After two hours on the painfully steep Skyline Trail of Malawi’s Mulanje Massif, my lungs were on fire. I’d been high stepping on boulders and searching for traction on slick red dirt, falling down more than once. I was knackered. Once I’d caught my breath and reassured myself that, No, my lungs weren’t actually about to explode, I stopped to survey the vista that had opened up. An awe percolated within me.
Off to my left, the sheer and soaring east face of Chambe, one of the Mulanje Massif’s 62 named summits, rose up into a cloudy white sky. Rolling hills of verdant green plantlife stretched in front of me. And, off to my right, somewhere behind the clouds, the summit of Sapitwa — at 3002 metres, the highest peak in Central Africa — loomed.
I’d travelled to Malawi with two friends to sample the rock climbing on the other side of Chambe. The mountain’s outward-facing western aspect is home to
