hill Double Challenge: Here is how you can do it!

How time flies!!! A new month is upon us. Fingers crossed this one will be teeming with adventure in the mountains, the countryside, the coast, and even the cities! Happy new month guys!

Last month was good, full of activity and merry. My favorite adventure was the Elephant Hill Double Challenge which we attempted with the Lets Drift Above The Clouds crew. It was tough but several people attempted it. Getting out of our comfort zone is always a win, so all these people who got out of their bed so early to travel to the mountain were successful! Cheers to them all!

My judgment of the challenge is that more people than those who tried can do it. All one needs is a little more preparation and determination. If you are thinking about trying such a challenge, perhaps my experience as highlighted in this article will be insightful. Before we continue, kindly note that I am not a professional athlete, just a guy obsessed with adventure, and helping other people with their adventure. This article is from the perspective of an amateur athlete.

Let’s start with the most frequently asked question first: Why a double challenge?

There is an abundance of new places to visit in the Aberdares, or anywhere else. However, choosing a trail that I have hiked several times before was very logical for that event. To begin with, I believe adventure happens on three fronts. The first is geographical, exploring landscapes. The second is physical, exploring your body’s limits and properties. The third is psychological, exploring how your mind reacts in different situations. Growing as an adventurer means developing all these aspects. The purpose of this event was to test the latter two fronts of adventure. It is safer and easier to set parameters by using a familiar trail. The reason I choose to do the Elephant Hill Double Challenge is because I know the trail. This is my safe space.

Got an opportunity to meet James Muhia, one of Kenya’s finest mountaineers. He successfully completed an x3 climb at Elephant Hill sometime last year. I guess you never know what the trails have in store no matter how many times you have been on them.

The next important thing is preparation for the event. Anyone who has done Elephant Hill knows it is not a regular walk in the park. To try it once needs you to have a reasonable level of fitness, as well as the right gear. At Lets Drift, we educate the participants of the Above the Clouds program in advance. The most important step is to practice hiking by doing it frequently. We avail up to 7 events per week that involve hiking. There, an absolute beginner with no experience and no gear can find an activity that suits them. Same case for seasoned hikers. Most of these are day hikes that take from 4 to 7 hours, and a wide range of terrain. The biggest perk is self-awareness, you get to know how your body can handle different situations, which parts of your gear become more uncomfortable after several kilometers, how you relate with people when the going gets tough, etc. Furthermore, you get to share a lot of information with other good hikers as well as the guides who have a subtle way of helping people push their limits. This is my primary training ground. Doing these hikes consistently will get you prepared for the Elephant Hill Double Challenge.

Hiking on weekends alone is not enough for all-round physical fitness. I learned the hard way that the strength and mobility aspects of fitness do not come with hiking or running alone. Weak muscles and joints with a limited range of motion are the biggest cause of injury for athletes and adventurers. That is why I recommend extra exercises during the week. For the Elephant Hill Double Challenge, I kept the training routine simple. Complicated routines can become confusing especially if you are not a pro athlete or you do not have a coach. Here are the exercises that comprise my routine:

1. Daily yoga session ranging from 10 minutes to an hour. This is good for the mobility aspect, breathing exercises, and meditation, thus it works on two of the three fronts of adventure.
2. Two or three runs of 5 to 10km because running is the ultimate expression of human physical fitness.
3. Swimming at least once a week, 1500m, helps me relax so it is also part of my workout/recovery routine.
4. Two strengthening sessions focusing on the lower body and the core are just enough to keep me at the level of fitness I need for most of my adventures.
5. Daily breathing exercises are a big part of my routine. I love the Wim Hoff Method because it has been studied by many scholars and applied by athletes, and proven to be effective. Give it a try sometime.

All these exercises need at most two hours a day, at home, without equipment (except running and swimming of course). You can find the resources online, clustered on pages of mountaineers like Chase Tucker, or scattered across the internet. Remember to take it slow as you approach big events. I am not a physical fitness expert, but this is what has worked for me so far so I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

More important than exercise, rest and recovery enable your body to make gains after the workout. Recovery is supposed to be done after a heavy activity such as a hike which was a little on the uncomfortable side of the scale such as the Elephant Hill Double Challenge, or strengthening, or running session, where you put in 80% of your effort for three-quarters of a session of reasonable length. In hiking, we call a situation where you are sore and fatigued because you did not set up your body for recovery the hiking hangover. Normally, you feel it as soreness and fatigue. Sometimes it might escape your notice, so it is important to practice good rest and recovery all the time. A routine void of rest will end up in burn-out. Activities involved in rest and recovery are

• sleeping
• eating nutrient-dense foods
• hydration
• myofascial release aka massage
• lighter exercise such as a walk, stretching, short slow run or swim
• treating any injuries appropriately eg. Blisters, cuts and bruises, sunburns, cold burns, etc.

Doing these things after the Elephant Hill Double Challenge will avoid injury and enable a seamless transition to a normal healthy body.

The Drifter Power Packis an all-round snack, with all the nutrients you would need for a day-hike, and definitely for the Elephant Hill Double Challenge!

If you have gotten this far, you might probably be asking where nutrition lies in this story. Let us talk briefly about that. Once again, I am not a professional nutritionist but I stand by my opinion because these are things that have worked for me. I practice a plant-based diet lifestyle after hearing about the advantages it offers athletes. Plant-based foods have all the nutrients your body will ever need. Furthermore, they are the only natural source of glucose, which is the only nutrient your nervous system needs, as well as fiber which is important for digestion among other nutrients.

The most common food for the trail the world over is nuts. Ever heard of GORP? It is an acronym for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts, the most common trail mix. Lets Drift has designed our own Drifter Powerpack, the tastiest granola I’ve ever had. The package is even reusable as waterproofing for your phone when it rains or just storage. The Drift Powerpack is available for sale; contact your favorite guide, they will deliver it to the event you will b attending next. The powerpack, and dates offered by my friend Mercy Juma, were all the food I needed for the Elephant Hill Double Challenge. Besides that, I drunk a lot of water.

A screenshot of my Strava activity record. At some point I was so tired I thought I had taken a wrong turn and was about to turn back. I checked my Strava map and realized it was all mind games! Do you record your activities?

Finally, make sure to structure the activity. If you had visited the trail once before or done good research, you will be aware of all the sections with steep slopes, muddy patches, slippery ground, exposure to the elements, etc. How much time will you spend in each section? Where will you take breaks? Anticipate the weather as well. Will it be sunny, cloudy, or rainy? How will that affect your performance? How much food and water will you need for the entire event? Can you carry it all or will you have a support person handing it to you in the middle of the trail? So what is the gear that you will carry? Do you have an emergency response system in place?

This is how my day went. Since it was a group event, most of the issues were taken care of by the organizing team. The research was done well, and emergency response was on standby. The weather forecast said things were going to be okay, and they were. It had not rained in the past few days so the terrain was good.

Here is how I was geared up:

• Head: I had a beanie and a baseball cap which I interchanged as the temperature changed.
• Torso: a raincoat and a thermal long-sleeve t-shirt.
• Legs: jogging tights, and cargo pants. At first, I thought my legs were overdressed but, in the end, I was glad they did not get a drop of rain on them.
• Feet: I used my runners with almost barefoot soles, and they turned out to be a great choice!
• My hydration pack contained about 2.5L. I finished it all on the first round and had to refill it at the gate.
• For food, it was the Drifter Powerpack and dates from Mercy Juma (thanks a ton for the gift that gave me life on that day).

My execution was very basic: I ran all the flat or small gradient parts of the trail and speed-hiked for the steep ones. Since I did not have the gear to check my heart rate, I used the basic speech test; I could comfortably hold a conversation at whatever pace I was going.

Views of Mt. Kinangop from the Elephant Hill summit.

Finally, two of the people in our group ended up completing the Elephant Hill Double Challenge to the very end; Cossy Rotich and I. It took us about eight hours. Other participants who put in a noteworthy effort are Peter Mwangi, Rode Kimondo, Emma Gitau, Preston Adie, and Sheila Huho. We owe gratitude to all who showed up on that day to share the trail with us because they encouraged us when we were in our toughest moments.

This is basic information about the Elephant Hill Double Challenge. This challenge is not for the faint-hearted but consistent improvement on your body, mind, and gear will eventually get you there. There is much more effort that went into this project that is not contained here because it is too much volume and complexity, or some other reason. Feel free to reach out to me or any other guide from Lets Drift to learn more about this challenge, our expeditions, or any other trip you would love to try.