Avalanche Season on Mt. Everest

---

“So-a-you wanna go to Nepal?”
“Um-yes-yes I do…”
“So-a-you wanna hike Everest?”
“Yes-yes I do…”

Done and done.

I can’t recall who asked who these important questions but it was unanimous.
Nepal.
Everest.

A week later we were on a plane out of Delhi and into the highest parts of the Ihmalayas. Now the complete and utter lack of planning a trip into the Himalayas would mean that we would have to rent just about everything. I’ve been carrying around insulating layers such as fleeces and capilenes but there’s no room in my bag for hiking boots with and substance to them and a down jacket, not to mention, gloves, hats, and heavy weather pants. Let me tell you, two weeks in rental hiking boots is not fun. Not nice to the feet either.

So having come from India and still with my once bitten twice shy mentality towards airport cab drivers, we hopped into a wagon and headed towards Thamal, the backpacker/hiker region of Kathmandu. We weren’t even out of the airport before the man in the passenger seat began pitching us on his ability to put together a trek up the Everest trail. Guide, this much, Porter, this much, food and shelter, this much. With a grain of salt we listened to the pitch, after all, we had zero resemblance of a plan as to how we were going to do what we wanted. The guy was nice enough and spoke next to perfect English so it wasn’t easy to pass up an invitation to come to his office later for some tea and trekking talk.

We checked into the Kathmandu Guest House, an excellent place to stay that is one hell of a bang for the buck. A quick trip down the main drag in Thamal and I was offered every drug I’d ever heard of as well as knives, pillows, tiger balm, chess sets, tapestries, kit-kat bars and someone willing to clean my ears. We checked out a few trekking companies but after a little haggling, we negotiated that our trek would include the rental of all necessary gear essentially free or overly inclusive of the best package price we heard.

Package to Everest includes: all meals and shelter, a guide, plane ticket to Lukla and plane ticket for the guide (split cost for the group of 2) all rental equipment, backpack, boots, sleeping bag, and down jacket. We were on our own for drinks, tea, coffee, beer, and most importantly, water. We also were responsible for bringing our own TP which in some of these countries, is more valuable than gold. For the money we paid the Global Trekking Company, we were adequately provided, which is to say we had all we needed without any effort on the company’s part to exceed expectations.

Knowing full well we were responsible for our own beverages, Royal and I arrived at the airport less than fifteen hours after arriving in Nepal, bright and early ready to hit the trail with a combined 500 rupees. This money incidentally was the amount of money spent in the first two days on the mountain. I had to grease a security guard to walk with me out of the terminal and over to the international terminal where I was able to tap the ATM…more atm issues…and have enough cash flow for 13 days in the mountains. (With my ATM issues in India, and this haphazardly planned departure, its hard to believe that people actually had to plan to get to the bank during working hours and vacationers had to carry fat wads of cash with them everywhere they went. The prevalence of ATMs today are so abundant that you can catch a tuk-tuk in just about any country to a cash machine in a matter of half an hour if you are in an inhabited area.)

I kept a daily journal during the hike that I thought was going to serve as my blog, but as I came to realize, we had a LOT of down time spent not hiking that I ended writing all too much to reproduce here. Anyways, it’s more fun to look at all the pictures again and try to recall the whole experience again in a renewed way.

Day one let me know that I wasn’t in the best shape of my life. From Lukla, the trail is a series of steps that lead you down to the river in the center of the valley, back away from the river, then back down again so you can cross a suspension bridge and continue on with the ups and downs. Royal and I feasted for lunch which would become a problem down the road because we were ordering more than Kmal, our guide, was allotted per day for meals. We weren’t supposed to have Kmal for a guide, and if there was anyone on the trip that was completely unprepared for the trip, it was the guide. He found out he had the pleasure of being our guide at 9pm the night before. He hiked in casual shoes which had apparently made the trip before and wore a sweater the entire time that made me refer to him as Abercrombie on more than a few occasions.

It took at least two days before Kmal was telling us the story of his life, how he married a beautiful young girl who is from a caste above him, and now all she does is eat and eat and his beautiful young wife has become his fat wife. He referred to his children by their names, but he only referred to his wife as “my fat wife.” Because he’s from a lower caste, he never got along with his in-laws, or judging from his presence, its them that never got along to the idea of their daughter marrying down. That’s a big no-no in Nepal.

Day two progressed up the valley towards a town called Namche Bazaar because of its locally famous Saturday market overlooking the valley. Along the way we learned of Kmal’s stint in a Saudi Arabian prison for failure to renew his working visa. He landed a job in Saudi some years ago that provided more than amply for his family but he got lazy and got caught and got thrown in jail. Though he’s a Hindu, he pretended to be a good god fearing Muslim, Kmal Mohammed, for three months in order to avoid a longer prison term. After I heard this story about his jail time, I had full confidence that this guy would get us to Base Camp.

It wasn’t much of a tough decision when we found out it’d take longer to make the Base Camp trek than the time we had allotted for Nepal. When else would I get a chance to hike to the Base of the Tallest Mountain in the World? Not anytime soon. Done. Consequently we would have to rearrange the time in Southern India and Sri Lanka but its Everest. Done.

We arrived at about an hour past noon after a morning hike of four hours straight up steps and against a steep grade. Here we would spend two nights acclimatizing to the thin air and relax. One night, one day and I was already a little stir crazy, finishing both books I had intended to read on the entire two week trip. I severely underestimated the amount of time spent doing whatever you wanted, so long as you were conserving your energy for the rest of the hike. The guesthouse we stayed in at Namche was owned and operated by Tenzig Norgay’s granddaughter (Norgay was the first Sherpa to reach the summit of Everest with Sir Edmund Hilary) so there was a bit of history in all that was around us.

There was a planned day hike the first day in Namche but I fell victim to the pressurized air the first night and didn’t sleep a wink. I think this is where my headache began, though it was with me for so long, two weeks in all, that I don’t remember exactly where it began; only knowing that it got worse the higher we hiked. Instead, the end of the second day was spent at the Namche Army Base at the Everest Museum. There’s an exhaustive collection of newspaper clippings and original photographs from nearly all the expeditions that have attacked the summit of Everest.

At the bottom of the Army Base but still above the town, there were two crashed helicopters that had failed to land on the landing pad. The wind does get rather vicious in the afternoon in Namche, but two choppers in three days was bad. Apparently the second chopper, whose crash was worse than the first was filled with spare parts and mechanics to fix the first. Neither is going anywhere anytime soon but back down the mountain, disassembled, in the baskets of countless porters.

Two nights and a new, thick John Irving novel later, we headed even further into the ihmalayas, pronounced with your best long German accent. The trail hugs the mountains on the west side of the valley so the heat of the sun is making you strip layers of clothes at about ten in the morning. Another day of heading high up along the mountain only to head down, down, down to the river and back up again. I was really starting to get into a groove with my physical restrictions and the weight of my pack but thought the day would never end. One final push out of a forest and you are in Tengboche, home of the last monastery before Everest. This has a significant history in trekking past of Everest as every Buddhist sherpa stops here to seek the gods’ blessing on their quest to the top. To me, the monastery signified the end of an uphill struggle and the first snow we were able to eat.

We passed through the monastery, that was closed for the next hour, and crashed for the night in a town, Dingboche about a half hour over the ridge and closer towards another river. This night we hung out with a father son combination that was using the same trekking company and was on virtually the same hike as us with one extra day to spare. We shared some whiskey and talked about the States, which was the first conversation I’ve had with American tourists about America since I’ve left. Brian had just graduated from college and his dad had taken him to the Far East for his graduation present. The Meades would turn out to be good card playing friends for the remainder of the trip as well as out time in Kathmandu afterwards. We shared whiskey and stories of home and travel over countless games of spades as well as an intense few battles of chess with Brian.

Day four was an easier day strenuous because of the amount of miles walked rather than the amount of steps climbed. The entire time we’ve been trekking, there have been relatively few other groups of hikers aside from the Meades. Occasionally there would be a group to come down the mountain with word from the top, but ninety percent of the people on the trail were Porters, hauling supplies to the numerous guesthouses that littered the side of the trail.

When we shopped packages for the trek, both Royal and I foolishly assumed that we would be camping and that it would cost more for us to stay in the tea houses. Campers need to carry much more gear with them as they cook for themselves as well, so camping consequently costs nearly double the price of tea houses. The tea houses weren’t much better than a tent. You were provided with a solid roof, and a mattress that more often than not had a blanket with it, but these tea houses had absolutely no insulation and if you were lucky enough, you could actually feel the wind whipping through the room in the night. Plywood separated the rooms so if you were cursed with being on the other side of a half inch thick excuse of a wall, good luck sleeping.

Day five was a day hike during the second acclimatization day and despite the headache I only really started feeling A.M.S. (Acute Mountain Sickness) during the night of day five and the morning of day six. I was curious where contains more pressure on your brain, 5000 meters in the air or sixty meters in the ocean but regardless, the pressure on the dome at around 5000 meters is absolutely crushing. The more you are in motion, the better your sickness, because as you move, the blood needs to circulate more thus you get more oxygen to your brain and the pain subsides from when you were lying motionless counting the number of times you’ve woken up after five minutes of semi-sleep.

Day six started with a headache and ended with nearly frozen appendages. We were well above the tree line at this point in time and passed through the Everest tombstones section of the mountain. Over one particular ridge that took an hour to conquer, there is a flat spread of land that contains countless tombstones of climbers who have died while climbing on the mountain. Some of the tombstones don’t even contain graves as there are many bodies still off the side of the trail to the top. There was an American from Texas, the same age as me, who had died last summer on a expedition that really got me thinking about my own mortality. I was glad we had Kmal as our guide because his resolve had proved tougher than a prize fighter’s and he never appeared tired. Kmal has been leading trips to Base Camp and all over Nepal for over ten years. There was no reason to fear death, except for the negative possibility of exposure to freezing cold temperatures for the next few days.

Loboche was the last stop before Base Camp and though I wasn’t able to sleep a wink due to the sub-zero temperature inside my sleeping bag, I would speculate that the excitement of the coming day would have had the same effect. Brian, our new hiking companion felt sick the morning of the push and decided to stay an extra day for acclimatization purposes. His lungs over the course of the day and night had begun to fill with fluid and he was slowly drowning his lungs. No one knew this was the case till much later in the day when we had all made our way through Gorak Shep on our way to Base Camp. Brian would never make it to the top though he attended NOLS in Colorado and was in much better physical condition. A.M.S. doesn’t discriminate who it affects and everyone is affected to one degree or another.

So finally we dropped our bags at the Gorak Shep Guesthouse and made our last push higher still towards Base Camp. This was by far the worst hike of the entire trek. The final trail to Base Camp, though it follows alongside a very cool looking glacier, contains astonishing vistas of rocks that range from the size of a gold ball to the size of a Volkswagen. There are the whitecap mountains all around you, though you have been looking at those mountains for the past few days, and even if you wanted to look up, the fall resulting in an errant step was not worth the risk. All eyes down and ahead for the next few hours. There were a few points in time along the way where a step six inches to the right and you would be on your way out of this world in a very fast hurry.

FINALLY! BASE CAMP! Just in time to go completely delirious. I was so tired and cranky by the time we reached the top, I was ready to turn back around and get a warm cup of tea. There is nothing at Base Camp in terms of amenities unless you have schlepped them up there yourself. There are no guesthouses, only campers preparing for expeditions to the top and they spare no luxury. Some of these camps set up for months at a time as they send squads up the mountain. Royal and I found some ice picks so we decided to swing them around like idiots, nearly stabbing each other and ourselves in the process. Pose for a few pictures, eat a couple of coconut cookies and pretend to kill your guide with an axe we were off.

I had hoped to be able to climb Kala Pattar that afternoon and get some good pictures of Everest at sunset, but the amount of effort it took to get to Base Camp and I did not have another four hour hike in me. Instead, we would wake before sunrise and begin the climb up Kala Pattar in order to reach the summit as the sun poked over the mountains. This climb was pure hell.

To start, John is not a morning person, I nearly skipped the climb entirely in order to catch some sleep with my warm water bottle, but guilt rather than excitement somehow pulled me out of bed and on my way. Royal fed me one of the Altitude tablets I’d been taking to combat my headache for the past few days and within twenty minutes the two of us were making our way up the trail with out headlamps shining bright as we doubled over, suffering from nausea. The pills were meant to be taken with food to become effective so instead of a clear head, I had attracted an upset stomach to accompany a splitting headache.

I must have stopped thirty times for intervals between two and twenty minutes in order to get my bearings for the next few steps. This was the stage when I realized that there is very little chance in this world that I will ever hike Everest or in fact ever be this highly elevated without being on a plane, ever again. When the top was in sight and I quickly realized that the view was not about to change and more in the next few hundred meters of painful hiking. I stopped, did the picture thing and headed back to the lodge.

It’s all downhill from here. One last gaze up at the mountains surrounding Base Camp revealed three or four Avalanches in about twenty minutes. This is currently the time of year when the warmer air is melting the snow causing the snow to get heavier and more packed and any cracks in the ice below and the snow goes tumbling. They weren’t what I had pictured as a prototypical Avalanche, but they surely would kill anything in their path.

The trek downhill was a welcome one though this is where I ran into troubles with my boots. After a solid week of mostly uphill I was beginning to show signs of blistering on my feet but after three days of solid downhill, they were wrecked. Three weeks later, as I write this, they are still healing and shedding layers of regenerative skin. I was actually worried that this trek may not be able to happen because of the myriad of foot injuries I sustained in Thailand including stepping on an anchor in the sand, slicing my toe on a sharp cinderblock staircase and shredding the sole of my foot attempting to stop my own moving moped. But my feet healed just in time for a whole new set of injuries which has prompted the thought if I should just never walk again? I’d protect my feet that way…

Anyhow, the trek down took three days which left out thirteen day trek come to an end after twelve days. This was actually a blessing because we had run out of money for food and lodging. Kmal was too nice and didn’t tell us that we were ordering much more food than he had budgeted for which meant that he had to ask us for a loan in order to pay for the lodging and meals. This wasn’t a bad predicament to be in because we were done with this hiking adventure and excited to get back to Kathmandu to celebrate Royal’s birthday the proper way, with copious amounts of Jack Daniels…

This hike was single handedly the most grueling and satisfying two weeks of my life. It was such an accomplishment to be able to hike everywhere we had intended and that I was able to see Everest with my own two eyes. I’ve had a poster on my wall of the Everest Range ever since High School and even gave a speech in college about what it would take in order to climb ole Sagarmatha. (My roommate actually wrote and presented the speech prior to me though I received a better grade. HA!) This was a life goal that I can now with confidence cross of the things to do before I die list.

The only adventure that could possibly follow two weeks in the Ihmalays would be a night on the Town in Kathmandu celebrating Royal’s birthday…

---

Photos

5am hike up Kala Patthar
FROZEN SOLID!
Everest in the Background...

Gorak Shep
Last stop before Base Camp...

The Big Hill
Doesn't look so big...

View from Kala Patthar
Roughly 6 am...

The Lukla Airport
Welcome to the Himalayas...

Comments

[M. Iacono]

UFO
Looks like you got a snap shot of a UFO in your "one for the Hun Today" shot! Very X-Fileish...I like it. Adds a little mystery to it.