Climbing Madagascar’s highest mountain

Mysterious Maromokotro

The highest point of Madagascar is Mount Tsaratanana, the highest point of which is known as Maromokotro, rising to 2876m. There are no roads up the mountain and no proper paths. Our expedition was to find species of bamboo not seen for more than 100 years. The work will lead to a better understanding of their evolution.

It's said to be possible to walk from Mangaindrano village (where we would leave our vehicles), to the peak of Maromokotro in just three days. We planned to complete the return journey in 10 days, completing all our botanical work along the way.

Preparing the team in Mangaindrano village

Our expedition included seven botanists and two guides, Berkman and Samuel. After calculating our needs for 10 days of walking, we hired 14 local staff to carry the food and luggage, each porter carrying up to 30kg. We later found out that our two guides had never been up to the top of the mountain, and neither had any of the 14 porters, except for François Ndriamifaly (head porter).

Darkness in the forest

On setting off, our porters walked ahead at frightening speed, carrying our supplies tied to bamboo sticks, with the scientists lagging behind. The path headed steeply upwards through dense vegetation. We reached the rainforest on the second day, and started to collect specimens. Suddenly we noticed it had quickly become dark and the path was impossible to navigate even with torches. We were forced to camp on a narrow sloping patch of ground by a stream called Ranoantevialambazaha. 

Cooking rice in the cloud forest

After our exploration of this area, there was no trace of a path and every step sunk into the rotten mossy ground layer. We crossed a ravine holding on to rotting trunks of dead tree ferns. The porters complained loudly of hunger: people carrying awkward loads up a mountain need large and regular meals! Porters normally carry a personal allocation of rice, but water is deemed too heavy, so the group relies on forest streams to cook rice and eat. But this bamboo forest had no streams.

François has gone ahead alone with a machete to cut the way, and he had not returned as promised, so, the only person with any knowledge of the route was gone. We waited for François until three hours before sunset. Then we used GPS tracking to return to the previous night’s stream

Turning back

François was missing all night. He didn’t succeed in cutting a path all the way to the next stream, slept in a tree, and then walked back to join us in the morning. Our slow walking team probably could not make it to the next stream within daylight hours, and walking at night was just too risky. In the end, we decided to stay where we were, spent two more days studying bamboos and then turned back for home. Our GPS devices indicated we were still 12km away from Maromokotro and 780m below the peak.

Local customs protect vulnerable ecosystems

Many places in Madagascar have powerful customs intertwined with religious practice. For example, anyone visiting Maromokotro must bring a white rooster and abandon it in the forest as a sacrifice. We took a substitute almost-white chicken with us, but because we didn’t reach the summit there was no need to abandon it. We ate chicken soup on the way back.  

It is an amazing privilege to be able to see a rainforest untouched by human influence, where even a modern well-equipped expedition like ours couldn’t succeed in reaching its destination. Local customs have a powerful influence in establishing respect for the forest as a special place and help to protect this area of northern Madagascar.