Mount Longido Rock Climbing

Longido is the first mountain you see as you cross over the Kenyan Border into Tanzania at the Namanga Checkpoint. It is a striking mountain, as it rises 4000 feet from the brown scrub-covered plain surrounding it.

There is an established Cultural Tourism Program that offers guided hikes up to the summit. A guide is required on any foray onto Longido. The trail is fairly steep and as you near the top, can be quite muddy. It takes 3 to 5 hours to reach the summit. On a clear day you can see both Mount Meru and Kilimanjaro from the summit.

As of July 2014, the coordinator of the Cultural Tourism Program was a gentleman named Ally who could be reached at 0767 885 185. The fee was about $50 per person per day.

The mountain is primarily granite. There are large granite boulders all over the mountainside and several granite faces, the largest and most striking of which overlooks the highway. The rock quality is solid but very overgrown with lichen on the faces and shrubs and trees in the cracks.

Several large, multi-pitch routes have been done on the west side of the main cliff of Longido, starting as early as the 1970s. Another, multipitch slab route was climbed on the back (east) side of the main cliff in 2017 and is detailed in the American Alpine Journal.