Mount Longonot National Park

Mount Longonot National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Longonot is the volcano on the floor of the Rift Valley an hour and a half north-west of Nairobi, and it is sold as a day hike from the city, the most popular one in Kenya: pick-up at the hotel at dawn, the drive down the escarpment past the viewpoints, three to five hours on the mountain with a guide and back in Nairobi by late afternoon, with the park fees included in most prices and added in some, so check. The sunrise versions leave at four to be on the rim for the light, which is the best time in the hot months; the group tours are cheap and the private tours set their own pace.

The tours that combine Longonot with Hell's Gate, Lake Naivasha or a boat trip make a long day, and the two-day trips with the Aberdares or Naivasha are the weekend. A KWS ranger guide is available at the gate for hire and is useful for the rim loop, where the path is eroded and the drops are real, but the trail is clear enough for fit walkers without one. Independent visitors take a matatu to Longonot town on the Naivasha road and a motorbike taxi to the gate, pay the fee by card and walk; there is no water on the mountain and no shade, so carry both.

Visiting Mount Longonot National Park: what you will see

The park protects Mount Longonot, a stratovolcano rising from the floor of the Great Rift Valley south-east of Lake Naivasha to 2,776 metres, whose name in Maasai means the mountain of many spurs, and it is a young volcano, built inside a caldera of 21,000 years ago and last erupted in the 1860s, with steam vents still smoking around the crater walls. The trail from the gate at 2,150 metres climbs three kilometres of dust and volcanic gravel to the crater rim in an hour and a half, steep at the top, and the rim itself is a loop of seven kilometres around a crater nearly two kilometres across, whose floor is a forest of small trees that no one enters, with the summit on the far side and the path along the edge dipping and climbing over the spurs, eroded to a gully in places;

the full circuit from the gate takes four to five hours and the view from the rim takes in Lake Naivasha, Hell's Gate, the Aberdares and the Mau escarpment on the other side of the valley. Zebras, giraffes, Thomson's gazelles, buffalo and hartebeest graze the slopes below the crater and are seen from the trail on the lower section, with the occasional lion reported, and the birds of the crater include augur buzzards and Verreaux's eagles on the thermals. Bushfires burn the slopes in dry years, and the 2009 fire that ran into the crater is remembered. The satellite earth station at the mountain's foot and the geothermal wells at Olkaria across the valley are the technology of the Rift, and the Longonot town on the highway is the shop.

Mount Longonot National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park gates open at 6 am and close at 6 pm, with the last entry for the full loop by about 2 pm. The dry seasons from June to September and from January to February are the best for the climb, with clear mornings and cool air on the rim; the rains from March to May and in November make the trail slippery and the summit cloudy, though the slopes are green. Start early in any month, since the mountain is hot and exposed by mid-morning, and the sunrise from the rim is worth the alarm. Allow a half-day for the rim and the loop, a full day with Naivasha. Hell's Gate is half an hour away, Lake Naivasha's boats and Crescent Island are the afternoon, and Nairobi is ninety minutes east.