Mont Ngaoui, Highpoint of Central African Republic

Mont Ngaoui (4,626ft/1410m)

Highest peak in Central African Republic

Dec 20, 2022

Eric and Serge

Serge and I had been waiting in N’djamena, Chad for the past week for final authorization to climb some peaks there. By Thursday evening we were starting to lose hope. We needed six signatures on the authorization circular document from government ministers but were still two short. It appeared that the remaining ministers were out of town and did not have deputy ministers to sign for them. 

Friday is only a half day in Ndjamena with most government offices closing at noon. If we didn’t get the final signatures by then we wouldn’t have time for our objectives. We would still have two weeks in Africa, though, so it made sense to start considering backup plans. 

We considered a handful of options and settled on going next door to Cameroon. It would theoretically be possible to get three country highpoints from within Cameroon – the highpoints of Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Nigeria. The later two are on the border and could likely be accessed from the Cameroon side. 

Cameroon required a visa, but we verified the embassy in ndjamena was open until 3pm friday and could issue us same day visas.

Our return flight back home actually connected in Douala, so we figured we could catch that same flight back to not need to buy a new one. We planned to get a car to drive around the country hitting all three peaks. Two weeks was more time than necessary, but would give us a few buffer days for delays with uncertainty of road conditions and red tape for the peaks. 

Our plan A was still Chad, though. Friday morning we drove to the minister office at 9am  to try to talk to someone in person. Despite it being only a half day, ministers still didn’t arrive until 930am. It turned out the person we were looking for was at a different building. 

So we drove to another building and waited around until that minister arrived at 1030am. We had a meeting in the office and calls were made, but we concluded it was not possible to get the signatures that day. The missing ministers were still out of town and nobody could sign for them until next week at the earliest. But there was uncertainty that it would even happen then. 

By 1130am we officially pulled the plug on our plans in Chad and started initiating Plan B. 

Serge and I rode to the Cameroon embassy to drop off our passports. By 2pm we had the Cameroon visas and I bought us flights on the next available day, sunday, to Douala.

We had to switch hotels that night so found a cheap one a few miles outside of town. Saturday morning we rode motorcycle taxis into town to the ethiopian airlines office and got our flights rearranged to fly home out of douala instead of ndjamena. We went on a short walk that afternoon to the Chari River. We also made final arrangements for transportation in cameroon. We had a friend there who could drive us around for much cheaper than a guide company, and we finally agreed on the dates and price. 

I’ve found in west africa it’s generally either extremely expensive or not possible to rent a car to drive around on my own. The only option other than public transportation is to hire a car with local driver. This has the advantage that the driver will know road conditions, will know which areas are safe, and will help with getting through all the police checkpoints. 

It could be possible to take public buses and share taxis, and this would be much cheaper. But it would take much more time, be much less reliable, and decrease chance of success. 

Sunday morning we flew to Doula, Cameroon.

In the airport we got local sim cards and found an atm that worked to take out cash for the trip. Fortunately for us cameroon uses the same currency as chad, the central african franc. In west African countries it seems most atms are either empty or broken and no places take credit cards. So it is important to stock up on cash whenever possible. 

Our friend, also named Eric, met us outside the airport and we loaded up in his car. Our first order of business was to decide which order to do the trip in to hit the three highpoints. This would be dictated by the weather. 

Mt Cameroon is in the southwest part of the country and was forecast to have bad weather for the next week but then clear. That peak is over 13,000ft high and above treeline, so stable weather is important. 

The other peaks, Mt Ngaoui and Chappal Wadi, are farther north in the drier part of Cameroon and were forecast to have dry weather all week. So we decided to go for Mt Ngaoui first, then Chappal Wadi, then Mt Cameroon when the weather had improved. 

Mt Cameroon is in a national park and requires a guide. Fortunately we had heard it was possible to show up at the park headquarters and arrange a guide on short notice. So, even with the uncertainties in timing for the first part of our trip, it should be ok to leave Mt Cameroon for the end.

Mt Ngaoui is not really documented at all online, though based on satellite images it appeared to be just on the outskirts of Ngaoui village, so theoretically it would be an easy hike. 

Luckily I know two people who have climbed it before – Ginge Fullen and Francis Tapon. They said it would be no problem. Just show up to the village and walk and scramble up the peak. 

I try to be very rigorous to ensure in advance that I will certainly be climbing the correct country highpoint peak. So I wanted to make certain Mt Ngaoui was definitely the highpoint of Central African Republic. 

Interestingly, while a few sources draw the international border between cameroon and CAR going directly over the peak, most sources have the border pushed a few hundred meters east. This is significant because, if true, that would mean Mt Ngaoui is not in CAR and not the highpoint, but instead just an insignificant hill in Cameroon. 

Satellite images show what looks like a border a few hundred meters east of the peak also. This is the eastern extent of Ngaoui village. 

Luckily, however, Ginge had researched this peak very thoroughly with the help of his friend Grant in the UK. 

The border was defined by a 1908 treaty as the watershed and goes directly over the peak. This is documented in the “Encyclopedia of African Boundaries” (Brownlee). I’ve checked this book out from the University of Washington library in the past for researching peaks, and it is an extensive and thorough 1500-page resource. There have not been any border adjustments since then, so that is the official border and Mt Ngaoui is the highpoint of CAR. Google Maps is one of the few sources that has the border drawn correctly.  

What has happened is Cameroon has unofficially annexed a few hundred meters into CAR and is occupying that territory. If you ask people in cameroon, they will say that is cameroon territory, but if you ask people in CAR I’m pretty sure they would still say it is part of CAR. 

This unofficial annexation is actually quite convenient for peakbaggers since it means Ngaoui is a bit farther inside cameroon-controlled land and farther from the sensitive border zone.

This means it is very difficult to climb from the CAR side but theoretically somewhat straightforward to climb from the Cameroon side. Currently CAR is listed as a level 4 Do Not Travel country by the US state department due to risk of kidnapping, crime, and civil unrest. So it is very fortuitous that it is not necessary to officially enter the country to tag the highpoint. 

Our plan was to simply drive to Ngaoui village, walk and scramble up the peak, then drive back. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite that simple. 

We started driving out of Douala mid day and made quick progress. The roads were paved and in excellent shape all the way to Yaounde. We saw many logging trucks heading the other direction and the trees were massive. A few of the trucks just had one log per truck! 

In Yaounde we stopped for roasted maize and caught the tail end of the world cup final on some radios people had outside. 

We originally thought we would just make it to Yaounde for the night, but the roads were in such good shape Eric decided to keep driving. 

By 10pm we reached Bertoua and stopped for the night at a hotel. I usually like to stealth camp but this doesn’t make as much sense in west africa. Its unclear which land is permissible to park and sleep at overnight, and it’s a bit risky for getting robbed. Hotels are pretty  cheap so it is best to just stay in a hotel. 

The next morning we continued heading north. The vegetation changed pretty dramatically from jungle near Douala to be much more arid. 

By 2pm we reached Meiganga and stopped to refuel. Things were looking good and we were well ahead of schedule. We figured we’d just push on to Ngaoui that evening and maybe even tag the peak that day.

We drove a little north of town to Gangi then turned off on the side road with signs pointing to Ngawi (an alternate spelling of Ngaoui). 

The road soon deteriorated to dirt and we reached a checkpoint. There were a man and woman sitting in the shade and I think we startled them. The man jumped up, knocking his gun bouncing on the ground pointing at us! 

Eric yelled at him and he came over and looked at our passports. He seemed surprised we would be heading that way but eventually let us pass. 

The road was rough and we were making only 10-20km per hour in the low clearance 2wd car. It was 100km to Ngaoui and we’d have to return the same way. It didn’t really make sense at that speed, especially since there was a high risk of getting a flat tire far from help. 

We stopped at the next village and asked about road conditions. They said it got worse ahead. One of the guys did have a motorcycle and would be willing to take us to Ngaoui, so that was an option. 

I’ve discovered motorcycles are sometimes the most efficient and quickest mode of transportation to cover rough roads and trails. They can get through terrain that even good 4wd vehicles cannot. 

We also learned there is a daily bus from Meiganga to Ngaoui that leaves at 6am. 

We discussed our options and decided to return to Meiganga that night, and arrange for two motorcycles to take me and Serge to Ngaoui and back the next morning. 

Two motorcycles would be faster and more comfortable than squeezing three people on one. Plus, if one got a flat tire we could then continue on the other. 

The bus didn’t sound very reliable for our timeframe. We actually saw one that had broken down while we were driving in. It also would not give us much flexibility if something didn’t go according to plan, as usually happens in africa. 

Eric and Serge arranged for two motorcycles to take us from Gangi leaving 5am. It would be 3 hours to Ngaoui, hopefully less than an hour for the peak, then 3 hours back. The price was about $30 per person and we optimistically told Eric to be ready to start driving out of Meiganga by early afternoon. 

We spent a little while trying to find a hotel that night. I don’t think Meiganga gets many tourists. One place was $5 per room but didn’t look too safe. We eventually found hotel Marion, which was perfect. 

The next morning Eric dropped us off at Gangi and we were riding motorcycles in the dark by 5am. 

This time the first checkpoint was unmanned, which made things simple since we just rode past. We made fast progress, at least twice the speed we’d  been going in the car. 

We soon reached a village  beyond where we’d turned around in the car. There was a chain across the road but it was still dark out and the military guys for the checkpoint appeared to still be asleep. 

If we were in a car we would have had to stop, but on motorcycles we easily squeezed around the gate and continued. 

Riding over the bumpy roads was pretty fun. At one point we cut right on single track trails and had to walk across a creek. I think this was a shortcut past a long bend in the road. 

Beyond this we came to another village with a checkpoint. This appeared to be less official, and the person talked briefly to our motorcycle drivers before letting us through. 

After 3 hours the riding was getting a bit tiring but we were just about to Ngaoui. With 2km left outside of town we reached a final checkpoint manned by two guys with big guns. One guy had a police hat on and the other was dressed in military fatigues. 

I handed over my passport and Serge handed over a photocopy of his. The policeman was mad at this and made Serge dig out his original passport. 

The military guy wrote down our information, then told us we were not allowed to proceed. This was kind of confusing. It wasn’t really clear to me why we weren’t allowed farther. 

Serge was not deterred, though. We hadn’t ridden 3 hours on rough roads to just turn around easily. 

We explained that we just wanted to climb Mt Ngaoui. We were there for tourism and would leave after just an hour at the village.

Serge was negotiating in french and I didn’t completely follow everything with my rusty french, but they seemed to keep asking what our mission was and what orders we were following. They said we didn’t have authorization to proceed. I was confused why they thought we were on a mission with orders. 

Serge kept negotiating, playing all his backup cards, and eventually the policeman agreed to escort us to the police station in town where we could ask the head officer there. 

(In hindsight, we would later learn they thought we were russian spies on some sort of mission near the strategic border post, and the officers had been alerted that we were coming the previous night from the man at the first  checkpoint. They thought we had fake passports and had concocted a fake story about why we were there). 

We motorcycled a few km and then saw the village with Mt Ngaoui sticking up behind it. The peak had a very distinctive summit rock outcrop with one big block on the left and a pointy finger sticking out to the right, and looked tantalizingly close to the edge of town. 

We followed the policeman to the station and Serge started talking to his superiors. One guy was still in a soccer uniform from a match that morning. I heard one of the policeman say the last white person he’d seen there was 13 years earlier, and another guy had never seen a white person before. Perhaps this helped fuel their suspicions that something was not right with two white guys blasting into town on motorcycles unannounced. 

After Serge exerted all his negotiating skills we were instructed to meet with one final official government person. We walked over to his office and started discussing.

We pointed to Mt Ngaoui just outside his window and explained how we simply wanted to hike to the summit then leave, and it wouldn’t take long. It made the situation a bit more confusing that our reason for climbing it was because it is the highest point in CAR. Understandably, the military guys would say the peak is not on the border but instead completely in Cameroon. I don’t think they were well versed with the terms of the 1908 treaty, nor did they have a copy of the Brownlee encyclopedia handy, but they certainly knew Cameroon controlled the whole mountain. 

After a head military guy came in and  we discussed more they concluded we were allowed to hike it, but the policeman and one soldier would escort us. They said it was for our own safety since it was near the  border with CAR. 

(We later learned that they still didn’t trust our story and actually wanted the escort to make sure we didn’t do anything nefarious.)

A young soldier motorcycled up from the border post and said he had hiked up there before. We motorcycled to the edge of town and then proceeded on foot escorted by the policeman and the soldier. 

We walked past the last huts, then followed trails to a waterhole where women were washing clothes. Past there we scrambled up some rock slabs and then started bushwhacking. 

As seems common for peaks with very little beta there was a bit of confusion which peak we were aiming for. Based on the peakbagger global topo and google terrain maps on my phone the highpoint was the peak a bit farther north on the massif, and this was where the peakbagger dot was. 

But from town it looked clear that the rocky outcrop to the south was highest. I recalled from Ginge’s report that he had scrambled up the rock outcrop and said it was clearly the highpoint. Francis had also told me he scrambled the southern rock outcrop.

This was not a good time to show any uncertainty in where we were going with the policeman and soldier scrutinizing our every move. 

We trusted Ginge and Francis and bushwhacked right to the outcrop. When we reached the base it looked much larger than I had expected from a distance. The boulders were 20-30ft tall with no obvious way up. The soldier said he had just walked to the base before and not the top. 

So we bushwhacked around, looking for a way up. We got almost completely around when I saw a wide chasm in the rocks on the north side. 

I scrambled through some bushes to gain the chasm and then found a chockstone that matched Ginge’s report. 

The other guys were having difficulty following so I scouted out another chasm on the west side that connected to mine. I directed everyone to enter there. 

In the chasm I squirmed up the narrow gap behind the chockstone and then easily made the final scramble to the summit. 

Before the soldier and policeman followed I quickly whipped out my sight level and took a measurement of the northern summit. The northern summit was definitely shorter, which meant we were indeed on the true summit of Mt Ngaoui and the CAR highpoint. I put it back in my pack before they could see something that might be contrived as suspicious. Good thing I didn’t try to bring all the fancy Trimble survey equipment up this peak since there’s no way they would have allowed that.

Serge and the soldier and policeman followed, all making the tricky scramble. It looked pretty awkward to scramble up with the long guns on their backs. 

Everyone was happy on the summit. We had a great view of town and took a bunch of pictures. The policeman even wanted to take selfies with us. 

We got a good view towards CAR and it looked like undeveloped forest in that direction, with the Cameroon-annexed territory a few hundred meters to our east.

We soon called it good and scrambled back down, then hiked back to town. We then motorcycled back to debrief the officials. 

We went back into the government building headquarters and met with the boss. The policeman and soldier explained to him we hadn’t done anything nefarious and there were no problems. We all shook hands, then left for a final debrief. 

We all motorcycled to the military headquarters and sat down in the military official’s office. We again explained how it had gone and he was satisfied. He told us that, unfortunately for us, the peak is actually in cameroon. We just smiled and nodded. Then we all shook hands and departed. 

The policeman escorted us back to his post on the outskirts of town, then we all hugged goodbye and rode off. It was amazing how the situation had changed so dramatically from confrontation in the morning to all being good friends in the afternoon. 

We still weren’t 100% out of the woods yet, though. We motorcycled a few hours back down the road, and eventually reached one of the checkpoints we had snuck around in the morning. 

This time the soldiers were there and awake and they were not happy with us for sneaking around in the morning while they were sleeping.

Luckily we had gotten the name and contact information from the government official in Ngaoui who had given us final approval for the climb. We showed this to the soldiers, but they were still not super happy. Serge exerted his expert negotiation skills, though, and they finally let us through. 

Our motorcycle drivers were anxious to get home and avoid further delays at checkpoints. We still had one checkpoint left, though. 

Just before we got within eyesight of the last checkpoint we diverged right on a small footpath. We followed a fence line for a while, out of site behind tall grass, then followed more trails and popped out behind some houses in Gangi. We wove between the houses and soon reunited with the road on the opposite side of the checkpoint. That was another excellent reason to be on motorcycles instead of in the car. 

We stopped briefly to buy some cooked beef street food then got dropped off back at the Hotel Marion by 330pm. We took showers and started planning for our next peak, chappal wadi.

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