1 Day Mount Longonot Hike

The trip departs Nairobi at 7:30am and the journey takes approximately 1 hour 30 minutes. Your start the ascent at 2150m from the gate and like all good uphill hikes, it will lull you into a false sense of security with a slow gentle rise to the first hill. This gives you a chance to get your lungs and limbs freed up for the second section which, in our opinion, is most awesome. At the end of each section there is a rest point for the preparation of the next part of your journey.
You start the hike from the main gate of the National Park, hiking vertically up the dormant volcano, rising over 630 meters to the rim of the crater at 2776 meters above sea level. The walk is very steep and craggy in parts and a trek encircling the rim and back to the gate is around nine kilometers. This day trek is a good warm up to experience the conditions of a mountain trek and test your stamina for a longer trek, like Mount Kenya or Mount Kilimanjaro.
Despite setting off early to avoid the heat of the sun, by the time you reach the end of the second section you will have surely generated your own heat. This hike is not an easy hike but is achievable by people of reasonably good fitness. Once you have finished the second section, you are on the rim of the crater. There is another respite of slightly less demanding terrain, before making the final climb on the fourth section. This again is a demanding section. As you heave yourself over the rim of the crater you are rewarded with the awesome sight of Naivasha and the Great Rift Valley and a feeling that it was all worthwhile.
Mount Longonot is a dormant stratavolcano (a tall conical volcano built up from many layers of hardened lava) which is believed to have last erupted during the 1860s. The name Mount Longonot is derived from the Masai word Longonot which means a mountain of many spurs or steep ridges. Mount Longonot National Park is only 52 square km, and most of it covered by the mountain.