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In a very remote part of Kenya, on the edge of the Great Rift Valley, lies a mountain that the locals call "Poi". It is nestled deep in the Ndoto Mountains northeast of the Matthews Range, about a 2 hour flight from Nairobi. We arrived in Kenya on December 6, and would be once again spending Christmas and New Years on the Dark Continent. After spending a day supplying ourselves in Nairobi, we loaded our gear on a small plane and headed into the bush. Although it may only be a 2 hour flight, we would not see signs of civilization until we returned there on January 10. Once you leave the vicinity of Nairobi, there is no doubt about it, you're in Africa. As we flew over the land we noticed how different it was than West Africa, where the sands of the Sahara seem to dominate the landscape and the people who work it. Kenya is much more lush and green, and although it still has it's sand and dirt, the trees and shrubbery seem to give it that "jungle"feel. As we came in for a landing on the small airstrip, we had to buzz a small herd of camels that were loitering on it. After 2 tries the pilot was successful in clearing the large, gangly beasts from the strip and he gingerly set the plane down and rolled to a halt. The team consisted of four climbers: Steve Bechtel, Scott Milton, Paul Piana and Todd Skinner, and an equal number in the camera crew: Nic Good, Bobby Model and I as videographers and Sandra Studer as still photographer. We were also lucky enough to have a young lady named Saba Douglas Hamilton with us as our guide and interpreter. Saba has lived in Kenya all of her 29 years, her parents Ian and Moria are two of the most famous elephant activists in the world. I started calling her Wonder Woman, because she never ceased to amaze me with her natural bush-woman instinct. After landing we made our way to a small group of cement structures in a place called Ngurunit, and would spend the next few days here sorting gear and finding a suitable base camp at Poi, which was still 5 miles away. All around were the Samburu, a native people that have been living in this area for thousands of years. As we passed their manattas, small round dwellings made of sticks and mud, they would wave and say "Jambo", which is hello in Swahili (although they spoke an entirely different language, Samburu). The Samburu are pasturalists, and live mainly on the goats and cows that they spend their days herding to and from water, grasses and shrubs. They are a gentle people, and other than the occasional cattle raid on neighboring tribes live a very peaceful existence at the base of Poi, which they say translates to mean "very tall mountain". The Samburu would prove to be a valuable asset to our team, and without their help, climbing this mountain would have been impossible. With help from the local villagers, we set up our advanced base camp along the narrow ridge leading to the proper base of Poi. It was a dramatic campsite, with each side of the rounded off, 30 foot wide ridge dropping about 1500 feet to the valley below. The climbers chose a line that went straight up the east face, and work instantly began to gain height on this wall, which we figured was almost 2000 feet tall. First, a trail was hacked through the thick jungle leading to the base, mainly by the sweat and toil of Steve and Scott. Besides the red cobras, scorpions and babboons, other hazards included a cactus that when cut, would ooze a milky white substance that if applied to the skin would burn like battery acid. Scott, the eager scientist amongst us, decided to conduct a test and put some in his eye. Another plant , if brushed against the skin, would render the infected area numb for about an hour. As soon as possible, before the trail was even near finished, work was started on the wall to get the ropes up. On one outing, Paul took a 40 foot fall and upon swinging back in to meet the rock hit his knee. A small puncture in it would eventually turn into a full blown infection and force him to leave for about a week and recover at a local dispensary. Upon returning to the States a month later Paul would find out he actually cracked his kneecap on that fall. One of the main cruxes of living on the ridge was the fact that there was absolutely no water to be found. In fact, the closest clean water supply was back in Ngurunit, about 5 miles away. And so began the daily ritual of supplying our team with its one true necessity, water. Every morning, before sunrise, a Samburu warrior would leave Ngurunit with a camel loaded down with about 20 gallons of water. He would take it to Base Camp, where our cook Kamow would commence to boiling it and pour it into 5 gallon water bags. Then more warriors would put the bags on their backs and make the three hour hike up the steep slabs to the ridge and to our advanced base camp. We would then treat it with bleach before using it to drink and cook food. We would alternate fifteen gallons one day, and ten the next, and we would use every drop of it. A strict ban was placed on bathing with the precious liquid, other than washing hands and cleaning off wounds. This ban lasted for about 2 weeks, until none of us could stand the smell of ourselves much less each other. Even then a very minute amount was used to bathe, about half a gallon. The second crux was the heat. The sun would hit the face every morning at about 7:00 am, a numbing wake-up call to us in our tents which would soon be a collection of solar ovens. We would all scramble for shade in the clumps of small trees or under our makeshift lean-to, and wait until about 1:00 pm when the face would eventually go into shade and you could actually start climbing. Even then, the rock still radiated the heat that it had soaked up like a sponge all morning.