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eCard #115 – The Mountains of the Moon
Hiking in the Rwenzoris
Back to Uganda after a 20 year absence. My goal this time was to nab Mts. Emin and Gessi – by my reckoning the 7th and 8th highest summits in Africa – for my “7 7ths by 70” quest. (Different altitude reports put one or the other at 7th…).
OK. I knew it was going to be muddy. There are two dry seasons in Uganda , though “dry” is a very elastic term. One dry spell runs from November-ish until the end of March-ish. The other is in June/July. I was late putting this trip together and couldn’t leave the states until the 2nd of March. I was hoping this would squeeze me in before the wet season began. That may or may not have been the case – all the locals I talked to said the rainy season hadn’t begun. But it was a wet dryness.
I’ve posted some pics here on flickr.
But I’m getting ahead of myself….
We’re going to the Rwenzori mountains in Uganda. In the 4th C. BC Greek philosopher Diogenes wrote of the mythical Mountains of the Moon which were said to be the source of the Nile in East Africa. They remained unknown to Europeans until 1889 when Henry Morton Stanley (of “Dr. Livingston I presume” fame) is credited as being the first to see them. They do indeed provide some waters to the Nile, though it is a trickle compared to the water flowing out of Lake Victoria. Still, they are the highest source of water in the Nile.
The Rwenzoris straddle the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (the former Zaire). In Uganda the mountains form the core of Rwenzori Mountains National Park which is fairly accessible. In the DRC the area is part of Virunga National Park and is mostly not accessible. As you can see, Mt. Emin’s summit is actually over the border in the DRC.
In researching the area I found quite a bit of information about the highest point, Margherita Peak on Mt. Stanley (at 5109m it’s #4 in Africa – it still retains some glaciers). There is much less information on Mts. Speke (#5 at 4890m) and Baker (#6 at 4843m) and essentially no information about Emin and Gessi.
The only photos I could find that I had any confidence were of the two peaks were some fuzzy copies of photos taken by Vittorio Selle during the 1906 expedition led by Luigi de Savoia, the Duke of Abruzzi (of Abruzzi Ridge fame on K2. He was quite an explorer, and was usually accompanied by the renowned photographer Selle who took some exquisite photos around the world using glass plate negatives – an inspiration for Ansel Adams.)
I contacted the Selle Foundation in Turin for some better copies or other views, but they didn’t admit to having anything in their archive – maybe if I had gone there I could have dug something up. The best copies of the 1906 photos I could find showed the two peaks still having glaciers, but were otherwise too fuzzy to be useful for planning a climb. Notes from the 1906 expedition were cursory, “We climbed Emin today.” (They climbed it from a different side, too.) The only other information available indicated that Gessi was non-technical, but wet and slippery. Emin was more technical with some rock pitches requiring being roped, and wet and slippery.
I found reference to a Brit named Henry Osmaston who spent many years in this part of Uganda and was recognized as an expert in many facets of the region. His 1972 guide to the mountains was last updated in 2006 (the year he died), and was out of print. It took a bit of research, but I finally located a used copy in a shop in England and had it shipped to me. He had a sketch of Emin derived from one of Selle’s photos. He also had a photo of Gessi taken in 1963 and included a sketch showing the climbing routes base on that photo.
Then there was the issue of organizing an outfitter.
There’s a good series of guidebooks regions of the world for the more adventurous traveler published as The Bradt Guides. Their Uganda guide summarizes the choice of trekking routes and outfitters:
“Two main hiking circuits traverse Rwenzori Mountains National Park. The longer and newer Southern Circuit is operated exclusively by Rwenzori Trekking Services, an offshoot of Australian-managed Kampala Backpackers. The more established option is the Central Circuit, and is in theory operated exclusively by Rwenzori Mountaineering Services, a community tourism group established in the 1990’s to provide local Bakonjo people with the opportunity to benefit from tourism. Recently, hikes on the Central Circuit, and minor variations, have also been offered by Rwenzori Ranges Hikers Association, a breakaway outfit with reputable backers that aims to offer better-quality services than RMS, and might well do as and when it obtains a UWA (Uganda Wildlife Authority) mandate to operate on the mountain, but has to be considered a bit dodgy until that happens.
Comparing the two routes, the main advantages of the Central Circuit are that it is shorter and slightly cheaper. The ascendant Southern Circuit is gaining popularity, however, for the simple reason that RMS, for all its ostensible worthiness, has a dismal record by comparison with RTS when it comes to quality of guides, safety and rescue procedures, transparency with clients, environmental practices, and pretty much every other organizational facet of a successful trek.”
Armed with recommendations like that, I pressed on.
The reputable outfitter, RTS, only operates in the southern region and could not take me to Emin or Gessi.
My front-end experience with RMS aligns with the Bradt review evaluation. Prices seemed to be pulled from thin air with minimal thought about how the program was evolving. Since I wasn’t able to find any good photos of either peak, I requested some from them. They sent me pictures of smiling people standing on top of a mountain, somewhere, nothing useful. I was never able to determine if their guides had actually ever been up either Emin or Gessi. Their first proposed itinerary said we would spend the night at John Matte hut and then summit Emin the next day, returning to the hut. Then bag Gessi the next day. Either peak is actually a two day trip from John Matte hut. (see detail map above)
The third outfit “to be considered a bit dodgy”, Rwenzori Ranges Hikers Association, accesses the park from a recently opened northern approach. Exchanging emails with them I at least had the feeling they knew what they were talking about, so I booked a rather ambitious 13 day trip to hit Emin, Gessi, Speke (reported in Osmaston’s book to provide the best views of the region and would certainly be in the best position for views of Emin and Gessi, should the clouds ever clear) and Mt. Stanley which is the peak everyone heads for. I figured the ambitious schedule would allow me to sacrifice the secondary goals if more time was needed for my primary goals, though I really had little interest in Stanley or Speke (though I schlepped my big mountain boots, crampons and ice axe to Uganda for them).
Getting to Uganda wasn’t very difficult, but flying anywhere continues to be tarnished with improving efforts by the airlines to maximize inconvenience. Turkish Airlines flies from Boston to Uganda via Istanbul and Kigali, Rwanda – a good connection, arriving in Entebbe at 4AM – just 18 hours after boarding the plane in Boston. I organized transport from Entebbe to Kasese ahead of time, so my driver was waiting for me for the eight hour drive, during most of which I slept.
I met my mountain guide, Jethro (pronounced YEH-ther-oh) and cook (Semei) at the RRHA office in Kasese, and we reviewed my kit requirements (I had everything needed, having acquired a new pair of high rubber boots before leaving home!) and discussed the logistics. In addition to Jethro and Semei I would have another guide, Alfred, along with seven porters to do the heavy lifting. Jethro’s English, and perhaps organizational skills were better, while Alfred has climbed everything in the area.
We would be hiking in on the northern route, but my climbing gear and a food re-supply would come in on the central route four days later … should have been a red flag about our route. Three additional porters would do the re-supply run. And we would also have an armed guard accompanying us as we would be trekking very close to the border with Congo. If you’re not aware, Congo was, is and will be a real disaster with ongoing armed conflict. The border with Uganda is “porous”.
I did sense from Israel, RRHA’s manager, a bit of concern about taking care of me in the manner I would be expecting. They were very accommodating.
Off We Go!
The start of the hike was about an hour and a half drive from Kasese up some dirt roads and through some settlements until the road ended. The first day was a nice hike continually gaining altitude to an open camp on a ridge where lunch was waiting. Jethro suggested we alter the itinerary a bit and continue for another hour and a half to a higher camp which would make day 2 a bit shorter. Fine. This camp was under a tree canopy in “huts” – really tent platforms with roofs which are very nice in a wet climate. When it’s raining you don’t have to flee to your tent – you can relax under cover. We walked for just under four hours on this day, gaining about 900m, setting up camp at about 2430m.
There was a young German couple hiking the same route – their only goal was Mt. Stanley. We shared one of the platforms for dinner, though they had a completely different staff accompanying them. He was an engineer for Airbus in Hamburg (where they build the main structures) – I never got around to asking him what he thought about Boeing’s spate of recent problems. She was an architectural engineer.
They were vegans.
The woman asked me if I had seen the goat running up the trail beside some porters, and she noted with bemused surprise that one porter was carrying a live chicken. “Did you see that?”
“Oh, the chicken is for dinner tomorrow. Wait, the goat was running? That means my stew tonight will be tough.”
In addition to goat stew, I was presented with a plate of “Irish” at dinner. These were boiled white potatoes. I found out later that potatoes were introduced to Uganda by the Irish (French fries/chips or mashed potatoes are called fried Irish or mashed Irish). It’s interesting how these things happen since, of course, potatoes were not native to Europe and were unknown until the conquest of the Americas. Did they originally call them “Incas” when they first arrived in Spain?
Day 2 – Mud 101
I knew it would be muddy. The Rwenzoris are notorious for it. But I thought the mud-fest hiking in El Altar in Ecuador earlier in the year would prepare me for it. It did not.
Day 2 was advertised as a six to eight hour hike to cover just under 10km to Kambeho camp at 3288m. I started out in my light hiking boots, but after a few hours it was time to don the rubber boots. The trail had many ups and downs, particularly after we got up onto a higher ridge. You’d think being up high on a ridge would mean less mud, but you’d be wrong. It was pretty strenuous going up and down on a muddy trail, but I managed to arrive in camp at the max end of the estimated time range. As I trudged into camp the German woman proudly stated that they made the hike in seven hours and three minutes! Camp was set up in “huts” again.
Another good dinner. Chicken tonight.
It rained from late that afternoon until the next morning.
Day 3 – Graduate School of Mud
On the third day the mud began in earnest. After breakfast we waited for the rain to stop before heading off at about 8:30. On this day it took nine and a half hours to complete only 6km. More ups and downs with a big climb crossing a pass. And more mud.
Much of the walk was through forest, so the mud pools concealed slippery submerged roots. I’d look where Jethro or Alfred had stepped and tried to step in the same place. More often than not, I’d land my toe on a submerged root, and when I put my weight on my foot it would slip off the root and plunge my foot into a mud hole of, until then, unplumbed depth. This simultaneously threw me off balance, so my trekking pole would be jabbed two feet deep in the mud to prevent a mud face plant while I tried to quickly survey a “dry” place for my other, now uncontrolled, foot to land. Regain some balance. Pull the trekking pole out of the mud. Repeat. Nine and a half hours.
We had a big climb today, crossing a 3800m pass at the northern end of the Portal Peaks Range. I looked at this as a model for the climb up the peaks, and if you look at the lines on the topo maps it had similar steepness to the approaches of Emin and Gessi. It made the mountains a decreasingly appealing prospect. Going up (and then down) the steep sections of mud was quite a challenge. In the worst places there were rusty ladders to assist. I made a mental note that the ascents of Gessi or Emin would be an additional 1000m vertically in mud (just about 2/3 of a mile), and there would be no rusty ladders….
At some point Jethro asked, “Are you enjoying this?”
“Oh, yes,” I lied.
For tonight’s camp my tent which was pitched under a tarp for added security since huts haven’t yet been constructed here. It rained.
Having crossed the pass, we were now in the valley of the Lamya River. This is the traditional border between Uganda and the DRC and, in spite of the straight line of the officially recognized political border shown on maps, it remains the border in the minds of the locals. Hence my armed guard. Lamya Camp was about 300m from the river at an altitude of 3580m. (see map above)
Day 4 – A Mud Post-Doc
In terms of mud, day 4 was worse. We covered about 9km in eight hours crossing several bogs. Well, I think it was actually just one big bog with occasional “dry” spots.
I haven’t mentioned the scenery much, and that’s because I didn’t look at it much. I was mostly looking where to put my feet. There were a couple of nice views on day 3, particularly at the pass. But on day 4 there were also some nice views around, though no mountain tops were visible through the clouds. I never saw the top of any mountain taller than 4000m. Some of the plants look like they’re out of Dr. Seuss – giant lobelia and giant groundsel.
In the afternoon we descended down to Bigo Bog where the park service had built a boardwalk to save hikers from slogging across the bog. It was nice to not be in the mud, but the spacing of the planks on the boardwalk was such that you had to look carefully at every step. The metal Bigo Hut was taken over by the kitchen staff while I had my tent with a tarp pitched over it, and the porters set up camp in a big rock shelter. We were at 3460m here. An Austrian couple who had come up via the Central Circuit joined me in camp that night – he looked as unhappy as I felt.
Day 5 – A Rest Day at Bigo Bog
I had warned Jethro on the previous day that I didn’t think the climbs were going to happen. I was not having fun. So I decided to take an unscheduled rest day here at Bigo Hut both for rest and to decide if I wanted to continue. OK. I had already decided to not continue. This day would give me the opportunity to change my mind. Or not.
It rained the night we arrived and the next morning. There were some sun breaks during the day, and you could see some lower slopes of the nearby mountains. No summits in sight, though. In the mid-morning Jethro and a couple of porters headed out of camp toward the valley between Emin and Gessi. When they returned he told me they were looking for the trail to Skull Cave (the high camp). I don’t think they found it. No one goes there. We would be slogging on an overgrown trail, if that.
That evening I confirmed I wanted to bail out. So we would head down the next day. I knew this decision would probably mean the end of the “7 7ths by 70” challenge – I would be unlikely to return here. But I didn’t care.
Days 6 and 7 – The Walk Out
When we started walking out the sky cleared a bit so the sun could come out and blue skies appeared, briefly. You could see some of the higher slopes of Mt. Speke – the rain we experienced had produced fresh snow up there. There was little chance to get a sunburn – the sun didn’t last long. It rained about half the day walking out. That’s not quite true. I exaggerate. During some of that time it hailed.
Day 6 covered the same ground that would have been the second day coming into the park on the Central Circuit. It was similar in nature to the second day for our route – mud in the higher reaches, but drier at lower altitudes. As we got lower the Mubuku river became a large gushing torrent as it contained the water draining from all the bogs. We crossed the river and climbed up the opposite ridge to Nyabitaba Hut to a new-ish cabin/lodge that hadn’t opened, yet, so my tent was pitched on the balcony. (There were other cabin-ish structures a bit lower down – I think we were saving money.)
On day 7 I was back in my light hiking boots – no more mud! Leaving Nyabitaba we walked past some groups of trekkers going up. I greeted one European family of four with a jaunty “Good morning!” since I was in a good mood – it was dry, I wasn’t wearing rubber boots, and it was downhill. The father looked at me rather gravely, and his jaw slackened a bit. He didn’t say anything to me, and looked a bit aghast. Then I realized that my armed guard was just two steps behind me. The guy must have figured I was a VIP walking with my body guard, or, more likely, a criminal who had just been rounded up. Coming in on the Central Circuit you don’t get near the border so groups coming that way don’t have guards.
This day was very similar to day 1 for my route, though probably not as steep. It was a pleasant walk through forest with occasional river views. Wildlife was spotted – chameleons of several varieties. If I had come in this way, I would have arrived at Bigo Hut after just two days with much less mud to eat at my resolve…
All in all it was a pretty miserable experience. But the organization was good and the food really excellent. Semei is a great cook and prepared some of the best trail food I’ve ever had … though there was a memorable pizza prepared on the Upper Dolpo trek in Nepal… Oh, and a layer cake at basecamp on Kang Yatze in India…
Jethro suggested I return in November or December when it isn’t as wet. “Sometimes, in some places, the mud is almost dry.”
To Sum Up
So I’ve come to liken this experience as the international version of leaving the house at 4AM to drive three hours to the White Mountains for a winter day hike and, once arriving at the trailhead parking lot in the cold and dark, thinking of the warmth and palmier at the Met Cafe in Conway and going there instead.
I think it’s fair to say that my enjoyment of a place is reflected in the number of pictures I take. In four days, I took 66 pictures. (And for many of those I didn’t bother taking out my camera, I just used my phone.) In contrast, during the first four days of the trek to Kang Yatse last year I took over 500 photos.
eCard #101 – Chile Volcano Climbing, or… Easy Peasy
(Re-issued from email format, now illustrated! Events of November 2022.)
I was getting worried that winter (2022-23) was coming to New England, so I bailed out for South America (for the third time this year…). This trip begins in Chile where I joined the KE Adventure trip Red Hot Chili Trekkers, which included a little trekking to acclimatize for an ascent of Volcán Licancabur (5916m/19,400ft) which looms over San Pedro de Atacama in the north of Chile, bordering Bolivia. We climbed it from the Bolivian side, making good use of the Bolivian visa shenanigans I went through back in August.
I was surprised there were only five of us in the group – one Canadian, three Brits and me. I wasn’t the oldest in the group, this time – squarely the median age, with the baby of the trip at 58….
This was my fourth trip to both Chile and Bolivia (my second trip to Bolivia this year), and the second time I’ve been in this part of Chile, around the Atacama Desert – John and I visited the area in 2017.
Pics from this latest trip are on flickr here. Photos of this area from 2017 are in the Norte Grande album on flickr. See if you can spot the same flamingos….
This trip began with flights from Baltimore to New York to Santiago to Calama and a transfer to San Pedro at about 2500m where the group assembled. We visited a few local sites (Valley of the Moon, Cactus Valley, the flamingo reserve on the Atacama salt flat, and some short walks) to start the altitude acclimatization process. (The pic with the single flamingo in flight is crossing in front of Licancabur. Bolivia is behind the mountain, across the pass.)
Limbering up to get the legs working at progressively higher altitudes, we did a three day trek. The first day was relatively easy and we spent a good bit of time exploring Valle del Arcoiris (Rainbow Valley) with colorful rocks (color in photos doesn’t live up to it). But our leader, Yasu, put us through our paces during the following days. The third day was billed as “easy peasy” after the previous hard day. But it was only easy peasy relative to the day of the climb. (There are only a few pictures from days 2 and 3. It was hot… Day 3 had a few opportunities to soak my head.)
After the third day we visited Tatio Geysers before breakfast, which are at about 4300m and the highest geyser field in the world. (The Brits pronounce these things that spit hot water as “geezers”, and I had to correct them that WE are geezers, and they are guy-zers.) After snarfing down breakfast, we did a short walk to a thermal spring, passing some wildlife – vicuñas and the rabbit-looking things called vascacha. We were back in San Pedro by the afternoon to get our kit ready for the drive to Bolivia the next day.
Crossing the border was seamless, though it took both Bolivian immigration officers to inspect my visa and bless it…. Working this border post looks like a pretty lonely job, though the Chilean building had ping pong and foozball tables for the staff. It was a short walk from the Bolivian customs building to the comfortable Refugio Laguna Blanca/El Alto – the only place in “town”. Literally the only place, in the literal sense of the word. Literally.
That afternoon we drove over to have a look at Licancabur from close up and see the route to the top. We walked about 1 km (downhill) to say we did. The area is dominated by the twin lakes, Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde surrounded by mountains. The white lake is colored by borax; the green lake by copper and arsenic – a romantic setting if ever there was one.
The next morning we did an acclimatization walk up to about 5000m (my phone GPS said 4900) on the shoulder of the adjacent volcano, Juriques (the orange line on the map below). Then back to the refuge to eat and rest for the early morning departure for our summit attempt. Two members of the group opted out of the climb, just not feeling up to it after the acclimatization walk.
The 01:30 wake-up wasn’t too miserable after the long afternoon of rest, and we were at the trailhead to start the climb by 03:10. The sky started getting light by 6, but sunrise is always the coldest time, so I was pleased when some solar powered warmth began to hit us at about 8 o’clock, or so. We were very fortunate as there was little or no wind all day.
It was quite a grunt. One of our trio decided to drop out at about 5600m – our progress wasn’t fast enough to put us all on the summit. From this point Yasu became a slave driver :). He started out at a pace at my limit, taking 50 steps and then stopping for 10 seconds to breathe. I could only manage this for eight or ten cycles and then his 50 steps were my 40 and waning… Just before a final 150 step gradual incline to the summit, there was a very steep 100m rock band – grunting counts as swearing and is only helpful in these situations. (Mark Twain put it, “Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”) Eventually we made it to the top at about 10:10 – seven hours after starting with about 1200m of altitude gain.
The view from the top over the lakes and into Bolivia was pretty spectacular. The crater of this dormant volcano has a lake a couple of hundred meters below the rim which was coated in ice.
As per usual, there isn’t much time to spend on the summit – the climb isn’t over until you’re back down. A quick few bites of food, water, some photos and then don the packs and start down. We took a different route down, following a scree field, but it was pretty rocky and didn’t afford a nice descent. Four hours later, we were back to our starting point. With the amount of gravel I poured out of my boots, I was surprised my feet fit into them (video).
Back to the refuge, pack, eat, drive back across the border to Chile and to San Pedro (with a quick game of ping pong on the way…). We had a very nice celebratory dinner at the over-noisy Adobe restaurant. Everyone but me had to pack for their early departure the next day. I had time to find a favorite coffee shop.
The next day I slept in. I went to a pastry shop. I had lunch. Sat by the pool for a bit. Dinner. That worked so well, that I repeated the process the next day. But I also booked a day trip to climb another, shorter, volcano, Lascar (5590m/18,300ft).
This area is known for it’s clear skies – it is a center for astronomy with a few large telescopes located in the high, dry, clear air. That’s a problem for sunset pictures, though, since a few clouds adds some character to the sky. I was rewarded with partly overcast skies one evening that created an awesome sunset. The clouds also dropped a bit of snow in the mountains, which made the drive to Lascar the next day very scenic.
There were four of us on the Lascar trip – me, a guy from Spain and a Dutch couple. Our guide, Brian, told us the climb was easy peasy…. I guess it’s a standard Chilean route rating system with EP14+ being the toughest grade. The most exciting part of the trip was the drive with music blaring and Brian singing along as we careered along the dirt roads to the most beautiful part of the area – the dusting of snow was a bonus.
The climb actually was easy peasy (EP6?). Not too steep, and I was well acclimatized by this time. It was quite enjoyable. This volcano is active (Ed note: It erupted a few weeks after the climb.), and there are sulfurous steam vents issuing out of the side walls of the crater. The actual summit is about 30 minutes above the crater rim and the view here was really stunning. You could see three 6000m peaks stretching to the south, including Llullaillaco which may feature in a future eCard…
Pack. Move on. I did have time for one more celebratory pastry. This one bigger than my head.
eCard #113 – A < Lovely > Walk in the Khumbu
Readers may recall that my adventure to the Khumbu Valley of Nepal (eCard #105) with the goal of summiting two somewhat technical 6000m peaks (“The Khumbu Classics”) in April of this year was thwarted with some sort of respiratory issue, probably exacerbated by the altitude. I ended up descending from the base camp of Island Peak breathing from an oxygen cylinder. In addition to not reaching the summits of either Lobuche or Island Peak, many of the sub-goals of that trip were unattained – reaching Mt Everest base camp, climbing 5500m Kala Patthar to get views of Everest, and walking in the Khumbu icefall above base camp. Oh, well.
You may also recall at the end of that trip description I expressed little interest in returning, closing with, “Never say never, but I need some time to forget.”
During the summer, not really certain that it was just a health issue holding me back in Nepal (or at least feeling I needed to prove it to myself), I executed a rather busy plan geared toward rebuilding some confidence in the mountains – 4000m peaks in the Italian Alps, walking the Haute Route (with it’s many ups and downs), walking the hills of the Balkans, summiting the 7th highest peak in Europe (Tetnuldi in Georgia at 4900m) and finally trekking to and climbing Kang Yatse II (6150m) in the Indian Himalaya. Oh, and conquering the occasional pastry enroute.
I hadn’t confirmed the trip to India until the end of July – I waited to see how I fared in the Alps and the Haute Route. I still had a bit of trepidation as I hadn’t been above 4300m. But in India I would be climbing again with Rolfe who has become a cheerleader of sorts for my “Seven 7ths at 70 project”. And, lo and behold, India worked out great. I felt really strong all the way to the summit. OK!
Rolfe understood my dislike of leaving projects unfinished, and while in India we had talked about my returning to do the “Khumbu Classics”. Seeing me off at the airport in Leh, he said, “See you in Nepal in October!” …. I guess it took just 5 months to forget.
It’s a Small World, Part I
Our group of 21 (!!) were the first to the airport in Ramechhap, well before sunrise for our flight to Lukla – hoping to be in the front of the queue to get out. Amidst the crowd that eventually formed, I ran into Nema Sherpa from the India trip – the lead on my rope to the summit. He was doing a trip with another outfitter.
Also in the crowd was a real celebrity, though I didn’t go up to meet him. It was Kami Rita Sherpa who summited Mt. Everest for the record 28th time in May (his 27th ascent was one week earlier…). Makes you feel like a real slacker.
Trekking Day 1 – Lukla to Phakding
Arriving in Lukla, we had a late breakfast and then hit the trail. The first thing that I noticed was how many more people there were trekking this route in the fall than there were in the spring. It poured during the day and we mostly dried out by the time we arrived at the tea house in Phakding.
Warming up in the dining room that evening I ordered meat momos for dinner – a Tibetan/Nepali dumpling. When mine arrived I bit into one which had that taste you get when you bite into a wormy apple. It was not pleasant. I asked if anyone else had ordered the meat momos, and one of the trekkers said, “Yes. They’re lovely.”
Wait.
Stop.
Just stop right there.
Lovely? A momo?
My dictionary offers the following:
lovely /lŭv′lē/
adjective
1. Beautiful especially in a pleasing or charming way, particularly reserved to describe young women.
2. When used in sarcasm to describe something which is decidedly not lovely, and the only authorized use for the word when not referring to young women.
So, no item of food can be legitimately described as lovely. It just doesn’t work. Among many possible descriptors, a momo can be good, tasty, delicious, yummy, scrumpdillyicious, or, as in the case of the one I bit into, foul. But lovely?
No.
An illustrative example will help clarify this self-evident issue. Below are two photos. The photo on the left is of a Nepali/Tibetan momo. On the right is Japanese K-POP singer Momo of Twice.
Questions?
In writing, voice inflections which make sarcasm easier to spot are difficult to ascertain. Adhering to the strict definition as indicated above, sarcastrophes should not be necessary, but to be crystal clear, one should write, for instance, “That Big MacTM was <lovely>” .
The comment over dinner that launched me on this came from a Brit. They are routinely overheard squealing about lovely cups of tea. It’s no wonder they lost their empire.
In a loosely related subject, there are a few idioms we use in English to describe dressing things up with varying levels of success. For instance, to “gild a lily” is to add unnecessary ornamentation to something already beautiful. It may also have the connotation of ruining the object in the process. (Apparently, the origin of this is a misquote from Shakespeare’s “King John” who described the unnecessary acts of gilding refined gold, painting lilies, perfuming a violet, or adding another hue to the rainbow.)
“Putting lipstick on a pig” means trying to dress something up that can’t be hidden. With or without lipstick, you still know it’s a pig. Archaic versions of this include, “A hog in a silk waist coat is still a hog,” and, “you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear”. I don’t know why pigs have been held up as quintessentially ugly throughout human history. Piglets are kinda cute, though never lovely.
I have been searching for a good phrase to describe the process of beautifying something ugly and in the process making it worse. I’m thinking here of tattoos. The Germans have a compound word, verschlimmbesserung, which means roughly to worse-improve, maybe the English equivalent would be disimprovement. But we need a good idiom, preferably one that involves pigs. I’m open to ideas.
Back to the trek.
Trekking Days 2 through 8 – Namche to Thagnak
The walk to Namche (3440m) follows the Dudh Koshi (Milk River) – that drains the southern side of the Everest massif. You cross the river several times on suspension bridges with the final crossing on a high bridge and then climb 800m to arrive at the base of the town. Back in the spring, I ate up the hill and continued strong for the next week. This time, the hill was a struggle. I had no strength in my legs.
This condition carried on for the acclimatization hike above Namche to the Everest View Hotel the next day. The day after that we put Namche behind us as we headed toward Gokyo. There’s a long climb up to where we had lunch, and for the last hour I had to give my day pack to one of the guides. I couldn’t breathe and had no strength. I only managed to force down half of my lunch (only the rice), the rest being completely unappetizing.
The afternoon walk up to Dhole (4200m) was a struggle. The natural assumption was that I was suffering from acute mountain sickness (AMS) and was not acclimatizing to the altitude, but my blood oxygen saturation level (%SpO2) was 92% indicating that I was acclimatizing well (mine is 96% at sea level). (Another guy on the trip was suffering and got on horse back. His %SpO2 was 30%. 50% is horrible. He was evacuated by helicopter.)
The dining room at Dhole was like an oven. The heating stove (using dried yak dung as the fuel) was stoked up and the room was crowded with other people. At dinner I was sitting next to the stove, wearing my down parka with the hood up. I was shivering uncontrollably. We couldn’t figure out what was going on. I had a light case of diarrhea. I didn’t have a headache or nausea (signs of AMS), and hadn’t had symptoms all day. We finally surmised that I probably had a mild case of food poisoning, but from where? I started a 4 day course of Cipro.
The next day walking up to Machermo (4470m) was worse. I couldn’t eat at all, and it was a struggle to breathe. I was thinking of bailing out – I wasn’t having any fun. But I decided to go on the next day to Gokyo (4790m) where we would have a rest day and see how things went.
The walk up to Gokyo had some steep sections which were a grunt for me. In the spring it was clouded over and snowed in the afternoon, restricting our views. This time we had great views of 8188m Cho Oyu 30km away on the Tibetan border. I didn’t care. I barely looked up. By this point I had even thrown my camera in my day pack – I didn’t want to deal with it. I took a few photos with my phone.
The ground at Gokyo was covered in snow in the spring, but now in the fall it was free of snow.
On our day off most of the group went to climb Gokyo Ri (5300m) while I just hung around and rested. Finally while ruminating over my illness, I remembered that momo at Phakding…. I was feeling a bit better, though the Cipro didn’t seem to have completed it’s mission. I had a course of Azithromycin with me which I started and it seemed to do the trick. But by the afternoon I was starting to develop a deep cough and chest congestion.
The next morning we started off from Gokyo to cross the Ngojumba glacier that descends from Cho Oyu. Stepping outside of the tea house I caught a whiff from the dining room stove chimney. “Blechh! That’s what’s making me sick!” The smell of burning yak dung.
Crossing the glacier, there were lots of small ups and downs, and I was trailing behind the group on both the ups and the downs. It was a short day, but I arrived in Thagnak pretty tired, and was happy to have the afternoon off to chill out and enjoy the new respiratory sickness that was developing.
My cough worsened after dinner, and I was really starting to think about bailing out. The next day was a big one – we would cross the Cho La at 5420m. It had a very steep climb from this side followed by a long descent on a glacier.
A Tough Decision
In conversation with Rolfe we discussed some of the possibilities, and having been here before, I knew what lay before me. It would hurt going over the pass. A lot. I could be slow, no prob for the group since we had lots of time. We had oxygen with us. A guide would carry my day pack. After the pass we would drop down to Dzongla at 4835m and then it was an easy day the next day to Lobuche where I could drop out for a day or two, if needed, while the group moved to Everest base camp and back. If necessary, from Lobuche it was an “easy” evacuation by foot down the Khumbu Valley.
It was a difficult decision to make. Either way. On the negative side was the possibility of getting really sick and perhaps needing a helicopter evacuation and then being dragged into a hospital. Or, at best if I remained sick, trudging along and not realizing any of the goals I had come for as I did in the spring. I had an inclination, particularly in light of that springtime experience, to bail out now. Fighting this was my desire to go on and finish what I was here to do, along with Rolfe’s fathomless optimism (one fathom = six feet, or about 1.83m) and alternate plans to make it work. And dropping out was not all that easy – I would have to walk down for two days to Namche (where there is a medical clinic), then one more day down to Lukla, then fly to Ramechhap and bus back to Kathmandu.
I think I woke Rolfe up three times in the night with different plan B’s, C’s, and D’s. Ultimately, at about 2:30 in the morning I was awake with a cough spitting up green stuff. I called my travel insurance company in the US to see what my options were, and to put them on notice that I was going to leave the group the next day and start to descend.
Walking Out
One of our guides, Asin, accompanied me down, and he carried my duffel and day pack, and kept an eye on me. Fortunately, we didn’t need to recross the glacier to Gokyo – we skirted down below the end of the glacier on a shortcut to Machermo and to Dhole where we had lunch. (They make some pretty good soups in the region.) I was convinced to continue on for “an hour” (really two) to Phortse Tenga (3680m) , and I’m not sure whether or not I regret it. I was ready to spend the night in Dhole, and this section has the most ups and downs. But we did get it out of the way and spent the night 500m lower than Dhole. The tea house at Phortse Tenga kept the WOODstove (See “Dung Lung” below) going all night so the inn was warm. There were still some long climbs to Namche to surmount the next day.
I got into the Mountain Clinic at Namche at about 1PM. The doctor had a good look at me and confirmed what I knew – respiratory tract infection – but she added to the diagnosis a mild case of HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema). She gave me a half-dozen medications including a five day course of Amoxycillin, decongestant, expectorant, cough syrup, vitamin C …
On the third day to Lukla my butt was really dragging. At one point I shook myself out of a stupor and realized I was trudging along slowly dragging the tip of my walking pole. I can’t imaging what Asin was thinking.
I felt like I was making progress when we finally started ascending Horse-Shit Hill – the place where the trail carpeting provided by pack animals changes from yak to equine. This marks the border where we were leaving Sagarmatha National Park. Not quite to Lukla, but a sign we were getting close. The path rolls up and down and then there’s one very long climb ’til you see the gate announcing your arrival in Lukla. A nice hot shower improved my demeanor.
A few of the trekkers who were taking a helicopter ride to Lukla after walking to Everest base camp arrived the morning after I arrived, and we all got on a morning flight to Ramechhap and then bussed back to Kathmandu. I hung around town for a couple of days since my climbing gear would be coming down with more trekkers later. Before heading to the airport to begin the 24 hour trip home, I popped a couple of lomotils, just to be on the safe side.
Dung Lung
I was still coughing up the last of the Nepal phlegm two weeks after getting home, and I’ve been thinking about the illnesses from the two trips I’ve made to the Khumbu region this year.
Everyone who comes to the Khumbu develops what is called “Khumbu Cough”. It is generally attributed to breathing cold, dry air. And though I have developed a dry cough at altitude before, this is different. It’s a deeper cough. And it hangs on for awhile after returning to warmer, more humid climes.
Many of the symptoms for me this spring and fall were common, starting with loss of appetite. So, loss of appetite, general weakness, shortness of breath (though my %SpO2 was 92% at Dohle and Gokyo) which in the fall then developed into a full blown lung infection. In the spring I did not develop the infection, but I did need to breathe from an O2 bottle descending from Island Peak base camp – I was so short of breath that I couldn’t speak. But Rolfe, thinking it was AMS, asked if I felt better immediately after my first breaths of O2. I did not.
So I’ve been thinking yak dung – breathing the dust and breathing the combustion products. My “realization” as I smelled the fumes leaving Gokyo sparked this. And then I found this paper, Dung Lung: Reactive Airway Disease Syndrome From Yak-Dung Biomass Fuel Smoke. A trekker in the Khumbu is described who was exposed to a high dose of dung stove fumes from a leaky stove overnight in a tea house. He experienced a quicker, more severe onset than me, but the same kinds of symptoms, and notably his %SpO2 was good at 89% at 4300m.
My conclusion is that inhaling yak dung either being burnt or perhaps breathing the dust from the trail causes the Khumbu cough. And I must be more susceptible to it than most, so it develops into a more severe respiratory reaction which then may lead to an infection. The onset came sooner in the fall than in the spring (in the spring the first symptoms started the day after crossing the Cho La. In the fall they started in Namche (though there might be some confusion with food poisoning…)). The sooner onset in the fall may be due to sensitivity from having experienced the condition in the spring.
I had no problems in India in September – no yaks. In 2022 I did a 28 day trek in the Upper Dolpo of Nepal crossing five 5000m passes and had no issues – there were no yaks. In 2019 I trekked for 26 days in Pakistan to K2 base camp and had no issues – no yaks.
I’ll be above 6000m/19,700ft/3280ftm in Ecuador and Chile in January and there won’t be yaks, so I’ll see how it goes.
It might be interesting to try an experiment back in the Khumbu. I could try wearing a particulate mask I have for when I was living in China (though I’m not sure I could trek with it). And/or a “cure” the authors of the paper tried was using an albuterol inhaler which seemed to provide near instant relief to the subject of the paper.
But I don’t think I’ll be the guinea pig…. I need time to forget.
It’s a Small World, Part II
The Kathmandu Guest House is an institution in Nepal. Everyone who’s anyone has stayed there. (I don’t think Elvis was ever there, but the Beatles were.) It’s smack dab in the middle of the Thamel section of town with it’s bustling, noisy, narrow medieval street layout lined with shops selling tat to tourists walking amid the swerving motorbikes. The KGH offers a respite from the hubub. A former princely palace, it’s a multi-building affair built around a garden where travelers congregate for food and drinks and watch trekkers and climbers with their massive amounts of gear come and go.
On the breakfast terrace one morning I kept looking at this woman who looked familiar. I finally went up to her and said, “Are you Valerie?” She was. We met on the trek in Pakistan in 2019. We caught up over lunch and I think I’ve piqued her interest in the trip to Africa…
Oh, did I mention Africa?
African Safari
As you may know, Africa is a continent. As such, it has a high point (Mt. Kilimanjaro) and also has a 7th highest point. As I’ve been able to discern, this is Mt. Emin which is located in the Rwenzori mountains which straddle the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Margherita peak which is right on the border is the 4th highest point on the continent, and Emin is just over the border in the DRC.
Chatting with Rolfe in India about nabbing this 7th summit, it turns out that he has another client he is putting a bespoke trip together for in the Rwenzoris in March ’24. He contacted Bill who had no problem with my joining his trip, and the rest may be history. The details are still being worked out.
But First, an Unfinished Project to Attend to
Remember the end of 2022? The basis of eCard#103 – “Fiasco in South America”? I had done an acclimatization trek in the Atacama desert followed by a climb of Volcan Licancabur (5900m) in Chile to prep me for climbing Ojos del Salado (6890m) and Llullaillaco (at 6740m the inspiration for the “7 7ths at 70”). I got Covid on day 1 and had to quarantine for a week and missed the entire trip…. and then got sick again a few weeks later in Ecuador while prepping to climb Chimborazo (6260m).
Well, I’m going back. This time in reverse order, starting in Ecuador after Christmas and then moving on to Chile for Llullaillaco, Ojos and maybe Aconcagua in Argentina.
Stay tuned.
One Last Bit of Humor
I’ve flown through Doha, Qatar several times now. When departing you always seem to go out through a jetway to a plane parked next to the terminal. But when arriving the routine is to park the plane out on the tarmac and be bussed to the terminal. I’ve always felt we were going in circles on the bus, so this last time I recorded our GPS track. My plane was parked at the upper left of the blue track and the bus deposited us at the lower right.
eCard #111 – The Markha Valley and Kang Yatse Climb.
Checking out of my comfy digs in Vienna in July, I said farewell to the land of good coffee and pastries and schlepped my bag to the airport for the next phase of my summer adventure – off to India!
I hooked up with Rolfe from 360 Expeditions for a trek in the Markha Valley of Ladakh with the goal of summiting 6200m/20,300ft Kang Yatse II.
The last time I saw Rolfe, I was crawling out of the Khumbu Valley in Nepal sick with Covid and who-knows-what, while he was sliding helplessly down a steep hillside, certain death prevented only by stopping hard against a tree breaking a few things along the way. So it was good to see him on his feet. (Spoiler alert. Some egos may have been damaged, but on this trip no one was sick or injured.)
The pictures are here on flickr: India 2023 – Ladakh and Climbing Kang Yatse., You can scan through them and follow along with the daily blog. The scenery can be described as “immense”, so you might want to zoom in on some pics to get more of a sense of the scale.
Arrival
I’ve been to India a few times, and generally I don’t care for it. As much as the cleanliness of Kitzbuhel, Austria gives me the creeps (see eCard #109), India is pretty filthy. And the masses of people are just too massive for me. I suppose many people are enthralled with the mysticism, but I’m not really mystified by much, anymore. Previously I had been to the much warmer south, and the climate in the north is more to my liking, too.
My intro to India this time was jamming through crowds at the Delhi international arrivals hall with my 20kg duffel and 8kg backpack slung on to find a bus to get me to the (wrong, it turns out) domestic departure terminal for my flight to Leh in the north, near the borders with China, Tibet (that seems to be China these days, too) and Pakistan.
But this is where the surprise you often find in traveling popped up and the graciousness of people one-on-one appears. In need of speedy transport to the correct departure terminal (now precisely 1 hour before my flight departure), a guy gave up his taxi for me and translated my need and panic to the driver who agreed to take me for free (since I had no rupees)! It was, in fact, the slowest taxi ride I’ve ever had in my life – we never got out of second gear – even though traffic was light. But I did make it in time – stuffing a crisp 10 euro note in the driver’s hand as I got out; toe tapping as the armed guard at the entry door patiently checked ID’s; shoving my way to the front of the check-in line once I found it (the 28kg load helped propel me); paid my overweight fee; got my boarding pass (“You need to hurry.” Yeah, no shit.); and dashed through security (as quickly as one can dash through security) and to the far end of the terminal; the last gate; where I actually had to wait in line to board! Whew!
Leh is different from the India of prior visits. Here the Himalaya meet the Karakoram mountains, and Leh is at 3300m/11,000ft – high above the hot plains of southern India. The feel is more like Nepal or northern Pakistan than anywhere else I’d been in India. I suppose it’s much like Tibet, perhaps more so, since there are many Tibetan refugees who’ve come here and no presence of Han Chinese imported to dilute/erase their culture. Many Tibetans have been here for a generation or more. (Our lead guide, Karma, is the son of a woman who fled Tibet with the Dalai Lama in the 1950’s.)
This is also a region which might be classified “a mess”, politically, known affectionately as the “Kashmir conflict”. The roots of the current conflict go back to the partition of India in 1947 after Great Britain relinquished control. The border between Pakistan and India in the northern princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was never finalized to everyone’s satisfaction with both sides claiming the same territory. China invaded in the 1960’s to add fuel to the fire, and there is a Kashmiri movement for independence from everyone. There have been quite a few armed conflicts varying from soldiers fighting each other with sticks to hot wars. One of our porters fought Pakistan in one of the conflicts – the highest altitude war ever fought (6000m). Like all good religious, ethnic, nationalist conflicts fueled with foreign money, this one promises to go on for many years.
The Indus River passes by Leh on it’s course form the source near Mt. Kailash in western Tibet to the Arabian Sea. From Tibet it wiggles north/northwest through Kashmir then into Pakistan, hanging a left around Nanga Parbat, turning south to empty in the sea near Karachi.
HOMEWORK: One source I’ve found states that the Indus is the 19th longest river in the world @ 3180km. (The Brahmaputra is 20th; the Ganges 30th.) What are the top 10 longest rivers in the world?
On to the adventure….
Thirteen of us met at the Mahey Retreat in Leh. (I had a view of 6153m Stok Kangri from my room.) We spent a couple of days here since the town is at a high enough elevation that acclimatization is needed, and we used the time to visit a couple of monasteries in the Indus Valley. It’s a fairly welcoming place once the shops reopened at the conclusion of a protest for something. This area seems to be booming with the tourist trade – lots of new hotels, travel shops touting hiking/rafting/adventure, souvenir shops, and shops with foreign provisions (Snickers bars were less than a buck!), etc.
Oh. Yeah. There’s a HUGE military presence here. The airport is actually a military field that allows commercial flights. There are lots of barbed-wire encircled compounds all over the Indus valley with signs that seem to leave little room for negotiation – “No photography. Trespassers will be shot dead.” (Memories of walking around town carrying my SLR in my hand after arriving in Yangoon, Myannmar in 2010 the day after a Japanese reporter covering the government massacre of protesting Buddhist monks was shot dead on the street. A guy asked me if I felt a bit self-conscious. Um. Yes.)
The Trek
Some stats: We trekked for six days to the base camp for Kang Yatse, spent two nights there and trekked out the day after the climb. Not including the summit day, we walked a total of 86km, gained 3960m/13,000ft, and the total walking time was about 39 hours. The longest day covered 18km and took 7 hours to complete. For the climb, add 8km, 1080m/3500ft and 12 hours. (All altitudes, times and distances come from the Gaia GPS app on my phone.) There’s a map at the end showing our route.
Day 2: Distance 4.7km. Start 3800m. Climb 491m. Descent 0m. Camp 4332m. Max Elev 4332m. Time 3:05
Driving an hour or so west-ish from Leh we arrived at the settlement of Rombak (3800m) where all our gear was organized into loads for the horses. (I never got an accurate count, but we used about 20 horses.) We took off on the trail. We walked for just over 3 hours and arrived at camp with ample time to settle into camp and organize a routine. Three of the group were suffering from altitude and went back down to town. They would rejoin us in a couple of days for another attempt.
Day 3: Distance 11.5km. Start 4332m. Climb 700m. Descent 1016m. Camp 4007m. Max Elev 5071m. Time 6:37
The second day of walking was a little challenging since we climbed over the Gand La at 4950m. The group spread out along the trail as we each competed for air molecules. At the pass, a few of us followed Rolfe up to a small lump at 5050m for a view back down to the pass, and we were rewarded with a view of Kang Yatse 36km away.
We dropped 1000m after crossing the pass and basked in the thicker air. We had to keep a wary eye out for all the marmots around. And Lammergeiers were seen soaring above. It was a semi-tough but satisfying day, and our grassy camp at Shingo was much appreciated.
HOMEWORK: Which bird has the longest wingspan? Which can soar the highest? Which yields the largest drumstick?
Day 4: Distance 17.7km. Start 4007m. Climb 293m. Descent 820m. Camp 3500m. Max Elev 4019m. Time 5:57
We continued down-valley, finally intersecting the Markha Valley at Skiu and wandered up the valley for a bit to a welcoming grassy campsite. It was hot today. The group stopped in a cute women’s eco-cafe, but both James and I felt the air a bit stifling inside so we relaxed in the shade under a bridge with a cold stream cooling the space. Arriving in camp we were treated to an icy cold rivulet running alongside – we had a group foot soak. Someone energized the group enough to get up and go for a swim in the Zanskar River – chilly, but not frigid. Great day. Camp was a little lower than the night before at 3500m, but from here on out we would only be going up.
Day 5: Distance 18.2km. Start 3500m. Climb 556m. Descent 199m. Camp 3850m. Max Elev 3905m. Time 7:13
It was a beautiful morning, so we dispensed with the dining tent and had breakfast al fresco. Today was the longest day of trekking and another hot day as we headed further up-valley camping at Umlung. The three who had gone down on day 1 rejoined us after breakfast (there was road access to this point), but unfortunately, they decided to abandon the trip for good after today’s walk.
This day was a visual treat. Stupas/chortens sporting strings of prayer flags appeared in several spots, we had a stop at a tea “house” (under a parachute tent), and rests in the shade. Climbing up a short hill we encountered a super-sized prayer wheel at the village of Markha.
A bit farther on was a huge pinnacle of rock jutting improbably from the valley floor. And just around the corner was a monastery perched on a steep hillside that we scrambled up to appreciate the views. Wow. We kept hoping to get a glimpse of our main goal, Kang Yatse, but not today…
Day 6: Distance 11.3km. Start 3850m. Climb 467m. Descent 122m. Camp 4190m. Max Elev 4201m. Time 4:47
We passed a couple of small settlements today as we inched further up the valley, but early in the morning we had our first peek of Kang Yatse, it’s summit about 2000m above us. Some animal tracks were spotted and an attempt to classify them as snow leopards ensued….
The ruins of a hilltop palace drew our attention and we scrambled up to see what it was about. It belonged to King Singay Namgyal, a 17th century king of Lakakh (his statue adorns a traffic circle in Leh). Passing through the “No Entry” sign we could clamber up toward the tower. Rolfe shooed us away saying it was too unstable (while he went ahead…). There were some nicely carved mani stones (om mani padme hum), some with images of Buddha. Pretty cool. Again, it was a hot day, but we were rewarded with a good swimming hole in the river and had a relaxed lunch break in the coolness of the gorge.
Day 7 and 8: Distance 6.4km. Start 4190m. Climb 863m. Descent 14m. Camp 5010m. Max Elev 5076m. Time 4:21
Today was a fairly short day as we began to climb out of the Markha Valley proper and head toward base camp in preparation for the climb. We got up on open sloping terrain with more views of the mountain and a large community of marmots. Rolfe pointed out the route on the mountain and we could see some climbers on their way to the top.
We camped about 800m above last night’s camp, and I could feel the altitude change. On many climbing trips, we would have arrived in base camp acclimatized midday-ish, spent the afternoon and evening resting and then taken off for the summit on an alpine start early the next morning. In this case we would spend a night here to acclimatize fully, rest the next day and do the summit attempt the next night.
For the rest day there was an optional short acclimatization hike, but I opted to, well, rest. In the afternoon we were issued any rental climbing gear and given some instruction on it’s use. Rest. Eat. Drink. Rest.
Day 9 – Summit Day! Distance 7.1km. Start 5020m. Climb 1081m. Descent 1059m. Camp 5010m. Max Elev 6135m. Time 12:26
Midnight wake up. Throw down some last minute hot beverages and eat a bit more. Make sure there are Snickers bars in the bag. Let’s go! On the trail just after 1AM.
Ten of us started out for the top. The first and longest part, distance-wise, was along rocky terrain, sometimes steep, to “Crampon Point” at the edge of the glacier (5630m) where, not surprisingly, we put on our crampons. Paul dropped out fairly early – he’d been complaining of altitude issues for a few days. The distance from base camp to Crampon Point is about 2.2km and it took us a bit over 3 hours to get there, arriving about 04:11. Since we gained 610m in this section, the average grade was about 28% – like a good trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire!
From this point to the short rock scramble just below the summit, we were on snow/ice.
It took 2.5 hours to cover the next 0.7km as we traversed diagonally from Crampon Point to the top of the rock rib jutting through the glacier – The Balcony at 5920m. The sun came up along the way, and we got there about 06:48. Time for a short rest for water, food and to adjust our gear, refit the rental crampons, etc.
Loman had turned back about 100m short of this point, and Steve and Sally were done at The Balcony and turned back. Sally said she had nothing left in her legs, and Steve said he “hit the wall”. We were now down to six, and the rope teams were reorganized into two ropes of three clients each with Nema 1 and Nema 2 leading them. The average grade for this section was 41%.
Leaving The Balcony we headed up the steepest part of the climb which can best be described as “relentless”. I was last on my rope with Nema 2 Sherpa leading, Colin in the number 2 spot, and James just ahead of me.
As it got steeper the air also got thinner. Colin slowed down in this steepest section, and I tried to urge him on yelling at him to dig deep. We finally crested the steep part and the angle lessened as we got up on the summit ridge proper. Now Colin found his second wind, and the closer we got to the summit, the more frequently I had to yell at him to stop so I could catch my breath.
It was beautiful.
To our left we could see over the lip of the corniced ridge and catch glimpses of the air below with peeks at the steep face of Kang Yatse I. To the right we could look down the Markha Valley to see the way we had come.
Once we arrived at the rock scramble to the summit, we knew we had made it! It took two hours to get here from The Balcony (seven and a half hours from camp) just in time for second breakfast at 08:53. The average grade from The Balcony to the summit was 38%, but I estimate the steepest section was 50%. Exultation, exhaustion, water, Snickers bar, photos, smiling, laughing. I heard words I’ve heard many times before when getting to a mountain top, “That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done!”
And then we needed to go down.
It’s easier. For the most part. There’s more oxygen for your legs, but your legs are tired. And going down, down, down, your thighs start to burn. It hurts. You’re tired. It’s getting warm. I couldn’t wait to get back to The Balcony so I could shed a few layers of clothes – I was sweating. (James had perhaps a more urgent physical need to hurry…) Our rope team was ahead of the other group, and we were ready to continue down just as they caught up to us.
It was not so much a relief as an acknowledgment of how far we’d come when we got back to Crampon Point. We kicked off our gear, packed things away and sat down. More celebration when the second rope team got there. Incredibly, as we made our way down the rocky trail, one of the kitchen lads appeared with a jug of cold juice and cookies!
We quickly stretched out along the trail as we stumbled down at our own pace, and I ended up alone trudging down. I stopped 20 minutes short of camp to sit for 10 minutes. Tired.
Although we had seen a couple of dozen people on the mountain the day we arrived in base camp, we had the mountain to ourselves. The Gaia app reported that our total elapsed time was 12 hours 26 minutes and that our moving time was just 5:46. I think we were traveling so slowly that it thought we weren’t moving most of the time….
Our Nepalese master chef, Topsing, made us pizza that night for dinner. He also made a celebration cake! I have some experience making cakes. I’ve never made one on a one burner gas stove, though.
And just when you thought it was all over …..
Day 9: Distance 16.1km. Start 5010m. Climb 593m. Descent 1781m. Max Elev 5252m. Time 7:10
More celebrating in the morning kicking around in the fresh snow. An end-of-the-trip group hug ensued as we passed out the tips to the staff. They really did an incredible job.
And after the summit, you’d think it was the end of the trip. But we still had to descend to the main valley and then cross a 5200m pass, the Konmaru La, to get down to the road.
I haven’t mentioned the weather up to this point, but it had been absolutely gorgeous the entire time. The night after we summited I awoke at some point hearing rain/sleet against my tent. We awoke in the morning to the mountain in cloud and snow on the ground, grateful it wasn’t warm enough to rain. It made the hike out that day a bit different as the normally arid, dry, treeless hills around now had a coating of snow.
Crossing the pass, we had our last looks back across the valley to Kang Yatse. And then we dropped down in the Shang Gorge where we were treated to some spectacular rock formations studded with green veins of copper ore.
Back in town we were reunited with clean clothes, and had much-deserved, much-needed, much-appreciated (by all) showers. A celebratory group dinner at a local restaurant topped off the trip before going our separate ways the next day.
Rolfe’s parting words to me: “See you in Nepal in October!”
eCard #105 – Himalayan Adventure
I declared 2023 as the year of climbing after coming off of last year’s sickness fiasco in Chile and Ecuador (the subject of eCard #103). February’s success in Mexico has now been followed by sickness, again, in a Nepalese adventure – the subject before us.
The main purpose of this trip for me was to climb two “technical” 6000m/19,800ft peaks (“technical” meaning they require the use of crampons, ice axes, ascenders and ropes, and at least some of the climbing is on glaciers with their hazards). To accomplish this, I signed onto the 18 day trip “Khumbu Classics” led by Rolfe Oostra of 360-Expeditions (very highly recommended). The major and minor checkpoints of the trip (with spoilers):
Fly to Lukla (“the most dangerous airport in the world”). Check, but they wouldn’t let me at the controls.
Trek to Gokyo Lakes. Check.
Climb Gokyo Ri (5360m). Check.
Cross the Cho La (pass) (5420m). Check.
Trek to Everest Base Camp (5364m). Nope.
Climb Kala Patthar (5550m) to get views of Everest. Nope.
Climb Lobuche East (6119m). Nope.
Climb Island Peak (6189m). Nope.
My photo album on flickr (organized by day) can be found here.
This was a “tea house” trek where we walked between small settlements and stayed in guest houses. They were typically arranged with one large dining/hanging out area that had a wood stove in the center of the room, though “wood stove” is a bit of misnomer since they were fueled with yak dung. Sleeping rooms were unheated, but provided with comfy duvets, though I usually snuggled into my sleeping bag. Toilets of various design were down the hall, cold, and usually clean-ish. After Namche Bazaar, electricity was provided by solar power, and any extraordinary use of electricity (like for charging phones or cameras) was for a fee. The farther up we went, the more beer and toilet paper cost – everything is carried in by porters or yaks. A couple of places had “hot” showers for about the price of a beer (1000 rupees, or USD$8).
There were 12 of us in the group, with 7 signed on for climbing the 6000m peaks and 5 for the trekking only. Rolfe was our leader, and Raj our sirdar. Both great guys who made things run smoothly. I never got an accurate count on the number of porters we had, but roughly 6 or 7, and we began with 3 trekking/climbing guides, Addy, Nirjan and Phurba. Others were added later for the summit attempts.
The trip started out well – we survived the flight to Lukla (2840m) and had nice weather for the first few days spending the nights at Phakding (2610m), Namche Bazaar (two nights at 3440m) through Dhole (4038m) and on to Machermo (4470m). One of the things I liked about this trip was the good acclimatization program making steady progress with reasonable altitude gains and a couple of two night stays to build our acclimatization.
On to Gokyo
Snow fell from the sky and covered the ground as we headed up to Gokyo (4790m). We left one of the trekkers behind in Machermo, seeing him helicopter out the morning we departed. He had chest pains and labored breathing the night before.
I was feeling really strong on this part of the trek – leaving the group behind regularly, not because I was walking any faster then they were, but I felt good and didn’t want to take breaks (I’m used to hiking alone, anyway.) I just wanted to go.
We spent two nights at Gokyo so that we could climb Gokyo Ri (5360m) on the morning after our arrival. This got our lungs working with less oxygen after having had a good night’s sleep. As strong as I felt walking the trails, I did suffer with the altitude on the way to the top. Some nice views of the valley were obtained and we could look over the Cho glacier we would be crossing the next day toward the Cho La. (The map shows it as Ngosumbu Glacier, but it drains down from the 8188m giant Cho Oyu lying just north of Gokyo on the Tibetan border.)
No one in the group took Rolfe up on his offer to go up a second time for the sunset. He went alone.
Another of our number was faltering in Gokyo, and she started walking down the morning the rest of us moved to cross the glacier to Thagnak/Dragnag (4750m) – a short trekking day (2.5 hours). This was the last we saw of Addy until back in Kathmandu as he guided her down. She ultimately was “heli-ed” out and spent several days in the hospital in Kathmandu diagnosed with Covid, pneumonia and HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema).
Turning East to the Cho La
The Cho La crossing (5420m) was pretty nice. Crossing from the west we climbed the steepest side and there was a via ferrata installed – wire cable nailed into the rock as a safety line. There had been some snow recently, so I donned my micro-spikes fairly early in the ascent – I was carrying them with me; might as well use them. Again the altitude with steep terrain had me sucking for oxygen and slowed me down, but the pain was rewarded with great views from the pass looking back from where we’d come and out over the glacier we would descend onto on our way to Dzongla (4800m).
Dzongla and Lobuche
Dzongla is where the first symptoms started coming on that something was not right with me. I could only eat half of my dinner the night we arrived, and at breakfast I could only manage a third of a bowl of muesli. Not much fuel for a full trekking day. As we rounded the corner to meet with the Khumbu Valley (with Lobuche peak to our left), I was feeling pretty punk. I was blaming it on not recovering from the effort to cross the Cho La, but I was starting to get sick. I was dragging behind the group as we arrived in Lobuche village and couldn’t eat any lunch.
At this point our schedule changed to take advantage of some good weather (and avoid some bad weather). Originally we were to spend the night at Lobuche village, go up to Everest base camp for a night before returning to Lobuche before climbing Lobuche East with those extra days of acclimatization in our pockets. Instead, we moved on after lunch to Lobuche high camp (5500m) and would make the summit attempt that night.
This was going to be a problem for me…. With even less fuel in my tank I trailed behind all the way to high camp. At dinner in camp, I could only force down three forks full of pasta. It was completely unappetizing (to me) and hard to look at, let alone eat. Normally, I would have wolfed down two plate-fulls.
Lobuche East. Puking: Natures way of advising you to do something else.
When midnight rolled around for our summit departure, I dutifully donned all my gear and started off on the trail, knowing I was not going to make it. I was way off the back of the pack at the start, accompanied by the ever patient Phurba Lakpa Sherpa. After an hour, I vomited (dry heaved, more accurately, since I had no food in me), took a few more steps and looked up at a steeper section of trail. I turned to Phurba and said, “Let’s go down.” He agreed, and kept a wary eye on me as I stumbled back into camp. He deposited me in front of my tent and dug a coke out of my pack. I never drink soft drinks at home. (Ok, well, I do drink tonic water, but only when I can dilute it with gin.) But this coke was good.
Once he was satisfied I was OK, Phurba turned back to catch up to the group. But I guess my next dry heave was loud enough to carry a couple of hundred yards as he came back to check on me, woke up the “kitchen boy”, and together they made sure I got my boots off and was in my sleeping bag, and instructed me to holler if I needed help, before he headed off again.
I got up with the sun and was able to get some shots of people nearing the summit, then went back to sleep some more.
When the group returned, they were pretty exhilarated and exhausted. Five of the six who had continued on were able to summit. – Steve was also starting to get sick with a chest infection and retreated early. After a short rest we packed up and moved back to Lobuche village for the night.
As I pondered my barely eaten dinner that night, I resolved that if I didn’t feel better in the morning, I would go down.
Tough Decision
The next morning we were to walk up to the village of Gorak Shep (5170m), visit Everest Base Camp (5365m), and walk into the Khumbu Icefall, with the plan for the day after to climb Kala Patthar (5550m) for views of Everest. This part of the itinerary was both for being there and to acclimatize. The plan for the group after EBC was that the trekkers would walk/helicopter out and the climbers would continue for Island Peak.
But I didn’t feel better in the morning, so at breakfast I told Rolfe that rather than go higher, I should go lower. Headache, ear ache, no appetite, upper respiratory unhappiness – perhaps a combination of altitude and some illness. Performance-wise, while earlier on the trip I was at the head of the group, now I couldn’t keep up. Perhaps I had what had struck the two who left the trip a few days before.
I assumed I would go straight down to Namche Bazaar and just hang out for a few days until the group came back down after all the climbing. But Rolfe suggested I go down 700m to Dingboche and have one and a half rest days there. The group would be there in two days time, and perhaps I’d recover well enough to go up to climb Island Peak. So I was provided with a porter to carry my duffel and Pemba Sherpa to act as my guide. Pemba had just joined the group as one of the climbing Sherpas.
I felt immensely better half-way down (the change a few hundred meters makes is amazing) and was already feeling optimistic about getting back in the swing and climbing Island Peak. Pemba didn’t go lightly on me – the “3 hour” walk took us 2:20. On the way I learned that Pemba had summited Ama Dablam 3 times and several 8000m peaks, each several times. He has also summited Mt. Everest 9 times. I really felt like a moron following him down the trail. Earlier this same week there were three Sherpa deaths on Everest, and it turned out that one of them was Pemba’s brother-in-law. Pemba’s wife had already forbade him from climbing Everest. Now he was reduced to shuttling sick foreigners down the trail.
Our trip up to Gokyo Lakes had been off the main trail going up to EBC, so we didn’t see too many people going up or down. But once we got to Lobuche village we were on the main trunk line between Namche and EBC. About half-way down to Dingboche there were literally (in the literal sense of the word) hundreds of people coming up. It was as if someone blew a whistle in Dingboche and all the guesthouses emptied at the same time. It looked like the zombie apocalypse.
Dingboche
There was a great cafe in Dingboche, the Cafe Himalaya, which became my home for a day and a half. It was much more comfortable than the unheated Yak Inn tea house which didn’t fire up the dining room dung stove until late in the afternoon.
The group arrived with their tales of adventure at EBC. It seems that it wasn’t necessarily bad that I didn’t get there – the group’s universal opinion was that Gorak Shep is a shit hole and it’s most redeeming feature is the path leading out of it. The weather was now poor (which is why the attempt on Lobuche was moved up in the schedule) and Kala Patthar was in cloud, so they didn’t bother to climb it, and didn’t see Mt. Everest. The one thing I did miss out on was the opportunity to walk a little in the Khumbu Icefall – other than the extreme altitude, it’s the most treacherous part of climbing Mt. Everest and starts from base camp.
The Push to Island Peak, Where Oxygen is Your Friend
Regrouping in Dingboche, we were off to Island Peak base camp (~5000m). About a quarter of the way there I was back to not feeling so good and was falling off the back of the group. We stopped in a tea house in Chhukhung, and when I sat down I said to myself that this was as far as I was going. But after a bowl of ramen I felt better and continued on to Island Peak. Rolfe attempted to take my day pack from me to give to Nirjan Rai to carry, but I said, “Rolfe. If I can’t carry my day pack to Island Peak, I shouldn’t be going there,” and he relented. I did feel better getting up to base camp, but certainly not fully fit.
Same routine as on Lobuche. Feeling crappy, meager appetite, but I was able to get some sleep in the afternoon/evening so at our midnight wake-up call I was rested. I followed along at the group pace for about two hours, but then felt the strength drain out of me. By the time we got to the old high camp (5500m), I was dragging. I could have gone farther, but it was very unlikely I’d be able to summit. And turning back later would have required one of the Sherpas to go down with me and reduce their number climbing with the group where they might be needed. So I went down from here, getting back to camp at about 04:30.
Then I slept for 30 hours. I raised myself only to go to the dining tent to eat what I could, or to rush to the toilet tent for bouts of what is best described as explosive diarrhea (which would have been much less fun during a glacier crossing tied into a rope….).
And then the walk out. I couldn’t even keep up with the group walking downhill. At the first small rise I deliberately took tiny steps, and after cresting the hill I walked even slower to catch my breath. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe. I was doubled over.
Rolfe came up to me and asked a great question to fully assess my medical condition, “Would you like Nirjan to carry your pack now?” I nodded yes (I couldn’t speak). And then Phurba hooked up the oxygen cylinder he was carrying to a mask and put it on my face. I was expecting instant euphoria, but the best I got was the ability to breathe. On oxygen I could keep up with the group, downhill.
Walking Out. Listen to your mother ….
We stopped again for tea in Chhukhung, lunch in Dingboche and continued down to Pangboche. The lower we got, the better I felt, and I got rid of the oxygen tank in Dingboche.
It was a crummy day; rainy, snowy. The trail wasn’t particularly slick, but walking took a little care. The valley here has steep walls, and the trail is several hundred feet above the raging river.
As I was walking along I heard this sort of slipping sound behind me, and I caught a flash of a red jacket go by in my peripheral vision. I turned to look and saw Rolfe plummeting down the 70 to 80 degree slope, sliding and rolling as he went. I heard Lynda scream from the back, but didn’t hear any sound coming from Rolfe in the surreal vision before me. He seemed to stop a couple of times – I assume he hit a rock or stump – only to continue rolling until a tree finally stopped him for good. I estimate he fell 100 feet. He was motionless. I figured he must be dead. Looking straight down, I felt helpless in doing anything about it.
Phurba was ahead on the trail and much lower, and very quickly traversed across to him. Rolfe came to, shook it off and was able to climb back up with Phurba’s help. He broke ribs on both sides and sprained his ankle…. but, wow. He thinks having a full pack saved his back. I think it was very fortunate that the hillside was covered in vegetation and protected him a bit from the rocks. We heard that recently some other people fell in the same spot and one broke his jaw. Last year two people were killed in the same place as they fell all the way to the river.
So, listen to your mother. Don’t get too close to the edge.
Long Walk Out
From Pangboche it was two long days’ walk back to Lukla with a night in Namche Bazaar. We got some final views back to Everest and Ama Dablam from Tengboche monastery. The walk from Namche to Lukla was 7.5 hours. Rolfe walked out as far as Namche and took a helicopter to Lukla. His trip to Lukla took 7 minutes.
After a night in Lukla we rose at 6AM hopeful to get an early flight out. The weather was not cooperating – drizzle, fog. After sitting around all morning and into the afternoon, we were pretty much resigned to spending another night in Lukla, but planes started coming in, and we were airborne to Ramechhap in a Twin Otter at just past 3PM. After a horrible bus ride, we got back to Kathmandu at about 11PM.
Epilogue
It took 12 days after arriving home before my lungs cleared out.
Ordinarily I’d be thinking about going back to bag the peaks I missed. But I really don’t have much desire to. The scenery is unbeatable – especially once you get above Namche Bazaar. But getting to Nepal (minimum 25 hours from the US east coast), dealing with the pollution of Kathmandu (which I also wrote about on my last trip there), the transport difficulties, and then the days spent getting to the peaks are probably more than I’m willing to do again. Never say never, but I need some time to forget 😉
Bolivia 2022 – The Cordillera Real and Other Stuff
In August I revisited Bolivia after a 26 year hiatus, joining a trek along the Cordillera Real – the northern part of the Andes in Bolivia that extends south from near the Peruvian border for 125km/80mi. This trip was with KE Adventures and led by local mountain guide Juan Villarroel.
Photos on flickr:
- Bolivia 2022 – Cordillera Real Trek
- Bolivia 2022 – La Paz, Sajama, Uyuni Salt Flats
- Bolivia – High Adventure 1996
I had been to Bolivia twice before. The first time, in 1985, I traveled south from Peru with three friends from Pittsburgh. We came across Lake Titicaca – the largest lake in South America and often referred to as the highest navigable lake in the world, though I’m not sure what type of vessel has to be navigating to make this claim. (Land-locked Bolivia has a naval presence on the lake.)
The notable lake experience we had in ’85 was taking a boat cruise to one of the Peruvian islands where we were stuck overnight due to rough water impeding our return to Puno. That night we drank the town dry, each having had one beer.
Trying to Breathe on Arrival
This year we would be hiking above 4000m almost the entire time and would cross four 5000m passes, so the first few days of the trip were spent on Lake Titicaca to start the acclimatization process at about 3800m. Acclimatization actually began as soon as my plane landed at El Alto airport – at 4061m/13,325ft it is the highest international airport in the world. Carrying my duffel bag to the waiting minivan had me huffing. Our hotel in La Paz was a couple of hundred meters lower in La Paz proper – in the huge ravine that descends from El Alto.
Other than the view of La Paz spilling down the ravine with Illimani looming in the distance, the city was unrecognizable. It seemed so much more affluent than on prior visits, with many tall, modern buildings. And traffic. The witches market seemed more modern. Tourist-shop-central Calle Linares was spruced up and (almost) pedestrianized.
A major addition to the city are the dozen or so, spotlessly clean, interconnected gondola routes comprising “Mi Teleférico”, that traverse the city, gliding over the hilly terrain and traffic below. The first line was inaugurated in 2014. It must be the longest cable car system in the world (HOMEWORK: Is it?), but though heavily subsidized it does not seem heavily used – nowhere near to capacity. Taking four lines on a circuitous route from downtown to our hotel in the Zona Sur took about an hour, cost just over 1 USD, and was much more relaxed than a taxi ride.
The Altiplano and Lake Titicaca
Enroute to Lake Titicaca, we visited the ruins of Tiwanaku, a civilization that pre-dates the Inca empire, but left few monuments of it’s extent and longevity. The Tiwanaku culture lasted from about 600 to 1000AD (the Incas were only around for about 90 years), and the capital city here on the southern end of Lake Titicaca may have had as many as 20,000 inhabitants at it’s peak. A visit to the ruins is a bit of a disappointment, though. The site covers about 4 sq.km, but there isn’t much to see, and what is there suffers from questionable over-restoration.
This is the altiplano – a huge flat expanse 100 miles wide extending 700 miles from southern Peru almost to the Argentine border with an average altitude at about 3700m. The geology is interesting. The Nazca tectonic plate dives under the South American plate along the western contour of the continent. It is this subduction that creates all the volcanoes along the length of South America – the southeastern fringe of the Pacific Ring of Fire. And large volcanoes dot the length of the western altiplano. (Ojos del Solado, the highest volcano in the world, is just over the border in Chile between the Atacama Desert and the altiplano.) On the eastern side, the Andes are generally not volcanic. They are uplifted and folded mountains – granitic mountains in Bolivia pushed up to 6500m.
If you look closely at the eroded ground in La Paz you will see what looks like compacted river debris – rounded pebbles and rocks in a strata of dirt. It isn’t what you would call a concretion – it isn’t solid enough or cemented together. Looking at the depth of the layer in the La Paz valley (several hundred meters thick) it is difficult to imagine the scale of the mountains and rivers that must have existed to supply and erode all this material and deposit it here. It reminded me of looking at the sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon in Arizona, imagining the mountains that must have once existed and been eroded to create those layers. Massive stuff.
To the west of the altiplano in northern Chile is the Atacama desert – one of the driest places on earth. And to the east is the Amazon basin (think rain, humidity, mosquitoes, itching).
Chilling Out and Acclimatizing
Our acclimatization on the lake was comprised of short walks around the town of Copacabana, short walks on Isla del Sol and Isla de la Luna (the Islands of the Sun and Moon), and lake trout at every meal. (Including, but not limited to, trout lasagna – sounding nauseating, but surprisingly edible.)
Ah, trucha!
From many spots on the lake you can see the hulks of the peaks Ancohuma/Janq’u Uma (6427m/21,080ft) and Illampu (6368m/20,887ft), the third and fourth highest peaks in Bolivia and the northern end of the Cordillera Real. You can also look south from the lake over the flat expanse of the altiplano and see the hulk of Illimani 60 miles away without seeing any trace of La Paz tucked in it’s ravine in-between (see opening photo).
The Trek
Time to trek! This experience warrants comparison with the Upper Dolpo trek in Nepal that I did earlier this year:
| Cordillera Real | Upper Dolpo | |
| Number of Trekkers | 10 | 14 |
| Total Days for Trip | 20 | 30 |
| Days on the Trail | 13 | 25 |
| Rest Days | 1 | 5 |
| Food1 | Very good | Good, at first, then not. |
| Days with Porridge for Breakfast | 0 | 242 |
| Number of Snow Leopards Spotted | 0 | 1 |
| Toilet Tent | Palatial | Just big enough |
| Toilet Tent Zipper | Crappy3 | Crappy3 |
| Total Distance Trekked | 67mi / 107km | 167mi / 269km |
| Daily Average Distance | 5.6mi / 8.9km | 8.3mi / 13.5km |
| Total Climbing | 6900m / 22,600ft | 11,370m / 37,290ft |
| Average Daily Ascent | 575m / 1883ft | 569m / 1864ft |
| 5000m Passes | 4 | 6 |
| Minimum Altitude | Challapampa (Trail Day 11) 2820m / 9260ft | Dunai (Trail Day 1) 2000m / 6560ft |
| Maximum Altitude | Pico Austria 5386m / 17,666ft | Sangda La 5515m / 18,089ft |
| Max Altitude Gain in One Day | 1243m / 4076ft | 900m / 2953ft |
Notes:
- In Bolivia we were resupplied often (once by taxi). In Nepal resupply was impossible so the food quality had a long, inexorable decline with a crash and burn at the end.
- There is no excuse to have porridge. Ever. Let alone every day.
- So to speak
The scenery was fantastic. You can page through photos of the days sequentially on flickr, but I’ll just hit some of the highlights here. The first two days we had long views of the cordillera and could see most of the line of mountains we would be in, but then we got into the mountains, following and crossing many valleys dotted with lakes.
We had seen some unsettled weather over the mountains from the islands on Lake Titicaca, and we woke to snow in the morning of our second camp and had some stuff coming out of the sky during the walk that day. But the rest of the trek was in fabulous weather.
Trekking here is not remote like the trek in Upper Dolpo was. There are roads in many of the valleys, many of the lakes are dammed to raise the level for water storage and/or equipped for hydroelectric power (the cities of El Alto and La Paz are not far away). But there were also few settlements – just a few herders’ huts until the last few days when we were on a main route to the Yungas region.
In 1996 I had climbed four peaks in the Cordillera Real. On this trek we walked beneath three of them, so it was like old home week for me.
There were many passes to cross, and each time we gained a bit of altitude we could get a peek at some of the larger mountains in the distance.
One highlight of this trek was the three days spent around the Condoriri massif. (Condoriri means “home of the condor” in Aymara, but I didn’t see any. I guess they weren’t home.)
The first day going up toward the base of Ala Izquierda (the left peak – the condor’s outstretched right wing) required a bit of scrambling and was the only place on the trek where Juan insisted we be on a rope belay. While waiting for each other to negotiate this spot we lolled in the sun and enjoyed the view across a turquoise lagoon created by the glaciers spilling down the mountain.
After lunch that day we nipped up to the trek’s high point on Pico Apacheta/Austria at 5386m/17,666ft with great views across to Condoriri. (Check out the photos for days 11-13 on flickr.)
In ’96 I climbed Tarija and Pequeño Alpamayo at the southeastern end of the massif which are of similar height to Pico Austria, but require climbing a glacier to get to. Pequeño Alpamayo used to have a beautiful snow ridge, but today the decline of all the glaciers has exposed a lot of rock.
I was a bit disappointed to not walk past the base camp of Huyana Potosi (6052m) to visit my former stomping grounds, but our campsite in the valley below afforded great views of the peak, it’s glaciers and some climbers on the way up.
The second highlight for me was the trek from the camp below Huyana Potosi, over a 4900m pass that required some scrambling and then a long descent down a really beautiful valley to camp at Sanja. (Photos for day 15.)
We caught a glimpse of the summit of Telata (5336m) which has a steep 1000m wall on it’s north face, for the adventurers in my audience…. (One of the nice things about Bolivia vs. Nepal is that you generally don’t need government permission, or the associated permits and fees to trek or climb.)
The final highlight was during the last two days walking along an ancient stone paved road 2000m up from the Yungas (the cloud forest) to our final pass, La Cumbre, at 4900m. It was a highlight both for escaping the mosquitoes of the Yungas and appreciating the engineering feat of whoever built the road. Before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century there were no horses in the Americas. Llamas can only carry small loads, and they don’t like to – they share the grumpiness of their camelid relatives, camels. The human effort to build this was immense.
All in all, this trek was a great experience.
Sajama, or Bust (Bust)
I considered the Cordillera Real trek as a good fitness and acclimatization program to do an excursion up a couple of the volcanoes on the Chilean border. This idea first came to me in 2017 when John and I visited Lauca National Park in northern Chile. (Report here.) From Lake Chungará in Chile there was a beautiful vista of the volcanoes Parinacota and Acotango on the Bolivian border. The top of Sajama (the highest peak in Bolivia) was visible 20 miles to the east.
I contacted local guide Javier Thellaeche of Andean Summits (highly recommended) before I left home and organized a week in Sajama National Park to climb 6052m/19,850ft Acotango as an acclimatization peak and then do the three day climb of Sajama (6542m/21,460ft). We would have mule and porter support on Sajama.
It was cold. Hostal Sajama has cute little bungalows, but is most notable for it’s lack of heat and hot water.
Even though there is this big honking mountain here, the reason the national park was created was to protect the Queñoa trees which were being over-harvested for firewood. Though the trees look like large shrubs, they actually form what is regarded as the highest forest in the world.
A pre-dawn start in the Land Cruiser wended us around the long line-up of trucks waiting at the border to enter Chile and past a sulphur mining operation in the foothills of Acotango. We drove up to 5400m/17,700ft which was higher than any point on the trek. (And higher than I’ve ever been in a car before.)
I figured this was going to be easy – just 650m up to the summit. But I started out slowly, and got slower. I just wasn’t performing well, and when we got up to where we were walking on penitentes I didn’t speed up. They are irregular lumps in the ice that can be taller than you. These were not so big, but very tiring to walk across. By the time we got to about 5800m I could see the remaining way to the summit following around the old crater rim along a continuous path of penitentes. There were two climbers ahead of us, and the distance between us and them was steadily increasing. I thought it would take about everything out of me to get to the top, but then we would probably want to descend, as well. So I made the decision to retreat.
On the way back to the hostal we talked about some options. Staying in the park to do a few things (but there wasn’t much to do); a local trek (but it wouldn’t be interesting after the Cordillera Real); head south to the Uyuni Salt Flats. I had wanted to get to Uyuni anyway and was considering staying on in Ecuador for a few days to go there. So that became the new plan.
In retrospect, even though I felt it was unlikely I would have made the summit, I’m a little sorry I didn’t push to start the climb of Sajama. Day 1 would have been a mule-supported hike to base camp at 4800m (the hostal was at 4300m). That should not have been a problem. Then on day 2 we would have gone up to high camp at 5800m which would have been a long day, if Acotango was any indication. Then the plan called for a midnight departure for the summit at 6542m which was unlikely. At the very least it would have given a muleteer and a few porters some much needed employment.
Salar de Uyuni
It took most of the day driving along the flat landscape viewing towering volcanoes in the distance to reach Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni salt flat).
We stopped for lunch at Poopó, an abandoned mining town with Lago Poopó shimmering in the distance, passed through bustling Oruro and on to the small settlement of Jirira where Javier knew a nice hostal to base for a couple of nights. No heat, but great blankets. And hot water. Good food. No porridge. Lovely little, very comfy place, right on the northern edge of the salt flat. Hostal Doña Lupe.
The salt flat is big. Well, it’s the biggest in the world. It covers 10,000 sq km. (60 times larger than Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.) Being a salt flat, it is also very flat, varying no more than 1 meter in height and easy to spot from space, so it’s used by satellites to calibrate their position.
Besides the nearly endless expanse of salt, there are birds (notably flamingos that dine on the brine shrimp, and flightless rheas) and some really cool cacti (Trichocereus pasacana). Oh. And lithium. About 7% of the know reserves in the world are in the water beneath the salt flat.
Javier’s plan was to drive the length of the salt flat and stop at a few of the sights. But the surface condition of the salt lake (bumpy) made him revisit the decision in the interest of time and the Land Cruiser’s suspension. Local communities plow the salt to make a smooth track for vehicles, but since the communities are in competition with each other for tourists, there is no cooperation among them. The route Javier had in mind had not been prepped.
We settled for visiting a couple of islands in the middle of the salt, though “settled for” is not correct – the place is really impressive, and I didn’t miss seeing the hotel made of salt, or the train graveyard.
Though there were several other cars parked at Isla Incahuasi (it was the most touristy of the two islands), I saw no one else during my walk around the island. The cactus are amazing and very photogenic. And Javier had lunch ready and spread out on a salt block picnic table by the time I returned to the car!
At Isla Pescador we were the only vehicle in sight and we scrambled up the steep slope to the top to soak in the views around the lake and over to Chile. Nice.
Back to La Paz
We got back to La Paz a day earlier than scheduled, so Javier took me around to a couple of the local sights. Muela del Diablo, The Labyrinth, and he introduced me to cholas – yummy pork sandwiches (No photo. I was too busy eating.)
Some Firsts
- First time I entered a country for which I needed a visa, but didn’t have one. Usually the airline gate agent confirms that your documents are in order before they issue your boarding pass for an international flight. In this case I think she was too wrapped up in the fact that I didn’t have a return ticket to notice the missing visa. I told her I’d buy a return ticket.
- First time I ever bought a full fare, fully refundable airline ticket (US$1999 one way!!).
- First time I ever had an immigration officer demand to see a visa I didn’t have. (Imagine my surprise.) $160 and 45 minutes later, we were all relatively happy. The visa is valid for 10 years….
- First time I was ever asked to show a return ticket to an immigration officer while entering a country. Glad I had one. I would have needed it had I been deported for not having a visa.
- First time it took 24 hours to fly anywhere in South America from North America. (I can get to Asia as quickly.)
- First time I discovered that fully refundable means partially refundable.
- First time I ever flew on a commercial flight where they didn’t have nuts or pretzels or anything else salty to eat.
- First time I ever flew on an international flight where they didn’t serve beer or wine. Not even for sale.
- First time I ever flew on Copa Airlines. (Probably the last.)
- First time on a trek organized by a UK company that porridge was not forced on me for breakfast.
Notes on Acclimatization
It has always taken me time to get used to altitude – and I spend a good bit of time looking at the elevation profile of any given trip before committing to it. I have a graph showing the good and experiences to compare to any proposed trip. But altitude is a difficult thing to get a handle on – the same person can react differently at different times.
The acclimatization program on the Cordillera Real trek worked very well for me, as did the the Upper Dolpo trip. I was generally at or near the front of the group and felt good the entire time. But I was still experiencing Cheyne-Stokes breathing in La Paz after a month at altitude. And I didn’t seem overly acclimatized on Acotango…
My fitness training regimen before the trek contained no hiking or even walking… I rode my bike. The week before leaving for Bolivia I was alternating days with 30 and 50 mile rides. It seemed to pay off well on the trek.
Nepal 2022 – Upper Dolpo, Kathmandu and Chitwan
Upper Dolpo is, of course, on everyone’s bucket list. What? You’ve never heard of it? Neither had I until preparing to leave Islamabad for The Mountain Company’s K2 Basecamp trek in Pakistan in 2019. The leader of another trek departing at the same time had recently led a trip to Doplo and was raving about it. So I put it on my to-do list, thinking it would fit into my plans for the following spring.
Well. In a word, Covid.
You know the drill. Trip postponed ’til the fall of 2020…. ’til spring of 2021… ’til fall of 2021. Until, finally, it was a “go” for the spring of 2022.
Pictures on flickr here:
(The trek pics are in chronological order with title slides for each day. You can scroll down the page view or click the slide show icon at the upper right. I suggest you then manually click through the pics as the slide show is too slow.)
I had read the itinerary, but still really didn’t know much about what the trip would encompass. I knew it was long (26 days) and at altitude (crossing six 5000m passes) – it’s the southern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, after all. There would be plenty of opportunity to come down with AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), or HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema), as well as any of an unknown number of local stomach ailments.
It wasn’t like the trek in Pakistan where the ultimate prize was a view of K2, or like the Tour du Mont Blanc where there was always hope the clouds would part to see the mountain at some point while walking around it for two weeks. (It finally did clear … on the last day).
We would not be seeing many of the “great” mountains – the 8000m peaks – like Everest or Annapurna, but we might see Dhaulagiri.
I knew that being in the Himalayas the scenery would be spectacular. I knew the area was remote and was expecting little in the way of civilization. We would be close to the Tibetan border, and the locals would be of Tibetan origin (many fled here when China invaded Tibet and began efforts to homogenize it). We would visit Shey Gompa (Shey Monastery – The Crystal Monastery) an important pilgrimage site for the pre-Buddhist B’on religion.
The region had been written about by Peter Mathieson recounting his trek in the area in his 1970’s book, “The Snow Leopard” (a popular reading choice among the trekkers), but I wasn’t familiar with his writing until after the trip began. I went into the trek not expecting much. Not in the sense of having low expectations, I just didn’t know what to expect.
But there were bad omens. The flight from Boston to Kathmandu via Dubai would … take … a … long … time…. I used to think that the traveling part of travel was fun. I no longer maintain that view.
Most worrying, though, was that this was organized by a UK outfit. There would be porridge for breakfast. My fears were dampened somewhat since I traveled with TMC to Pakistan, and on that trip I ended up donating my personal (and closely guarded) supply of muesli to the kitchen, since porridge wasn’t the only choice on the breakfast menu most days.
So I didn’t have many expectations for the trip, but that’s all I needed to know to sign up. Before heading off on his trek, Mathieson’s Roshi admonished him, “Expect nothing”, and he walked “with no thought of attainment.”
The trek followed an inverted “U” shape from Juphal to Jomsom, bounded by the Shey Phoksundo National Park on the west and the Annapurna Conservation Area to the east. We were within 7km of the Tibetan border at the northern part of the U.
The area is remote, but not wilderness. There are many small communities scattered around, monasteries (seeking seclusion, but welcoming donations), and yak herders. It is quickly changing, but now there are few roads in the region and very few vehicles. The primary means of moving around is by foot or mule, though motorbikes appear in some unlikely places as they are disassembled and carried into remote areas on mules for reassembly. (How much would your gas/petrol cost if it had to be brought to you by mule?)
Logistics
The group met in Kathmandu. With the recent removal of Covid testing requirements, an early flight arrival time, and pre-departure online visa approval, entry formalities were quick and painless. Just pay the visa fee, get the sticker in your passport, and away you go. I arrived a few days early to help adjust for the time zone, and I spent the time walking around the city to see if I could feel anything from my last visit here in 1997. I could not. More on Kathmandu later. Let’s get on with the trek.
Restricted area permits were required for the Dolpo region – keeps out the riffraff, you know. I’m never quite sure what purpose these serve. Possibilities are: To limit numbers (maybe); Keep track of who is in the area (for sure in China, but not likely in Nepal); To extract hard currency from tourists (definitely). The fee (included in the trip cost we paid to TMC) was US$800 per person – not trivial, but cheaper than Bhutan which now charges US$200 per day just to be in the country. Presumably you can be fined/detained if you don’t have a permit or overstay the duration of it, and there were checkpoints along the way. Our leader collected our passports and took care of obtaining these for us.
There were 13 trekkers (3 Canadians, 3 Americans, 7 Brits) with one western leader. A fairly diverse group, though doctors were over-represented with 4, and I usually consider one Canadian more than enough 😉 Ages ranged from 43 to 70. (I’ve noticed a definite upward trend in the average age of travelers in the group trips I go on – and it’s not just me skewing the average!)
The popular trekking routes in Nepal can be completed while staying in tea houses of varying standard. In Dolpo, this is not the case – camping is the only alternative to make a circuit out of it. There were tea houses until day 4 at Ringmo on Lake Phoksundo, but we didn’t see any other accommodation to speak of until we got to Chharka 14 days later. I suspect if you were a solo traveler you could convince a local to take you in for a small consideration, but be prepared to eat a lot of dal baht, and be prepared to be outside.
In the great tradition of Nepal treks, we had a rather large staff led by a sirdar who oversaw everything. We had three “sherpas” (guides – see minor rant below), a head cook with 5 “kitchen boys”, a lead porter in charge of 9 porters, and two muleteers chasing the 20 mules we began with. A staff of 22 plus 20 mules!
At one point 14 of the mules and one muleteer departed as we ate our way through the supplies and they were no longer needed. (Chatting with a French woman in Chharka trekking in the opposite direction, I mentioned that we started with 20 mules and were now down to six. She asked, “Did you eat them?” I did not leave her with clarification….)
Each porter and the kitchen boys carried 30kg (66lbs) in addition to their personal gear. The mules carried 60kg each. So in total we had about 1500kg/3300lbs of stuff, but no room for a charging cable for the sat phone, apparently.
Our personal gear was limited to 15kg in a duffel (each porter carried two duffels) and 7kg in our day packs. (In the late 90’s I trekked to Annapurna, and the porters carried three 15kg duffels each, though, come to think of it, they went on strike…. These days there are standards set so the porters are treated better and more uniformly across all expeditions than previously, and expeditions are less likely to be abandoned.)
The 22kg limit was set by the airline, though slinging my 1.3kg camera around my neck and wearing a fleece jacket with the pockets stuffed with things assisted in evading that restriction. (Traveling to Bolivia on a climbing trip in the 80’s, we threw our four big duffel bags on the check-in scale together and then jammed our feet under the bags. The gate agent was surprised how little the bags weighed. We wore our mountaineering boots on the flight, just to be sure.)
Stats:
- We walked about 170mi/273km
- With all the ups and downs, we ascended 37,000ft (7 vertical miles) or 11,300m.
- We crossed six 5000m passes with the highest at 5566m/18,260ft.
- On 16 nights we camped above 4000m (13,125ft).
- On 12 nights we camped above 14,000ft (4267m).
- On 4 nights we camped above 15,000ft (4572m).
- Our highest camp was at 4905m/16,090ft. For comparison, Mt. Blanc (the highest point in western Europe) tops out at 4808m (15,774ft) and the highest point in the conterminous US is Mt. Whitney at 4418m (14,495ft).
Food
I thought the food on the trek started out very good and remained that way for two-thirds of the trek, then it wasn’t. It’s typical on a long trek, though, particularly when you don’t have access to buy fresh food. As the days go on, what you still have becomes tedious, and you run out of fresh stuff – vegetables, eggs, etc. You run out of fresh everything once you’ve eaten all the mules. (We ran out of three goats in Pakistan about half-way through the trip. They were named Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. The chickens were un-named – they were much less personable.) Toward the end of the trip, you look longingly toward the cooks at lunch hoping there’s an extra slab of Spam.
You tend to lose your taste for food at altitude and can lose your appetite completely. Some things you just can’t eat – porridge, at any altitude, for instance. Fortunately, there was a good stock of peanut butter, and the cook seemed to have a knack for making a wide variety of fresh breads. That got me through breakfast.
I don’t ever recall turning down seconds (or thirds) of anything early in the trip, but by the end of it I was handing my plate back with uneaten food left on it. Whether it was boredom with the diet, altitude, or just bad food, I can’t say (OK, the vegetables were inedible by the end). There’s a corollary to the mountaineering wisdom, “Be as comfortable as you can for as long as you can and then suffer.” It is, “Eat as much as you can whenever you can and then starve.”
A good cook realizes this is the case and tries to mix things up and give you the occasional surprise. Our cook was pretty good, especially the baked goods. Who was expecting good pizza? But 25 days of porridge? That deserved a lot of awshits that cancel out the attaboys.
Late in the trip he managed to buy some fresh cucumbers and potatoes in a village we passed through. My notes from May 24th (day 17) at Rapka say, “We had French fries for dinner!!! Oh, yeah. We saw a snow leopard.”
Off We Go
I won’t give you a day by day account of the trip, but will cover the literal and figurative high points.
The original plan was to take commercial flights to Nepalgunj (nicknamed “Nepalgrunge” as the hottest city in Nepal) and then a flight to Juphal the next day. But it turned out there were enough of us that it was economical to charter a flight directly to Juphal. This saved a day, giving us a buffer day, if needed, and avoided “the grunge.”
The flight from Kathmandu to Jhupal was in a 20 passenger Czech-built Let L410-Turbolet twin-turboprop STOL (short take off and landing) plane, and was low and slow. We were nearly scraping the ridge tops and I could hear the annunciator from the radar altimeter shouting to the pilots, “Terrain! Terrain! Pull up!” According to Wikipedia, “With at least 20 fatal crashes from 2003 to 2013, it is one of the most accident-prone aircraft.” Hmmm. Video
Disembarking at Juphal and passing through the first checkpoint of the trip, we had a short walk down to the Thuli Bheri River and upstream to Dunai where we had our first camp and were indoctrinated into the trek proper.
The real walking started the next day as we passed through some lush forests and ascended for a couple of days. A beautiful walk through forests I did not expect to see.
We finally started gaining some real height along airy trails and passed the tremendous waterfall exiting Phoksundo Lake shortly before arriving at Ringmo at about 3600m (day 5).
Ringmo is in a fantastic setting overlooking Phoksundo Lake and surrounded by big hills. There are a few snow-capped peaks visible nearby, though the largest, Kanjiroba (6612m), is not seen from this end of the lake.
The lake is, well, gorgeous. The blue is amazing. We had a rest day here to marvel at the setting and we took a short walk to the nearby monastery perched above the lake. I only wish we could have kayaked here, but it’s a holy place, and I wanted to avoid being stoned to death. I couldn’t get a kayak in my carry-on, anyway.
From Ringmo we followed the high route of the Great Himalayan Trail for the rest of the trip. The GHT traverses the length of Nepal and is out there waiting for you if you’ve got a few months available and looking for a 1750 km trek. Only about 100 people have completed it. That’s far fewer people than summit Mt. Everest every year. I’ve seen trips that offer it for a fraction of the cost of climbing Everest – just $27,000 for 150 days!
This was an awesome place to hang out, so Lake Phoksundo has been inscribed in the “Awesome Places in the World to Hang Out In” list.
The discouraging aspect of Ringmo is that we could clearly see the trail we would follow to our next camp at the north end of the lake snaking along the base of the steep hillside on the western waterfront. (It’s called “The Devil’s Trail” in the film “Himalaya”.) It seemed to continue around the peninsula just above the lake,… but no. That part of the trail is unfinished. Look up. No, look higher. No. Up there. Yeah, there. That’s our trail.
After leaving the second camp on the north end of the lake (day 8), we hiked northwest up the beautiful valley formed by the Phoksundo Khola (river) and beneath the Kanjiroba/Kanjirowa Himal – a ridge at 6500+m towering above the southern side of the valley. I nearly broke out into song. Where’s Julie Andrews when you need her? There were booming cracks in the high glaciers and occasionally we could spot an avalanche.
Turning north, we climbed above the Ghyampo Kapuwa Khola valley with Kanjiroba behind us. The climb up was a bit strenuous and caused trekkers and porters alike to be strung out along the trail – we were still acclimatizing to the altitude. But as we continued to climb to “Snowfields” camp this day and the next, we were rewarded with ever changing views of Kanjiroba to the south.
Snowfields camp (4690m) was located below the Kang La (our first big pass at 5400m). We camped here for two nights and did an acclimatization hike a few hundred meters higher toward the pass on day 10.
The next morning we awoke to snow. The weather changed for better and worse as we worked our way up to the pass.
Crossing the pass we had hoped to have a good view of Dhaulagiri to the east, but it was shrouded in cloud. The weather cooperated enough for the descent (it started snowing a bit) and walk down to Shey Gompa, improving as we went.
Shey Gompa – The Crystal Monastery. I’d love to wax poetic about it, but I never heard of it before this trip. It is a pilgrimage site with roots in the pre-Buddhist, pre-Hindu, B’on/Tibetan religion. Like all religions, it seems to have adopted, evolved or transformed into an mish-mash of all three religions – pick whatever myth suits you and become righteous. It is situated in a beautiful spot at the confluence of two rivers. Crystal Mountain (largely quartz) looms overhead and is a holy substitute for the holier Mt. Kailash in Tibet. Pilgrims do the circuit around the mountain here as they do in Tibet.
We had a rest day after arriving at “Shey” with an optional day hike to nearby Tsakang Gompa. The path was high above a rugged valley with views of more rugged valleys beyond and was breathtaking. This entire area has been inscribed in the “Small Gems of the World” list.
Moving on from Shey Gompa, we crossed the Saldang La (5115m) with two false summits before the pass (and one false lunch stop afterward), continuing on to Namgung.
After a rather long day passing through the prosperous villages of Saldang and Karang, we descended to the Nagaon Khola and camped along the confluence of it and the Panjyang Khola where they form the Tora Khola at Tora Simna. We were now on the northwest corner of the inverted “U” of our track.
Turning east from Tora Simna, following the Panjyang Khola upstream, we took some time to visit Yanger Gompa, and just a few km later we turned northeast up the Musi Khola to the outskirts of the village of Musi/Mischa in preparation to cross the Muri La (5085m). This was our closest approach to Tibet, just 7km away.
The SE side of the Muri La dropped back down to the fertile valley of the Panjyang Khola and the villages of Shimen and Tinje.
Somewhere I had heard that Tinje was the site of an airstrip used by the CIA for covert operations during and after the Tibet uprising against the Chinese in 1959. I haven’t been able to directly confirm Tinje as the site for this, but Tibetan rebels were trained at Camp Hale in Leadville, CO during this time, and I’ve found references to four airdrops into Tibet in ’59 and ’60 which all failed miserably, which may or may not have been dispatched from Tinje. (There was also support for a Tibetan guerilla group based in nearby Upper Mustang until 1965, but I didn’t find any references to air support.)
In any event, after walking through the fields in the broad valley near Tinje, we crossed “the disused airfield” and camped along the river below it. Most importantly to the present narrative, Tinje is where our cook obtained fresh potatoes and cucumbers.
Just after settling into camp near Rapka, our leader spotted a snow leopard above camp. This wasn’t just a quick glimpse. The cat hung around for a good 15 minutes sizing us up for a meal. These animals are extremely rare, solitary and cautious. Needless to say, it’s extremely rare to see one, and we were incredibly fortunate. During the best of times, the path we were following is not heavily traveled, and during the previous two years of pandemic, even less so. So I can’t help but think that the cat we saw was habituated to fewer people, and an army of brightly colored tourists caught it’s curiosity. Thank goodness for the pandemic! One of the trekkers got a good video . (Oh, yeah. The French fries at Rapka were awesome, too!)
A fairly long walk took us to our highest camp (4905m) just below Chharka La. It was a pretty windy day, which is the norm for Dolpo, but adding to that the snow/sleet in our faces for the latter part of the day made this the only unpleasant trekking on the trip (due to weather, that is). The approaches to the pass were grass covered – a perfect place for an afternoon stroll or to let your yaks graze.
We could almost see the top of the Chharka La (Mola La on the map, 5038m/16,530ft) from camp, and it was a great morning trekking up to it on day 19. The pass would be our final chance to get a peek of the peaks of Dhaulagiri, and the local weather was promising. We made the pass in good time and hung around the summit cairn and prayer flags snapping photos.
We had good views through moving clouds of Dhaulagiri II, III, IV and V (all around 7700m/25,200ft), and we could just see the top and a bit of the western ridge of Dhaulagiri I behind a nearer mountainside. At 8167m (26,794ft) it’s the seventh highest mountain in the world (collect the set!).
I have always been slow to acclimatize, so I look carefully at trips to see how quickly altitude is gained – generally the longer the trip, the better. This trip had it right for me (see elevation plot below), and I only had a few nights of sleep interrupted by Cheyne-Stokes breathing (where you stop breathing and wake up gasping for breath – sometimes with dreams of suffocation). As the days went on I felt stronger and stronger.
But my performance peaked on day 20 after we crossed the Chharka La. I was near the front of the group going up from camp and over the pass, and I felt strong all the way up and on the descent. But then we arrived in the miasmic village of Chharka for two nights – a literal shit hole. Not sure, but suspicious there was open sewage in the main street, definitely trash and shit in the river, cramped camp with pit toilets within a few feet of the tents. Too bad, since otherwise it could have been a nice village.
I didn’t feel well the next day (a rest day) as we walked across town to visit the local monastery – I had some ill-defined stomach/head thing – impending diarrhea, gas, malaise, and the beginning of my loss of appetite on the trip. I never got over this for the remaining week, and the last couple of days my butt was dragging (including, unfortunately, crossing the highest pass and on to our last camp at Sangda). Getting lower in altitude didn’t immediately make me feel better, so I suspect it was a bug of some sort. Complicating the diagnosis, I started taking the anti-malarial drug, Mefloquin, since I was going to the low country of Chitwan National Park soon after the trek. (I’ve taken it before and don’t recall similar bad side effects.) So I don’t know. Bug? Altitude? Mefloquin? Bad food? Or just plain fatigue?
Glad to leave town, we followed the Chharka Khola on a trail above the valley which then descended to meet the Thasan Khola which we waded across. A steep climb above the river’s narrow gorge took the energy out of me, but a good snack while admiring the twisted geology before crossing a large scree field revived me a bit. Then it was down into the narrows to walk along the rocky riverbed where there was once a trail – now obliterated by landslides and washed away. The walk was topped off arriving in camp near Norbulung located in a broad valley with snow capped peaks behind. It was a nice walk and the varied hike made it a highlight day for me, in spite of not feeling so hot.
Camp at Norbulung was the second highest camp on the trip at 4773m/15,660ft. By this point, day 22, we had already crossed four 5000m passes and spent 13 nights above 4000m. I was well acclimatized, running a PO2 of 86% with the same resting pulse rate I have at sea level at home. Here’s the daily profile for the trip:
But at about tea time after arriving in camp, one of the trekkers exhibited symptoms of HAPE with a PO2 of just 50%. The trekker was sealed into a Gammow bag which was pressurized to reduce the effective altitude by 1000m, or so, which seemed to bring instant relief. The satellite phone was dug out to summon an evacuation helicopter, but they would not be able to come that day. The symptoms were under control the next day, and we had an additional rest day in futile anticipation that the helicopter would come (cards were played) – glad we had acquired an additional buffer day early on.
Norbulung was a much nicer place to chill out than Chharka, and the extra day here gave me the opportunity to catch up on laundry. I decided it was time to wash the shirt I had been wearing continuously for seven days whether it needed it, or not.
With assurances that a helicopter would come, a skeleton crew was left behind to assist, and the bulk of the group went off toward the Sangda La.
At 5566m/18,261ft, Sangda La was the highest point of the trek. We could see the full climb from a long way off – no switchbacks, just a long, steady traverse to the pass. I was slow. Even the Snickers bar half-way up didn’t energize me. Finally at the top, a nice view, and I thought, “All I need to do is get down the other side, and we’re in camp.” Sangda Phedi camp was scheduled to be our highest camp at 5100m.
But, no.
Arriving at Sangda Phedi there were no mules and no porters. For some reason the sirdar (still back in Norbulung at the time) had contacted the guides to move on to another camp (Ghalden Ghulden) over the lower Sangda pass (5025m) and 800m down a very steep slope of loose shale. In my view, this was an incredibly poor decision for a variety of reasons. But there we were.
From there we continued the descent into the deep gorge of the Kyalunpa Khola and then ascended to the village of Sangda/Santa for our last campsite in the village. My knees were still wobbling from the long descent the day before, and by the time I got to the bridge at the bottom of the gorge, I was whipped. It was a tough grunt uphill to a road that eventually led to Sangda. But the gorge was a beautiful and dramatic expanse – another highlight of the trip in spite of the pain.
In the evening we discussed the possibility of taking a jeep from Sangda down to the Kali Gandaki river (a tributary of the Ganges). There was only one jeep on this side of the uncompleted bridge, so it was worked out that we’d be in three groups – the driver would shuttle back and forth and pick up each group as they made progress walking along the road. There were four seats available from camp, and I waited a respectful 30 seconds for someone to grab the last seat before volunteering myself and avoiding the long, dusty walk.
A second jeep from the east bank of the river got us to Jomsom (3612m) in good time. We were back in civilization, and my radar quickly found a “Himalayan Java”, the first coffee shop (with German chocolate cake!) in almost a month. … so come to think of it my appetite did come back upon losing altitude….
We completely took over the Hotel Dhaulagiri.
Showers. Hot showers.
We had our last full group meal followed by a small celebration to say farewell to the staff who supported us during the trek. Tips were handed out individually. Along with cash tips, gear that the group decided to give away was distributed to the staff by lottery. It was a fun event with blessedly minimal singing and dancing.
It was intended that we fly from Jomsom to Pokhara where we’d spend a night before moving on to Kathmandu. Ours was to be the first flight departing Jomsom after a plane crashed coming into the valley a week or so earlier, killing all 22 on board.
In an incredibly prescient decision, one of the trekkers had pre-arranged to add on a 5 day trek to walk out of Jomsom in order to avoid the flight – he felt the riskiest parts of the trek were the flights. (I need to contact him to see how his investment decisions are doing…)
We trundled to the airport at 5AM only to be sent away as the weather was not going to clear. The alternate for this 20 minute flight was a torturous 8 hour jeep ride on the horrible “highway” to Pokhara via Beni. The road is a continual construction project, buried by landslides and undercut by floods with the occasional earthquake keeping everything in motion. At one point I was hoping that it would rain to reduce the dust, but that would have turned the road into a mud hole.
Om mani padme hum
The sacred mantra, om mani padme hum (“Praise the jewel in the lotus”), can be heard and seen inscribed everywhere, though a taxi driver in Kathmandu was chanting something else which I assume meant, “Let me survive this traffic one more day”.
In the countryside there are mani walls everywhere – piles of stones neatly organized into rectangular structures which were nice places to lean against for a rest. The stones were engraved with the mantra or some other religious text. I assume there must be a class of itinerant stone masons that performs this service.
The piles of rocks reminded me of home in New England where old stone walls snake through the forest – fields cleared by early European settlers that have since regrown. The walls weren’t built to enclose anything, it was just a convenient way for farmers to stack the rocks that were in the way of plowing as they scratched their livelihood out of the meager topsoil.
Recent ethnographic research indicates that, as in many cases where languages are adopted by new immigrants or conquering powers through the ages, initial meanings are mis-applied or mutated to accommodate new needs. It turns out that agrarian cultures in the Tibetan plateau in pre-Buddhist, pre-B’on, pre-Tibetan times used to chant omm anip adme hom while working in the fields. Roughly translated, the original meaning was, “Another damned rock!”
Pokhara
Monsoon season had begun. During the trek we were north of the mountains that acted as a rain shadow for us, and we had great weather throughout – just one night of rain early on and a bit of snow crossing the Kang La and going up to the Chharka La. But we arrived in Pokhara in our jeeps under a torrential downpour – it washed the dust off.
More hot showers. Swimming pool. Beer. Not necessarily in that order.
No porridge.
The group went on to Kathmandu the following morning, while I stayed in Pokhara for a couple of days and did absolutely nothing. That’s not true. I walked up the main drag to Himalayan Java and back along the lakefront – the clouds never parted so I had little ambition to walk anywhere to try and get a view of Annapurna. I did walk between my room, the pool, the laundry and several restaurants.
Chitwan
From Pokhara I flew to Bharatpur (205m) and was picked up by a driver for the short drive to the Sapana Village Lodge near the village of Sauraha – a gateway to Chitwan National Park on the border with India.
God it was hot.
After the trek in 1997 I stayed in a tented camp inside the park which was a really cool experience. Each morning and afternoon guests were scheduled for a different event – jeep game drives, elephant-back game drives, bird walks, canoe trips, etc. – and they made sure everyone had a chance to do everything over the 2 or 3 days we were there. The government has since prohibited any lodgings within the park, and many lodges and guesthouses have sprouted up along the northern edge of the park.
Back then it was unusual to see an Indian (one-horned) rhino, and incredibly rare to see a sloth bear or tiger. Now estimates put the rhino population at just under 800, and there were reports of tiger sightings the week I was there this year.
It turned out there was only one other guest at the lodge when I arrived, and I was the only one there for my last night – the monsoon, you know. I didn’t get the memo. But I was in Nepal so I would have come regardless. The lodge had a nice peaceful setting with viewing platforms and sitting areas overlooking a grassy river. I watched a rhino there while having breakfast one morning.
The lodge offered an a la carte menu of activities, and I convinced the other guy staying there to share the most expensive item – a full day jeep game drive. Not that I was anxious to spend another day in a jeep, but I figured the farther we went in the jeep, the more likely we’d see something.
As we waited for a dugout canoe to ferry us across the river from town to the park proper, we spotted our first rhino across the river. There were also two varieties of crocodiles to encourage us to stay in the boat – long-snouted gharials which are not a threat to humans, and marsh or mugger crocs, which are.
On the jeep drive we saw a couple of varieties of deer, and later in the day as we got further in the park we saw quite a few rhinos – video here. Our driver had heard reports of a tiger and we stopped in at several potential spots to look for one, but to no avail.
We did stumble on a sloth bear coming down the road with two cubs. It walked right past the jeep! Video. Not seeing a big cat here, I had to content myself with having seen a snow leopard on the trek.
You would have thought that riding in an open vehicle with a good sunshade would have helped with the heat, but it did not. It was 40C/104F in the shade, and, with the humidity, my weather app said it felt like 48C/118F.
It was so hot, that the other guy left the next day – I couldn’t convince him to hang around for a jungle walk, which in the end I didn’t do either. I managed to go on a dugout canoe trip on the river in the morning – lots of kingfishers and crocs – but spent the rest of the day hiding from the heat.
That night some thunderstorms rolled in and I heard the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard – I went from sound asleep to sitting upright on the edge of the bed in a split second, twice, thinking the world had ended .
The food at the lodge was amazing, especially considering there were only 1 or 2 guests. They had an extensive menu and could prepare anything on it. It was plentiful, well presented and delicious. And there was no porridge!
Chitwan has also been added to the “Awesome Places in the World to Hang Our In” list, a previous omission. Go there, but go in a cooler time of year.
Kathmandu
I flew back to Kathmandu and was reunited with my fragrant duffel bag which contained dirty clothes and a mildew-smelling sleeping bag, having been packed away for 6 days by then.
Laundry. Drying.
There was a severe earthquake in Nepal in 2015 which destroyed many of the old masonry buildings everywhere, and particularly in central Durbar Square. I didn’t recognize anything in the center of town.
I walked over to the Buddhist stupa at Swayambhunath (the “Monkey Temple”) where Siddhartha/Sakyamuni/Buddha is said to have preached. Though the area around it is largely built up, the hilltop temple area still retains some atmosphere and it’s monkeys.
On the other side of town, I recognized more of the golden Hindu temple of Pashupatinath and it’s “burning ghats” – where people cremate their loved ones along the banks of the holy, wholly polluted, Bagmati River. (A smaller version of Varanasi and the Ganges in India.) It brings a different dimension to having smoke in your eyes. It all seemed so very overcrowded, and I remember there being a more mystical feeling about the place when I was here in 1997 – it was on a foggy morning, back then.
I started to walk the 5km from my hotel over to Bodhnath where the largest Buddhist stupa in Asia was built around 600AD. But the noise and pollution coaxed me into a taxi after 20 minutes. The stupa itself is a serene structure bedecked with prayer flags. But the neighboring area was a sensory overload for me. The branch of Himalayan Java that overlooked the stupa was a more meditative place.
Kathmandu just seemed like a teeming, dirty, Asian city, which, come to think of it, it is.
The air pollution didn’t seem to be a problem when I arrived in early May before the trek – there are blue skies in some of the pictures. But for the few days in June before heading home, the pollution was suffocating – as bad or worse than the worst I experienced when I lived in China. Kathmandu sits in a depression and the exhaust from vehicles has nowhere to go – it’s filtered by your lungs. Really awful and best avoided.
Epilogue
The evacuation helicopter flight from Norbulung to Pokhara and then to Kathmandu cost the evacuee about US$7000, making what seemed to be a pricey US$250 travel insurance policy suddenly look like a bargain. A similar flight in the US would have been triple that, or more.
After being off the trek for about 10 days and back home, I was still down a net 20lbs from my post-pandemic, pre-trek weight. I’m guessing I actually lost 25 to 30lbs on the trek, some of which was quickly put back on once I discovered Himalayan Java.
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Minor Rant #1
I put Sherpa in quotes since this term seems in common use for referring to any guide. Originally, Sherpa meant a Sherpa – someone from an ethnic group of people originating in the Khumbu region of Nepal and the Tingri region across the border in Tibet. They became famous as high altitude porters for the early Himalayan expeditions. Tenzing Norgay Sherpa was the first person (along with Edmund Hillary) to summit Everest.
Today Sherpas do the heavy lifting and set the route for the tourists climbing Mt. Everest, and for most expeditions in Nepal. But with their experience, Sherpas have transcended this role as support teams for foreigners and have become some of the best mountaineers in the world.
In May of this year, Kami Rita became the first person to summit Mt. Everest 26 times. An all Sherpa team led by Nims Purja became the first climbers to successfully summit K2 in winter last year, putting all 10 members of the team on the summit together. (Video here. At 1:46 there’s a great view of the “Bottleneck” and the hanging glacier above – “The Motivator”.) Oh, yeah. Nims? He set the record of climbing all fourteen 8000m peaks in just over 6 months.
Our guides were all great guys – cheerful, kind, humble, gracious, always helpful. But not Sherpas.
becklectic Tales 