We left beautiful sunny weather at home and arrived in peak trekking season to find heavy rain and a backlog of flights from Kathmandu to the famous airstrip of Lukla (2880m) that has become the start of the trekking approach into mountains of Nepal. The small Twin Otter planes only fly in good weather after some nasty accidents in poor conditions. We were lucky to catch a flight early the very next day, squeezing between high passes and low clouds and enjoying the spectacular landing on a runway that is seemingly perched on the side of the mountains themselves, and so our trek began.
Rosie, Lynda, Mick, Joe, Paul and I trekked for the best part of two weeks to the Mera La, base camp for Mera Peak at 5400m. The first week saw heavy rain each afternoon and strenuous walking over high passes and through beautiful forests as we steadily gained height. We took the longer approach to allow an average height gain of 300m to 400m a day with a couple of rest days for good measure. I am sure that each of us will have our own highlights of this first week, it was a week of immersing ourselves into the local way of life and appreciating where we were. It was the end of the local harvest and the tourist season was now in full swing but the approach that we took was still quiet with just us and one other group for company. Once we left Lukla we said goodbye to electricity and immersed ourselves in the world of water purification and open fires for warmth and cooking.
At the end of our second day we arrived at the village we were to be staying in to find that our Sherpas choice of tea house was closed. Tea houses are basic forms of accommodation. They vary from offering twin rooms (with paper thin wooden walls!) to more basic dormitory style accommodation. They have a dining/living room which is often based around a wood burning stove. We measured the quality of the tea house on the length of the stoves flue. If the flue went all of the way up and out of the room then it was a high quality tea house. More often than not the flue would stop at above head height.
The Sherpas disappeared off around the village until they came back to say that another tea house had been found. We dutifully followed on to a lovely old stone and timber building where it soon became obvious that the owners had not been expecting 6 Westerners. Nonetheless we were ushered into the family kitchen, sat by the fire with a cup of butter tea and watched as fresh vegetables were brought in from the land outside and a fine meal was prepared over the open fire. We were even given an impromptu tour of the families Buddhist temple!
As we travelled we enjoyed meeting the people in the villages along the way. Young children would always welcome us with a cheerful Namaste whilst older children, men and women would be busy crushing corn, collecting firewood, building, tending to crops etc but would still offer a friendly smile and greeting.
Many an evening throughout the trip Porters would get together in their own basic accommodation and would sing songs to the beat of a drum for hours at a time. I know its a cliche but these men worked incredibly hard, carrying loads of upto 30 Kilos and wearing nothing more than trainers on their feet over high passes and down steep slopes.
The second week saw us enter the main Hinku valley and as we did so the weather improved to give blue sky days and fine views of the snow capped peaks that surrounded us. For me it felt great to be in the mountains proper, above the tree line and fully able to soak up the mountain scenery. The trekking also got easier as each day we simply went up, there was no dropping down steep passes to head back up the other side. Again we made slow and steady progress allowing for a couple of days rest along the way before finally reaching the village of Khare which sits at 4900m and is the final stop before base camp. Our Sherpas were pretty keen to make the most of the weather window for our summit bid and so with everyone feeling strong we had an acclimatisation day up to Base Camp (5400m) and back to Khare before making our summit bid.
We decided to skip base camp and head directly to high camp (5800m) the following day. This had several advantages as it meant less time on the glacier for the porters, less time for us suffering in high camps, better food and sleep down in the village of Khare and a better chance of the weather staying in our favour for our summit bid. It also meant that we avoided the busy weekend summit push.
The week of rain that we had experienced at the start of our trip had fallen as snow on the mountains. From Khare upwards the majority of the route is glaciated and all of the fresh snow combined with the recent end of the monsoon season meant that the glacier travel was safer and easier than in some years. The snow bridges over the crevasses were well formed and the passage of many feet before us meant that there was a good track in place for us to enjoy.
As we made our way up to High Camp Mick felt tired and groggy and so made the decision to head back down. We had already helped treat two Porters from other teams who were suffering from Acute Mountain Sickness that had developed into HAPE in one case and so all recognised the risks in not listening to what our bodies were telling us. I dropped down part of the way with Mick and then caught the others back up on the way to high camp.
As we enjoyed a brew we shared the company of fellow Brit climbers Andy Houseman and Tony Stone. We had met up each day for the last couple of days as they acclimatised for a new route on nearby Kyasher - read more here. The views from High Camp are stunning and we could see Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu and many more awesome peaks that made us question whether we were actually here or had we been super imposed into a mountaineering calendar of the worlds highest peaks.
Once in the tents my head started pounding and I delighted my fellow tent mates by vomiting all over the back door! With an hour of daylight left I decided to lose some height as Mick had done earlier. I was closely followed by Tony who was the same colour as me!
We re-grouped back at the village of Kote where two more Westerners and a climbing Sherpa were all evacuated by helicopter suffering from AMS and HAPE. Here we enjoyed a day of rest together, eating and drinking and soaking up the sun. I don't think I have ever eaten so many eggs in one day as I did on that rest day, scrambled, boiled, fried I could not get enough!
Our route back took us out over the high pass of the Zatrwala (4600m) which took us two days. It was amazing to think that during our first week we had crossed a pass the height of the Matterhorn, in our second week we were on Mera Peak itself and then in the third week just to leave the valley we had to climb back up to a height just below the summit of Mont Blanc. The final nights tea house was pretty low on the flue scale. The stove was very smoky (the flue finished well short of the roof), the roof leaked and snow regularly blew the entire length of the hut. We were lucky to meet up with some French Canadian trekkers who somehow had an over supply of Toblerone! They kindly donated a couple of bars to the 6 Brits that seemed transfixed on the shiny wrappers! When we awoke for our final days trekking were stepped outside to several inches of fresh snow, blue skies and a stunning cloud inversion. The crampons were needed one last time in descent and we headed to Lukla for sizzling steaks and beer!
We got lucky with the flights from Lukla again and arrived in Kathmandu with a few spare days. We stayed in a former Palace with swimming pool and enjoyed a couple of days of feeding ourselves up, swimming and sightseeing in the lively Thamel district of the city. A highlight for me was a Rickshaw race across town to the Everest Steak House!
For all of us it was a brilliant trip, offering 24 days of adventure in many forms and an insight into a different cultures way of life. We all spent the last day discussing the next trip! I have just put a few nice photos into this Blog entry. The rest will be on the gallery page and on my Facebook page by the end of the week once I catch up on 3 weeks of emails and phone calls! Oh and theres also snow on the mountains as an added distraction!
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