The Sun Fighting Through Afternoon Clouds (Looking Towards Kongde Ri, From Namche Bazaar)
Dateline: March 28th, 2010
Sleep is supposed to become more difficult the higher up we ascend, go I'm glad that last night at 2,600m was a piece of cake. I was in bed by 2200 and – with only two brief interruptions due to sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings – I slept deeply until 0700. It was chilly during the night, dropping to 12°C in that unheated room, but the thick blanket provided by the guesthouse kept me toasty. Breakfast was a large bowl of apple-flavoured oatmeal. I chased that down with a mug of Nepali milk tea, made with a creamy, sweetened nak's milk. (Second thing I learned while trekking in the Himalaya: yak is masculine; nak is the feminine. Thus, there is no such thing as yak's milk.)
Trekking - Day 2
By 0830, Santosh, Arun and I were packed up and ready to tackle a day we would split into two, distinct parts. Santosh dubbed the first part of the route, "the Five Bridges trek". This was an easy, relatively level hike along a trail that crossed back and forth between the east and west banks of the Dudh Kosi. The crossings were made via long, steel-wire bridges, strung anywhere between fifty and one-hundred vertical metres above the waters below. The scenery was calmingly beautiful: sharp valley walls leading down to a raging river fed by bright, milky (Dudh means "milk" in Nepali), turquoise glacial waters; and our first glimpses of the snow-covered high Himalaya in the distance.
Like yesterday, the sun was beating down. All of us were sweating quite profusely from the brisk trekking pace. We only stopped twice during the two-and-a-half hour hike to our lunch spot – one stop was mandated when we had our permits and other paperwork checked on officially entering Sagamartha National Sanctuary via the guard post at Monjo. We lunched about a half-hour further on in Jorsale, the last major settlement before Namche Bazaar. Since we stopped at the Jorsale Momo House, I felt I had to go with a plate of vegetarian momos (though, to tell the truth, I'm already getting sick of daal bhat). Momos are Nepali/Tibetan dumplings – they look almost exactly the same as woh teep, the Northern Chinese potstickers – stuffed with various fillings. The carrot and cabbage dumplings were a served with both a spicy peanut sauce and some ketchup, which really helped since the dumplings themselves were rather bland.
A Himalayan High Wire Act
At 1200, we were on our way again. Soon after leaving Jorsale, I was confronted with a steep staircase, leading up to the last of the steel bridges for the day. This bridge, like all the others, was covered in Buddhist prayer flags – flags that were flapping are near horizontal due to the speed of the wind coursing through the valley. On the steel platforms, we were easily over a hundred metres above the river; and about thirty metres above where the old bridge was located before being swept away in a flash flood years earlier. The end of the trails leading up to the bridge were both unaltered, meaning we had to climb up to the new bridge, cross over, then descend thirty vertical metres' worth of vertigo-inducing steps before meeting up with the track on the other side. The reward for our efforts was nothing more than the beginning of a series of switchbacks leading up to the as yet unseen village of Namche Bazaar.
We were at the point I'd been dreading since I woke up this morning. Lonely Planet's Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya guide only has one descriptor for these switchbacks: "torturous". And a quick check of my altimeter indicated that we had anywhere from five-hundred to six-hundred vertical metres to ascend before we hit Namche.
I was using altogether different words to describe the climb up those switchbacks – most of them of the colourful, four-letter variety. None of these words were spoken aloud; I barely had enough breathe to gasp in oxygen, and letting fly with a string of invectives would have been an ill-advised waste of energy. I was sweating like crazy, my twenty-pound backpack felt like a tonne, and my breathing and heart rate were through the roof after only the fewest of steps.
Fortunately, my previous experience trekking in the Andes had me prepared for the rigours of high-altitude ascents, and I employed exactly the same mental psyche-up games as I had back in Peru. I'd tell myself that all I needed to do was take fifty steps before I could stop for thirty seconds and catch my breath; then wash, rinse and repeat all the way up the damn mountain. Ascending between five and seven vertical metres per minute, my short-break strategy had me making faster and steadier progress than other trekkers who kept moving for longer bursts, but resting for far longer. Our only significant break was a single, isolated teahouse located at 3,270m – the very first indication that there was a village at the top of the hill. Namche still wasn't visible, but we took a ten-minute breather before making our final stab upwards.
That last section of the climb, into the lower levels of Namche Bazaar, was easily the worst part of the entire day. On the switchbacks, I'd started feeling fatigued. On the last stretch of stairs leading up to our night's accommodation, I bonked. My quads seized up and I lost my balance. I had to steady myself against a short stone wall, literally a pebble's throw – I was less than thirty metres away – from the front door of the Buddha Lodge. After five minutes of catching my breath, and massaging the feeling back into my legs, I was able to shuffle up and through the door of our guesthouse. As I collapsed onto the bed in my room, my only thought was that a bowl of oatmeal, two mini Crunch bars, a tangerine and fourteen momos was not nearly enough food for that climb.
I spent the next fifteen minutes just staring at the ceiling. That I got up from the bed absolutely starving just hammered home my assessment that I'd not had nearly enough to eat that day. Before I knew it, I'd scarfed down half of the chocolate and crackers and biscuits I'd brought to last me the entire trip. I'll either need to pick up more supplies before leaving Namche, or just resolve to absolutely stuff myself at my morning, midday and evening meals.
From the Bottom of Namche Bazaar
As it was, I was out wandering through Namche in the afternoon, picking up a few other necessities. I finally found some iodine tablets and can stop buying bottled water, or paying for boiled water at the lodges. I also paid 250 Nepali rupees for a half-hour of Internet access – likely my last online time until I get back to Kathmandu in two weeks. While the $4 Canadian isn't so ridiculously dear, I'm not sure I can bring myself to part with that much to check e-mail when I was only paying 25 rupees an hour in the capital.
I "made back" that 250 rupees by opting not to pay for a heated shower. The water was bloody freezing, but it did the job of washing off the accumulated sweat from the climb, and it actually made me feel warmer once I was out and dry. The temperature has dropped to less than 10°C this evening and it's just going to get colder as we continue up.
I spent the evening playing cards with Santosh, Arun and three American lads also staying at the guesthouse. Arun taught us duam bol – a fun little game that kept us occupied for hours.
In amongst all the cards, the Americans and I started chatting about the altitude and what we expected as we went further up. They had arrived in Namche a little earlier in the day than I had and it surprised me to learn that they were not stopping in for an acclimatisation day. They were pushing onwards tomorrow. The guys explained that they were originally due in the day before, but the cancellation of all flights to Lukla on March 26th delayed the start of their trek. They were pushing an accelerated schedule, trying to finish the trek to Everest Base Camp and back in ten days. That meant skipping at least one acclimatisation day. I wished them luck, but thought they were totally nuts.
Yet I can understand why they're doing it. Coming into the trek, my biggest fears have pertained to how my body will adjust to the altitude. There are too many unknowns, and no certainty until the body does what the body is going to do. This is Santosh's eleventh trip to Base Camp. He's reached Base Camp nine times. Three trips ago, he got altitude sickness at Lobuche and had to stop. You just never know what will happen.
And acute mountain sickness is dangerous. I've read too many accounts of climbers summiting Mount Everest multiple times without issues, then dying of altitude-induced HACE or HAPE on their third, fourth or fifth times. AMS also kills trekkers, who have no delusions of climbing any mountains. I swore I wouldn't be so monumentally stupid as to ignore the symptoms, of becoming a statistic. But now that I'm on the trail, the thought of abandoning my goal – of turning around before reaching Base Camp – is gut-wrenching.
What happens when I start getting the headaches? What happens if I lose my appetite? If I start to sleep fitfully? If I start walking around like a drunk, on a trail barely a half-metre wide, with a steep precipice just off to the side? Will I press on hoping that I eventually acclimatise? Will I hide the pain from Santosh? Or will I have the fortitude to quit? To turn around before things get worse? Even fatal?
I'm certainly praying that I won't be faced with any of those decisions.
Altitude Stats:
- Starting Altitude: 2,605m
- Ending Altitude: 3,365m
- Maximum Altitude: 3,390m
- Minimum Altitude: 2,585m
- Total Ascent: 1,585m
- Total Descent: 820m
Related Entries:
1. Trekking in the Solukhumbu - Day 1: In the Footsteps of Hillary
2. Fast Forward to the Himalaya
3. Out of the Solukhumbu
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