Recently my good friend, Mike (Bear Grylls) McMahon, came
and visited me here in Nepal, and we got to do a little bit of peak
climbing. He flew in to Kathmandu in
early October and we had plans to get some things together and head out as soon
as we could to begin a long acclimatization trek, but unfortunately the weather
did not cooperate. We had to get a
flight to Lukla which is a tiny airport in the foothills of the Everest region
with one short runway that leaves no room for error, so when the weather is even
slightly bad flights are cancelled and rightly so!! This is what happened to us. Flights were cancelled for two days that we
were trying to get out, so we ended up leaving several days later than we
intended. This of course gave Mike time
to catch a lovely respiratory illness in the severe air pollution that blankets
Kathmandu for most of the year. It also
gave us some time to go see some of the cultural sites that Kathmandu has to
offer. Two of which are large Buddhist stupas and the other is a large
concentration of Hindu temples called Pashupatinath. Mike was definitely under the weather for
these little excursions, but he handled them well.
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Some statues on the way up to Swayambhunath (The monkey temple)
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The monkeys at Swayambhunath do not like their pictures being taken from close proximity, so of course Mike does just that.
Photo:Mike McMahon |
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Just chillin'
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Some prayer wheels... "What happens if I spin them the opposite direction?" So evil.
Photo: Mike Mcmahon |
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Paintings and whatnot
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The Garden of Dreams: Right in the middle of nasty Kathmandu there is a nice little place to rest/nap
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Approaching the giant stupa, Bouddhanath
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Mike feeling very stoked about life and air pollution |
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Part of the site at Bouddhanath
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Old people...
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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These places have some downright intricate carvings. They just don't make things like they used to.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Stone carving at Pashupathinath.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Gazing through one of many indentical temples at Pashpathinath.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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For a conservative culture in which sex is taboo, they certainly do like their phallic symbols.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Human Barbeque!! (or cremation I suppose), but it really did smell like meat on a grill. I guess all burning flesh smells about the same.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Pay some money, and take a picture with these classy dudes!!
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Checking out more temples at Pashupathinath
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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A monkey puppy!! Very snuggly.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Monkey playing. They would climb on top of the bridge and then take flying leaps off of it into the water. It looked fun, except the water was only a couple feet deep. The did seem to get hurt though.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
Getting the required climbing permits was also not as easy
as I envisioned. I have a friend here
who is a mountaineering guide and he offered to help us get the permit since
the permit requires any potential climbers to have a guide. He had a friend who had a friend who owns a
little travel agency called High Spirit
who we were told could help streamline the process. Mike and I walked into his little
dungeon-office and were immediately a bit uncomfortable when greeted by the
overweight sweating man with little weasel eyes and a track suit that really
accentuated his rather ample plumbers’ crack, but he came recommended by a
friend of a friend, so maybe we would get some sort of deal. We sat down and started getting things
going. We told him what we wanted, and
he started making the proper arrangements, and we were to come back later and
finalized everything. When we came back
in, he informed us that there would be some extra charges as we would be
required to take one of his porters for which he would charge 2000 rupees a day
and he would take 800 of those rupees as his fee. This was on top of the 10% fee off the total
cost of everything that he would be taking for his fee. Why he was taking money from the porter each
day is not currently understood. Having
this guy’s porter wasn’t really an issue because we needed porters anyways, and
this porter was supposed to be reliable and could help us get some other
porters. We did find it a bit odd that
he waited until it was too late for us to go to another travel agency for our
permits before telling us about the extra fees.
We had our plane tickets booked for the next day, and by this time we
didn’t have time to start the process over again. He also ended up charging us $40 extra for
some trekking permits we did not need as we had a mountaineering permit.
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Please read second to last bullet above the green line... I would have thought a travel agent would know this rule and not have us get TIMS permits...of course we could have done our research and known this ourselves, but it's always easier to place blame on others...
Photo: Mike McMahon |
We eventually got everything sorted out and went to the
Kathmandu airport to do some serious waiting.
We got a flight out on a little airline called Makalu Air which seems to
be chronically late and fairly disorganized.
Our 7:00AM flight finally left at 10:30 or so and we flew off in a
little one engine prop plane for Lukla.
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Our trusty sky rally machine.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The sprawl of Kathmandu
Photo: Mike McMahon |
After landing we met with our assigned porter and went to grab some
breakfast. We told him we needed another
porter and he rounded up one of his friends, and then proceeded to do something
rather peculiar: we had two heavy bags that we needed our two porters to carry
and he began to strap both bags together so that one person could carry both
bags which combined probably was over 80 pounds. I asked him what he was doing and he said,
“My friend will carry these two bags, and will carry my friend’s day
pack.” Well, that seemed pretty
strange. I told him that wasn’t going to
work and that we got two porters because the bags are heavy and we had some
ground to cover that day. If one porter
could do the work then he could either send his friend home or go home
himself. He wisely chose to split the
bags back up and both he and his friend carried the bags. And with that we started off on the seven
hour walk up to Namche Bazaar.
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The airport at Lukla
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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A list of the most extreme airports which we found in a copy of the Guiness Book of World Records that was randomly lying around the hotel in Namche
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The infamous runway at the Tensing-Hillary Airport
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Weaving our way through the constant line of porters taking goods up into the Everest Region
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Weaving our way through the one of the many yak trains taking goods up into the Everest Region
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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A look of...determination
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Crossing one of many suspension bridges on the way up to Namche Bazaar
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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A helio-bird. For those less excited about suffering, and with deeper pockets.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Mike crossing the bridge in the picture below. |
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Looking down at a confluence and an older suspension bridge while crossing a newer one built much higher than the old one.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The first mountain visuals, Kongde Ri in the background.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
Along the way we got some nice visuals, and met a nice group
from Spain at the National Park check-in who we ended up with in just about
every guest house. The one man was in
front of me to get his permit to get into the park. He had not done his planning very well and
did not realize he had needed this permit, so his group and him walked on past
until they reached an army checkpoint further up the valley. At this point, the army folks told them they
needed this permit, to this guy walked back to get everybody their
permits. Again, he did not plan well as
they did not have enough rupees to cover all six of their permits. He was trying to pay in Euros and the people
at the desk were giving him a very bad exchange rate which wasn’t helpful, but
at the same time their right to do as he was the one who messed up. Anyways, I was extremely impressed with how
well this guy was holding it together because the guys at the desk were being
pretty curt. He said, “Please. In Kathmandu, the exchange rate is much
better. Can you help me some?”
They said, “Then go back to Kathmandu.”
“I can’t do that obviously. Can I pay on my way out after I’ve visited an
ATM in Namche Bazaar?”
“Nope. Go back to
Lukla. There is an ATM there.” Lukla was three hours back the way he came,
and the sun was setting. This sort of
thing went on for a bit, and I stepped in.
“Can I help you in anyway?”
I said.
The Spaniard mistook my question as a hint to hurry up and
said, “Look man, I’m trying as best as I can.”
“No, no. Really. Can I help with something?”
“Not unless you have 18,000 rupees you can lend me.”
“I do. How can you pay
me back?”
“Well, I can go to an ATM in Namche or get Euros from my
friends and pay you back in Euros.”
“Okay. I’d prefer
rupees, where can we meet?”
“The Zamling Hotel in Namche. We’ll be there for two days. Really?
Here, I’ll give you my passport as collateral. Thank you so much.”
“No, no. That’s not
necessary. We’ll meet you either tonight
or tomorrow at that hotel.”
And with that he paid for his permits, and that very
grateful Spaniard continued on his way and we did the same.
We walked pretty slowly so as not to strain ourselves and
risk feeling sick at altitude. As we
neared Namche Bazaar the illness Mike picked up in Kathmandu really started to
catch up with him. He looked pretty
ragged and was stopping a lot, but he nutted up and dragged himself into Namche
and we stopped at the first place that had beds and food.
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| The bustling mountain city of Namche Bazaar |
The next morning we got up, and headed up to the Zamling
hotel to meet our Spanish friends and have some nice breakfast. The places in Namche are for the most part,
pretty shwanky.
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Our Spanish friends at the Zamling Hotel
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Zamling Hotel. Shwaky, eh? Almost all the materials for all the hotels in the region were brought in on the backs of porters.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
We spent the morning gathering gear, and non-perishables as
well as a kilogram of cheese. In
retrospect we should have gotten the cheese when we came back through Namche to
pick up our things after acclimatizing, but it held up pretty well. McMahon always gets very excited about cheese
and forces us to take way too much cheese on all our trips. I remember one time in Alaska when he
insisted on taking five pounds of cheese for a six day trip. I always try to be the voice of reason, but
he is very insistent when it comes to cheese… though I may be confusing the two
of us…
After getting some things together we arranged with our
porter from Lukla to send two more porters on a specified date up to Namche
where we would meet and begin our trek up to the climb. We specified that both porters needed jackets
and real shoes (as opposed to the flip flops that many porters wear), and that
we would rent them hats, gloves, a tent, and sleeping bags. We realized that we needed to pay some money
in advance to reserve them, and we agreed to pay them half of them money they
would receive up front so they would be sure to meet us in Namche. Local porters make about 6 to 7 dollars per
day, and porters hired by trekkers and tourists make 10 to 12 dollars per
day. McMahon and I decided to pay $20
per day since we were asking a bit more of our porters than most people
do. Our plan was for them to stay one
night up in a tent at pretty high altitude which would probably not be very comfortable. We gave our porter $180 to give to the two
porters he would send up on the agreed upon date.
McMahon and I set off in the late afternoon for a little
town called Phortse Thenga at 3680m. Along
this route we caught some views of Everest and Lhotse off in the distance, and
around dark we pulled into what we assumed was Phortse Thenga, but was in fact
a town called Mong La (3900m) at the top of a pass. We had a pretty set acclimatization plan, and
staying there would have us sleeping 300 meters higher than we originally
intended. We continued on down the other
side of the pass in the dark to sleep in Phortse Thenga. The next day dawned clear, and we had a
leisurely breakfast and set off for Dhole.
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| Mike on the way to Phortse Tenga with the double bridlges in the valley in the background. |
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| The river near Phortse Tenga |
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One of many porters lugging building materials high into the mountains with with Kangtenga (6783m) in the background.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Ombigaichang (6340m), also known as Octagon by Bear and myself because we couldn't remember the actual name. This peak has two ascents, the first in the 60's by Edmund Hillary and the second in the early 2000's. |
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| Kangtega (6783m) |
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| Bear enjoying the sites on the way to Dhole. |
These acclimatization days were quite pleasant. We only wanted to increase about 300m per day so each day was only about two hours of walking which left plenty of time for picture taking, chatting, sitting and enjoying the scenery, and eating tasty food. We managed to stretch each walk at least an hour longer than it should have been. We pulled into Dhole at 4110m around lunchtime and had a nice meal out in the sun. Then I took a nap, and got up in time to go wander up one of the ridges for a little additional acclimatization and view gazing. Sunset was magnificent with views of many of beautiful peaks of the region.
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| Bear enjoys the sunshine, the views, and some tasty food. |
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Nearing sunset above Dhole looking North
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Afternoon light on Ombigaichang (6340m), Malangphulang (6573m), Kangtega (6783m), and Thamserku (6618m)- left to right.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Kangtega and Thamserku looking cloudy |
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| Macchermo Peak |
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| Not sure of this one, looking North |
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| Looking North |
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| Bear |
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| Bear making some sort of funny face... |
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| I think this is Cholatse (6335m) |
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| Ombigaichang |
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| Kangtega |
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| Mike hiking up above the little town of Dhole |
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| Looking to the east. |
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| Thamserku |
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| Looking towards Ombigaichang |
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| Some interesting geology in the Macchermo Valley. I wonder if this yellow colored rock is the same as the infamous "Yellow Band" on the North side of Everest. |
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| Everest with a nice cap cloud. |
The lenticular clouds we had been noticing gave way to a
gray morning with some light snow which was just the forerunner of things to
come. Mike was feeling a bit better, so
we decided to make the couple hour hike on up to Gokyo at 4790m. The trail went gently up through some nice
alpine terrain, and then climbed some narrow stairs etched into the side of a
cliff to get into the Ngozumba Glacier Valley.
By the time we reached Gokyo the snow was falling pretty hard…and this
kept up for the next three days. The
morning after we arrived we were going to climb Gokyo Ri and start heading back
down the valley, but we woke to about a meter of snow on the ground so we
scratched the idea of going up Gokyo Ri and decided to just start trying to get
back down the valley.
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Doing a quick assessment of the snow..."yep, it's cold."
Photo: Mike McMahon |
We joined hordes of other tourists on a narrow trench
through the snow. As we walked we could
continuously see slough avalanches coming off of the steep slope to our right
across the river, and we could hear much larger avalanches somewhere up in the
fog higher up on the slopes. As we
neared the bridge to cross the river and get onto the narrow stairs we encountered
a major traffic jam, so Mike and I cut around on the moraine to get a look at
the stair section. It didn’t look good. The slopes above the stairs were continuously
sloughing, and the stairs were very narrow with a long drop into a raging
glacial river on one side. The chances
of being buried in a large avalanche were slim, but the chances of getting hit
by a small slough on the narrow, slippery stairs was extremely high. The consequences of even a small slough
hitting somebody would be pretty bad.
Mike and I decided we would return to Gokyo to wait out the storm, but
first I decided to go talk to the guide who seemed to be in charge of sending
groups of tourists across the bridge onto the stairs where they would
immediately catch up to the other groups and be in a major jam on the dangerous
stairs.
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Working around on the moraine
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The traffic jam at the bridge
Photo: Mike McMahon |
I walked up to him, and spoke in Nepali so as not to worry
his guests. I asked if he was in
charge. He said he was, so I mentioned
that the stairs seemed dangerous, and that even a small slide could knock some
people into the river. He said that
several people had already been knocked in.
“And you’re still sending people through??!!”
“Well, yes,” he replied. “They have to catch their planes.”
I told him I thought it would be best to return to Gokyo,
but this guy was clearly a nitwit and would hear nothing of it, so I decided to
talk to some of the clients directly.
The guide asked me not to talk to his clients, but I said that they
could make up their own minds…it quickly became apparent that they could not do
this.
I know there have been experiments with random authority
figures with no credentials telling somebody what to do, and they will
frequently do it even when it means harming others or risk to themselves. This sort of sheepery is amazing to me, but it
happened that day. I walked up to the
first group and said, “Hi, I know a little about avalanches, and that path
looks very dangerous. I recommend
turning around.”
“Well, our guide is telling us to go on, so we will,” many
replied.
Others said, “We have to catch our plane soon, so we don’t
have a choice.”
To which I replied, “Okay.”
It wasn’t my job or desire to argue with them, but the word guide
carries so much weight. These people
were with trekking guides who are very nice, know the area, and have probably
spent a lot of time walking around the mountains of Nepal, but becoming a
trekking guide here requires very minimal qualifications. You need a license which is acquired after
taking some sort of basic exam given by the government; avalanche training is
NOT a prerequisite, and under normal circumstances it really has no reason to
be. Knowing a bit about the history,
culture, local flora and fauna, basic first aid, and simple acclimatization rules
are what most tourists are looking for from a guide. The people that day were putting their full
faith (and lives) into somebody because they were guides. Having a guide is not an excuse to stop using
your brain! I do admit that if I hired a
guide on a mountain or skiing trip I would trust what they said, but only to an
extent; if something looked too dangerous I would at least question their
decision making. I also admit that if I
had to catch a plane it would have been very hard for me to turn around though
all the flights to and from Lukla were cancelled during the storm anyways. It’s why when survivors of avalanche
accidents are asked whether they knew that conditions were poor, a large
majority say, “Yes.” They went anyways
due to external factors; knowledge isn’t everything. Chances are we would have been fine crossing
the stairs that day, and in fact only one yak herder and his yak fell into the
river. The yak died and the man survived
after being rushed down to a rescue post in a severely hypothermic condition. McMahon and I just couldn’t take that risk,
so we headed back and as I walked back through the traffic jam my story
changed.
“Hi, I’m a ski patroller from the States, and I think those
stairs are too dangerous to cross. I’d
talk to your guide and head back to Gokyo.”
“Okay, that seems like it might be a good idea.”
And then, “Hi, I’m a certified mountaineering guide from the
US, and those stairs a definitely too dangerous to cross. I’d talk to your guide and head back to
Gokyo.”
“Oh, okay.
Thanks! We’ll definitely do that.”
Again, the word “guide” is a magic word. I am a far cry from a mountaineering guide,
or even a ski patroller, but people listen if say you are an authority, and
then speak as if you are.
So McMahon and I settled back into the lodge in Gokyo with
our books and some very long games of Cosmic Wipe Out, a fascinating and fairly
confusing dice game that Mike brought with him.
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Debating the next meal, prepping for Cosmic Wipe Out, and deciding which of the other guests we would eat first if food in the lodge ran out...
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Lodge workers trying to keep the roofs from collapsing under the weight of the snow. One of the lodge's roofs did end up collapsing, but no one was inside or we would have had some nice barbeque.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
We spent several hours one day digging a path through the snow up to the
top of the moraine, a two and a half hour task to get to a point that would
have literally been a ten minute walk without snow.
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Beginning the trenching operation to the top of the moraine.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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A snow bound Gokyo
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Ending my first trenching shift, and checking out Gokyo Lake
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Mike enjoying the digging |
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| Surveying the Ngozumba Glacier |
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At the top of the moraine
Photo: Mike McMahon |
This paid off because not only did it give us
something to do, but that night the storm cleared out and a nearly full moon
revealed itself making for some awesome visuals of the newly snow covered
glacier from the top of the moraine.
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The top of the moraine at night
Photo: Mike McMahon |
Some night shots of from the top of the moraine:
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| A Bear!! |
Mike and I thought that if we stayed the night we could get
out early and head towards Namche. This
way, the snow would have the rest of the night for sloughs to run, and if we
crossed underneath all of the avalanche terrain before the sun hit it then we
would be able to avoid sloughs as well as the slides that would surely begin as
soon as the warm autumn sun started affecting the snow. Mike and I headed out early in the morning
constantly listening for any sign of avalanche activity. As we hoped/predicted, all was completely
silent and still, and just as we reached the stairs the sun started hitting the
slopes high up on some of the enormous peaks to the north. We knew we would have to hurry to get through
the dangerous parts before the sun hit the high slopes we wanted to sneak
underneath. Unfortunately, hurrying was
not too much of an option. The stairs
were covered in cemented piles of snow from the continuous sloughing during the
storm, and soon we hit ice. The storm
was not particularly cold and while it was snowing some of the rocks were
already warm enough to melt snow; the runoff flowed on top of the avalanche
debris and refroze during the clear night.
After I spent a while chipping at it with a trekking pole, Mike
discovered you could get a foot underneath it and break it up from
underneath. We spent quite a while
getting through this section of stairs because each steep section we had to
kick steps in the rock hard avalanche debris which resulted in some damaged toe
nails, but did get us through just as the sun started hitting the slopes up
above us. The two doctors as well as two
other people followed us down to the stairs, but upon seeing the exciting
traverse decided to turn around and head back to Gokyo.
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| A quick photo break on our dash out. |
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A startled Baer.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| First light on something way to the North on the border with Tibet. I had these all figured out at one point, but I've forgotten exactly where I was looking in some of these pictures. |
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Kicking through some ice.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Mike making his way down the avalanche debris |
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| A quick rest for the toes. |
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| Whew, made it through : Mike sporting his super fine and dangerous neck warmer. |
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Enjoying the sun
Photo: Mike McMahon |
Mike and I stopped at the rescue post in Machhermo to give
them an update on people and the doctors in Gokyo since the phone lines were
not working, and then we proceeded to rally down to Namche Bazaar. On this day we saw at least eight helicopters
heading up towards Gokyo presumably to airlift people from the town since there
was no way out unless you were up for crossing terrain best crossed with an ice
axe and crampons, without them.
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| Kyajo Ri after the storm |
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| The snow line |
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A real man would fill that thing with concrete first.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
In Namche we had to pick up a couple of last things, and
then meet up with our porters. At this
point we were a day behind schedule, and had no way of telling our previous
porter to send the new ones a day later.
That’s why we paid in advance though.
That way the porters would hopefully wait for us to get there because we
had already paid them for a week. I
called our porter from High Spirits and apologized for being late, and asked
him about the porters. He said that they
went up the day before, but since we had not shown up they returned at night to
Lukla. That was interesting.
“Can you send them back up today, and we’ll meet them in the
afternoon in Namche?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
In the early evening, we got to Namche very tired after
hiking all day, and met our porters.
There were several problems which needed to be taken care of that
evening. Only one had an even remotely
reasonable pair of shoes; the other had only sandals and neither of them had a
jacket. Both were from the village of
the High Spirit porter which is way down the valley at very low elevation. They had not done porter work for a trekking
group before, and they were not even remotely acclimatized. Most distressing though, was that they had
not been paid the money we gave for them in advance. This is why they hiked back to Lukla at night
when we did not show up: they couldn’t afford to stay in Namche.
We set out to rent our new porters the proper equipment
minus the shoes. Having shoes was part
of our initial agreement, so they had to pay for those from their salary. I spent a lot of time on the phone trying to
figure out why the porter from High Spirit didn’t pay the new porters though it
didn’t really matter. He wasn’t going to
come to Namche to pay the porters that night, and they needed money while they
worked so we were just going to have to pay them again and try to get our money
back from the High Spirit porter after our climb. We were frustrated, but could do nothing
about it so we went ahead with our plan…which was constantly changing.
Originally, we were going to acclimatize, return to Namche,
and then hike up a remote valley to the base of Kyajo Ri to begin our climb,
but with all the new snow we thought using established trails for as long as
possible would be a good idea. We didn’t
want to post hole up the valley for a long distance at high elevation, so we
decided to hike back up to a town called Luza and over a pass there which would
drop us into the Kyajo valley almost at the base of the peak. This way we could use a trail that already
had an established boot pack up to Luza and then quickly gain elevation over a
short distance which would minimize the distance we would have to trudge
through deep snow. This was not the
first, or last time I wished I had skis on this trip. This plan would also mean
that bringing a tent and food for the porters would not be necessary. They would hike with us to Luza, and then
spend one day hiking as high up to the pass as they could and then return to
Luza for the remainder of our climb.
Luza had a nice lodge and warm food available. They would then meet us on a prearranged day
at a prearranged spot up on the pass in order to help us bring our gear back
down.
The next day we headed out with our now equipped porters,
and worked our way towards Luza. At
Dhole the porters said they were tired (they had some heavy loads and were not
acclimatized), and decided to stay there for the evening. Mike and I continued up to Luza where we
would meet them the next morning.
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| Nearing Dhole on our second trip up |
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| Nearing sunset... I think the reflection of the mountain in the clouds is neat. |
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| Peaks peeking above the clouds |
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| Almost to Luza |
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Newly snowy peaks to the west of Dhole
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The views while walking were sort of breathtaking.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Sunset from just above Luza. Hungchhi (7029m) is in the sun I think. |
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| Nice streaking in the sky |
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| Again with the streaking |
The next morning our porters showed up on time, but one of
them was feeling the altitude. We now
had a bit of a dilemma. I gave him some
Advil and a Diamox, and he had a hot meal at the guest house. His headache got a little better, but was
still hurting him. Our plan was to take
the porters quite a bit higher, and we did not want him to get any sicker. For one thing working hard with a splitting
headache is not fun, and second, if one of our porters got really sick we would
have to abandon our trip and make sure he got taken care of medically as well
as financially. The agent we dealt with
in Kathmandu said that we paid for insurance for our porters, but at this point
it seemed unlikely that our previous porter had passed on the names of the new
porters to Kathmandu which was also a task he was supposed to do. It also dawned on me at this point that we
were idiots and never got an itemized receipt from the guy at High
Spirits. If one of our porters needed to
use the insurance that we paid for it would be easy enough for the man in
Kathmandu to claim that we never paid for it.
We obviously couldn’t ask this guy to go any higher, but we
needed a second porter. We talked our
problem over with the lodge owner. The
lodge owner made sure that our sick porter was not dizzy because that is the
main symptom of high altitude cerebral edema.
We were sure to include the lodge owner to make sure we didn’t make a
stupid decision based on summit fever.
We all spent a long time talking and the sick porter decided he felt
well enough to walk back down alone. If
he had not we would have had to either go with him or send our other porter
with him. We paid the sick porter his
wage for the day even though he had only worked for about two hours, and then
sent him on his back to Namche and then his village.
The lodge owner agreed to send one of the women who were
working in his kitchen with us as a second porter, but only for one day. We were hoping to have porter support for two
days. The first day we would hike to a
camp, and then porters would return the short distance to the lodge to return
the next morning with nothing and carry things to a higher camp. We only had the woman, who was one of the
shortest women I have ever seen, from the lodge for one day though and that day
was quickly slipping through our fingers while we figured out our porter
situation. We quickly dumped everything
we didn’t need for the climb in the lodge and loaded up. We gave a pair of our hiking boots to the
male porter, but the woman could have probably fit her entire leg into our
boots so she made do with sneakers.
She may have been short, but she was strong. She was also
acclimatized seeing as she lives at 4300m.
This was the kind of porter we needed from the beginning. She carried a bag that was probably more than
half of her body weight…all day…through the snow…at altitude…with wet socks,
and never once complained. Mike and I
took turns breaking trail for our much shorter Nepali companions who sunk to
their hips every time Mike and I would sink past our knees. The snow had compacted some, but was far from
consolidated. We made depressingly slow
progress as we slogged our way up towards the saddle. We were hoping to reach 5090m which would
have been 300m higher than the highest place we had thus far slept in
Gokyo. We traveled on avalanche debris as
much as possible because it was a bit more consolidated that the rest of the
snow, but not the cement we were expecting.
At 3PM we had to turn our porters around so they could get back to the
lodge before the temperature started dropping too much, and before it got
dark. At this time we were still fairly
short of our goal for the evening so we turned our porters back and told the
young man to come back the next day if he wanted. We told him it would again be a tough day,
but we wanted to start earlier and hopefully the snow would be more
compacted. If he did not come then we
asked him to meet us up on the slope in five days’ time and he could help us
carry things back down. We were all very
tired, and it seemed unlikely he would want to get up at 5AM to get there by
seven or eight to start hauling again.
 |
Beginning the slog
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Continuing the slog
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Taking a break from the slog
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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A little higher on the slog
Photo: Mike McMahon |
Mike and I began shuttling loads up another 100m or so to a
camp we set up at 4990m. This took us
another three hours, and we finally settled into our tent to start making food
as it was getting dark. This was our
first night in the tent, and it went pretty well. The stove was the main issue. We were not sure what kind of fuel would be
available to us in Namche when we were planning so we brought my stove which
can burn just about anything. I figured
we would be able to find normal gasoline as I had used it before here in Nepal
and it worked pretty well. It turns out
that you can get all sorts of compressed gas canisters in Namche Bazaar, but
gasoline is not available. The only fuel
they had was kerosene which, by the way, can hardly be described as
combustible. It has the greasiness of a
cheap sunscreen, and a lovely smell that never goes away…ever. It has a relatively high combustion
temperature. With white gas or normal
gasoline one has only to get some sort of spark in the vicinity of the liquid
to ignite it, but kerosene is another animal.
We had to protect a lighter from the wind for a good two or three
minutes while holding the lighter to the kerosene to get it to light which is
not an easy task high in the mountains where breezes are common and hands
freeze quickly. It also doesn’t burn as
cleanly as gas which quickly reduces the stove’s performance.
 |
| "Hmmm... I think we go up." |
 |
Really enjoying shuttling heavy loads late in the day.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
 |
The stove is started! Nightfall in the Khumbu
Photo: Mike McMahon |
We woke early the next morning, made some tea (after
battling the stove again), had some chocolate and started hiking just as it was
getting light. There was no sign of our
porter which was no surprise, so we distributed loads more evenly among the
four bags and started up with our first of two loads to shuttle for the
day. Even at this early hour we were
still sinking in the snow. A little less
than the day before, but the going was still frustratingly slow. We were expecting the snow to be much harder
as the storm was pretty wet to begin with, the days after had been pretty warm,
and the nights had been clear and quite cold.
It’s clear I still have a lot to learn about snow.
A little later we neared the terminus of the glacier coming
out of the saddle, and Mike suddenly exclaimed, “Wow! Look back at our camp!”
And there was our porter gathering the two bags together and
beginning to hike up towards us. He was
making a lot better time than we were, and he met us at the terminus where we
stopped and waited for him. At this
point the route got very steep and icy in order to climb the terminus. The porter didn’t have crampons, and we
weren’t sure how sketchy the route would be once we got onto the glacier so we
paid him double for carrying both the other bags, and sent him down with
instructions to come back to that point in several days and meet us. We also paid him $15 a day for the days he
spent sitting around waiting for us to come back because we really needed him
to help us get the gear back down.
The terminus also had the only slab release we saw the
entire trip. The debris we had been
hiking up had come off of the glacier, and there was a several foot crown
exactly on the convexity at the top of the terminus for almost the whole width
of the glacier. We climbed up onto the
glacier and began yet another slog. We
were still sinking up to our knees, so each step became a lot of effort and we
started to feel the effects of the sun for the first time. The sun reflecting off of the unbroken snow
was very intense. We had applied
sunscreen several times, but it was like walking on mirrors that are all
directed at you. We were drenched in
sweat and the heat just made the going that much slower.
 |
Stopping to melt some snow for drinking water
Photo: Mike McMahon |
 |
Reaching the top of the next knoll from where I am in this picture took one hour. About 200m.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
 |
| Bear feeling the sun. |
Luckily, flurries would occasionally blow in
providing relief, but the glacier seemed to stretch on forever. At one point a flurry blew in which reduced
visibility to basically nothing, so we pitched the tent and figured we’d wait
it out. In the two minutes it took us to
pitch the tent the sun again came out, and we could see that the glacier was
fairly crevassed from this point onward.
We roped up and again began to trudge upwards towards the saddle which
we reached in an hour or so, and then had to return for the rest of our
gear. The second shuttle trip was much
shorter because we already had a decent boot pack. At the saddle at 5420m we pitched the tent
between two crevasses and settled in for the night.
 |
Hiking through one of the flurries.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Roped up just after a flurry blew through
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Strolling past a yawning crevasse.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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At the saddle feeling depressed as Kyajo is still quite far.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
The views from this camp were pretty spectacular as we could
see west as well as east.
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Attempting to survey the route down.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Setting up at Crevasse Camp
Photo: Mike McMahon |
That night was COLD; I was very happy to be in my sleeping bag. The next day dawned clear and also cold which quickly changed over to blisteringly hot as soon as the sun got working on the snow. McMahon and I were still quite short of our goal so we again downsized our loads and decided to make a long dash for the peak hoping to get to a closer camp that evening and start to climb very early the next day. We packed absolute essentials and set off for what turned out to be a very short dash.
 |
Enjoying some hot tea.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Nightfall at Crevasse Camp
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Looking to the west at night towards Teningbo Peak (5839m)
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Two bears at night.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Fish eye lens
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Applying the necessary sunscreen
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Lifestyle shot
Photo: Mike McMahon |
We immediately had to down climb some very steep terrain
into the Kyajo Valley so McMahon put me on belay and I began to down
climb. The slope very quickly
deteriorated. With every step I kicked into
the unconsolidated snow my toes hit rock.
I would try to weight a step in six inch snow on top of rock slabs and,
unsurprisingly, the step would give out and I’d have a quick adrenaline rush as
I scrambled not to tip over. I searched
back and forth for a way through the cliffs that didn’t involve down climbing
the slippery slabs, but I couldn’t find one.
Even if McMahon managed to down climb with only a sketchy belay I could
provide from below there was no way we would be able to re-climb the face up to
the saddle on our way back out. I struggled
my way back up the face by wedging an ice axe into cracks in the rocks
underneath the snow and scrambling up to a point where my foothold held and
then repeated. At the top McMahon was
feeling the sun after sitting in that oven for about an hour, so we retreated
to a shady spot and discussed options.
 |
" Oh man, that is steep and scary."
Photo: Mike McMahon |
Time was passing quickly and we would have to use one of our
two ropes to set up a fixed line down into the valley and back up again. We decided against doing this for some
reason, but in retrospect I’m not sure why we did. We had two ropes for rappelling purposes, but
we probably could have gotten by with one.
Perhaps the task was just getting too daunting to pull off in the time
frame we had left. Anyways, we decided
to give up on the peak and decided to do whatever climbing we could from our
crevasse camp. We set the tent up again,
scaled down to day packs, and then began to climb the ridge just north of our
camp.
 |
Mike belaying me up.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The view down the Kyajo valley.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Climbing up with Crevasse Camp in the background.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Getting onto the struggle bus.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Pitons!
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Crevasse Camp catching some late afternoon sunlight.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Ama Dablam on the left looking east.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Evening falls in the Kyajo Valley
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Last light on Ama Dablam (6814m).
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Moonrise from Crevasse Camp
Photo: Mike McMahon |
The next morning we decided to make a go at the ridge again. This time it was much easier as we were
climbing earlier and we had already broken trail for a good ways up. The climbing was fun and the day was clear
which gave us some truly amazing views.
We reached the top around lunch time and spent a while taking pictures,
eating lunch, and enjoying the spectacular views.
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| Ama Dablam |
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| Mike at Cravasse Camp |
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| Crevasse Camp in the morning |
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| Mike trying to warm up. |
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| Everest |
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| Enjoying the sun |
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Housework
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Definitely the altitude talking...
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Everst and Lhotse from Crevasse Camp |
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| Moonset |
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The rotten section
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Getting to one of the rock sections.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Mike climbing up on our second attempt |
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| A tricky little rock section |
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Settling in for a nice sunny belay
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Mike taking the lead |
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Mike leading some steep snow.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Getting ready to start the next lead
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Mike cresting the top of a narrow knoll. |
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A cozy little belay
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The last section!
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Pumo Ri (7165m) on the left and Everest on the right |
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Fish eye vies of Kyajo Valley
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Some very rugged and glaciated terrain make up the Tibetan border. |
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| Kyajo Ri...The closest we ever got. |
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| "Hmmmm..... let's see if we can get up this bit of loose snow...Nope." |
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| A very interesting rock formation makes up the head of the Macchermo Glacier |
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| Everest |
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| Pumo Ri |
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| Cho Oyu perhaps (8201m) |
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| Mike with Kyajo Ri in the background |
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| A nice icefall coming down from Teningbo Peak |
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Fish eye of the Khumbu
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Fish eye of Kyaho Valley
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Looking extremely fierce
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Mike hauls this thing everywhere...
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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America!!
Photo: Mike McMahon |
Too soon it was time to start working our way back down. We traversed down the ridge a ways to a big solid rock band where McMahon drove in a piton and we made a quick rappel down the steep ridge to the glacier.
 |
Time to get down!
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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I hope that thing holds...
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Rapelling off the ridge |
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| Getting back to Crevasse Camp |
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| Evening sunlight on Ama Dablam |
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| Makalu in evening light |
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| Makalu |
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| Everest and Lhotse |
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| Alpenglow on Makalu |
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| Alpenglow on Everest |
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| Neat colors in the sky with Ama Dablam |
The next day we began our rally out to Lukla. We strapped bags together and pulled another and teetered
our way down with some very heavy bags to meet our porter who had come up to
meet us at the bottom of the glacier. We
met, transferred gear, had a snack, and then started walking down the snow
which had consolidated considerably.
That evening we were planning on stopping in Phortse Tenga, but the
guest house was full so we pushed on up to Mong La, arriving shortly after
dark.
 |
The next morning getting out of the tent. Mike was very proud of this picture as he got the sun directly behind the tent pole.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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What I think is a Himalayan Snowcock, but not sure. He was pretty unconcerned with our little camp.
|
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Sharing snacks with our trusty porter
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Photo: Mike McMahon |
The next morning we had wonderful views of Ama Dablam and the other surrounding mountains so we spent quite a bit of the morning sitting in the sun, drinking tea, and taking pictures. We left in late morning and made the two hour walk to Namche Bazaar where we wanted to spend the night. We returned rented gear and in the late afternoon went for a little walk where we got to see Nepal’s national bird, the Himalayan Monal (Danphe in Nepali).
 |
A fitting place for a Bear to sleep
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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The way back to Namche with the Kongde range in the background.
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Mike was lucky to catch this specimen unawares. Definitely European...
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Everest, Lhotse, Ama Dablam
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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| Neat sunset taken near Namche |
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| The valley west of Namche and Sunder Peak (5368m). |
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| Hunting bowhead at the head of the Kyajo valley |
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| The Himalayan Monal (Nepal's national bird) They are not this blurry in real life. |
I attempted to call our previous porter who owed us a fair
amount of money only to learn that he had gone off on another trek and
therefore could not return our money.
Mike and I ran into a couple other employees of High Spirit and they
were very helpful and nice. They called
the Greasy man, (who we had nicknamed “The Nubian” from Star Wars), but we
would have to work out all the details in Kathmandu when we returned.
The next morning we rounded up another porter so ours would
not have to carry two bags all the way to Lukla. This kid was very small, and McMahon and I were
sure he couldn’t be more than 11 years old, but he insisted he was 15…even
after we paid him. Mike and I rolled out
a bit late and ended up in Lukla in the early evening. We settled up with our porters, had a nice
dinner, and then headed out to a little coffee shop after dinner for a
snack. Lukla is very touristy. There is even a legitimate Starbucks…
 |
Hiking back to Lukla
Photo: Mike McMahon |
 |
It's never a bad time for air guitar
Photo: Mike McMahon |
The next morning we got up very early and headed to the
airport around 5:30 to make sure we could get on the first flight out…which we
did not do. Unbeknownst to us, we had to
give our ticket number to the hotel, and the hotel had to confirm our flight
the night before in order to get on the plane.
They told us that since we did not do that we could only get on the
second flight. Well, as it turned out it
really didn’t matter because both flights were extremely late (as seems to be
the norm with Makalu Air), and the second flight only left 20 minutes after the
first flight, at 11:30.
 |
A bit sleepy at the airport
Photo: Mike McMahon |
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Our trusty steed for the return flight
Photo: Mike McMahon |
The flight back to Kathmandu was a bit more turbulent that
coming, and I was sitting pretty close behind the cockpit which makes all sorts
of terrifying noises which are just normal alerts about various goings on, but
they sound like alarms. Every time I’d
hear a beeping noise I would quickly glance at the pilots to see it they
thought we were crashing, and upon seeing them calmly doing their job I’d relax
again until the next horrible beeping noise.
Soon enough we were back in the chaos, dirt, and noise of Kathmandu.
We wasted no time in visiting our greasy friend at High
Spirits because we figured it would take us quite some time to get our money
back, if we were going to get it back at all.
We explained the situation with the porter, and also presented our trash
receipt which was worth $250. He
explained to us that he could not get us our deposit back for two days, and
that he would first have to talk to his porter to confirm the situation before
he could return the money that the porter took.
He said that the deposit was not for him, it was for the Mountaineering
Association so he had to get the money back from them, but the problem he had
was that we paid his company for the deposit not the association. His company was on the credit card receipt so
HE owed us the deposit, not anyone else.
On top of this, McMahon’s flight was the next day, so two days wasn’t
going to cut it. We argued back and
forth for a bit which eventually degraded into me screaming obscenities and
told him if he didn’t give us our money then I would get the police. He said, “Okay, get the police.” So, I did.
They were not overly helpful, but they did get the talks
moving a lot faster than we had been doing.
He quickly agreed to give us the $250 of our deposit, but it took a bit
more haggling to get him to agree to give us the money his porter took. Also, he couldn’t have it ready until the
next morning, so McMahon and I left, had a nice meal at one of the many tasty
restaurants in Kathmandu, and had a good nights’ sleep. In the morning we went back and got most of
our money minus about $30 which we let him have since we were both finished
dealing with that bimbo.
Then it was time to part ways. I went back to Pokhara, and McMahon went back
to the States with another successful adventure under our belts.
