The journey over the pass . . . H.A.F.E.!

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Sorry the pictures turned out super blurry. I wouldn't have posted them but it took so long to upload them, I figured what the heck. Hopefully my next attempt at pictures will turn out better. Anywho on with the story . . .

So we spent a couple days in Manang eating yak steaks, watching movies in barns and learning about the dangers of H.A.F.E. Jules wasn't feeling too good the first day we got there so we decided to wait a day and see if she improved. Our second night in Manang, Jules got really light headed, so bad that John and I had to help hold her up on the way to the altitude clinic in town. The doctor checked her out and told her to come back the next morning. She did and afterwards we had a group meeting and decided that it would be best for Jules and us as well, if she caught a flight from Manang back to Pohkara and did not finish the trek. Her body was exhausted and the lack of oxygen was really affecting her so it was the best thing for her to do. We were sad to lose a team member but if she was that sick at 12,000 feet, she'd be dead at 17,000 ft and considering she is one of my best friends and travel partner in crime, that just couldn't happen.

I spent our last day in Manang hanging out with the boys while Jules rested up. The boys, who are all rock climbers, brought their rock shoes in the hopes that they would find some boulders to play on and it just so happened that there was a nice little boulder field located about 15 minutes from our hotel. I went down to meet the boys and John was climbing a route which Charlie had dubbed "the Red Yeti". As soon as I walked up, this sound like a small explosion went off. The other boys and I jumped back expecting a rock to be falling or something scary like that. Then John jumps off the boulder yelling "Me tweeds! Me tweeds!". Turns out the "explosion" we heard was a seam on the back of Johns pants blowing out (whether it was due to climbing or extreme H.A.F.E., we do not know). It was the loudest seam explosion I've ever heard and we were all on the ground laughing. Soon the snow started falling so we ran back to the guesthouse and spent the afternoon having snowball fights, building rum bottle sized snowmen and having fencing tournaments with our trekking poles. Hey, what else are you gonna do with them?

The next morning, we got up nice and early, hugged Jules good bye and headed up the trail towards higher elevations, thinner air and in a few days time, the pass. The walk that day was fairly short. Once you get above a certain elevation, you are suppose to only gain 300m of elevation a day so that your body can get use to the oxygen difference so that day we only walked until the early afternoon. We stopped in the little town of Ledar and were glad to have a guesthouse as it was dumping snow outside. However, we soon found the guesthouse was not ideal. The dinning hall had a wood burning stove, "sweet!" we thought, but it was actually a wood SMOKING stove filling the dinning area with so much smoke that it had us ill. Add that to the fact that the whole room was full of angry Germans who were starring us down and the dinning hall became the last place we wanted to hang out so John, Charlie and I went back to our room. Now it was snowing outside and we had a stone room. It was 33 degrees in our room and stinking cold so we pushed two beds together and then all piled on with our sleeping bags to make "the cuddle puddle". It was the only way to keep from shivering your brains out so we spent the day in bed chatting, reading and enjoying an occasional extra cuddle buddy when the other boys from next door came to visit. It's amazing how many people can fit on two twin size beds when you're cold!

In the morning I awoke to find my Nalgene bottle frozen. Excellent, I thought to myself, it's hard to stay hydrated when you have to try to suck on a giant ice cube. I decided to use the bathroom and worry about my water problem later. I went into the bathroom which was just outside our room to discover that there was an ice rink (made of water, pee, only lord knows what) that had formed overnight around the squatter toilet. And it wasn't small, it was a good 2 ft out in all directions. I don't know about you guys, but the last thing I felt like doing at 6am in a cold bathroom, with massive window that over looked the trail in such a way that you flashed whoever was passing by on the trail when you dropped your pants, was trying to balance on a frozen pee "rink" while trying to pee myself. I assessed the situation and decided to go for it using the water tap on the side of the wall for extra balance and decided if I started to slip to try and bail right, since that looked like the cleanest place to land. I made it through the situation unharmed, but a few minutes later heard Blair yelp in pain as he almost killed himself on the icy squatter. Apparently he didn't plan out his bathroom experience as well as I did.

After a horrible breakfast that caused Charlie to puke, we hit the trail and headed for Thorong Phedi, the last stop before the pass. On the way, we had some awesome views which Rich, Blair and Tom decided needed a little spicing up. Suddenly, packs were on the ground, shirts were off, pants were dropped and there was 3 half naked boys standing in the snow covered trail. I laughed my booty off and took advantage of the photographic opportunity capturing every seductive and ridiculous pose that they could come up with. Once the photo shoot was over we continued the walk, slipping and sliding over snow and old landslides. Soon we reached Thorong Phedi and we settled in for a nice afternoon of reading, eating, drinking tea and playing cards. We needed our rest because the next day we had to tackle the pass!

Pass day started off rather earlier at the lovely hour of 4am. We packed our stuff and then enjoyed a hot breakfast while the Nepali cooks rocked out to Jimmy Hendrix. It was a great way to start the day. It was still dark when we left and cold, real cold so we bundled up real good, put on our head lamps and started our 1,000m hike uphill. The hike actually wasn't that bad at all on the way up. It was quite snowy and the trail was quite narrow making a couple spots quite interesting to navigate. It was a slow journey up from the bottom and we all had to take a lot of breaks. It's amazing how winded a tiny little hill can make you at that altitude. The views were amazing though. Bright blue glaciers, massive snow covered peaks, big fuzzy yaks, the hike had it all. I kept walking and walking waiting to hit the top and finally I saw a mass of prayer flags waving at me as if to say "Hello, congrats, you don't have to walk up this stinking mountain anymore!" I had reached the top and was rather proud of myself. I had done it!!!!!! We hung out at the top for a while waiting for the whole group to arrive. John and Charlie were starting to suffer pretty badly from altitude sickness by the time they come up so we took a group picture and got out of there before one of them dropped dead. But before we left, Rich had a surprise for us. He had borrowed a lovely pair of pink tights that I had (don't ask why) and wore them under his pants all the way up to the pass. Once everyone was up there, Rich dropped his pants and he instantly had everyone from the angry Germans to the Sherpa's laughing and taking pictures of him. Ah, the joys of being with silly boys!

After we had done numerous photo shoots, we started the 2000m descent. I had a terrible time, falling 8 different times on the way down cause the snow made the trail like an ice rink. The downhill killed my knees and my feet were killing me as well, but eventually I made it to Muktinath where the boys already had a room with a hot shower waiting for me! It was the best shower ever! I hadn't showered in 5 days and hadn't had a warm shower since the trek started. Needless to say, it was amazing! That night we celebrated our success by drinking rum and apple brandy (that will warm you right up!) before retiring a "cuddle puddle" and watching a movie on an ipod. What a great day!

The rest of the trek was lots of fun with tons of interesting stuff happening along the way. We hiked through mud so thick our feet got stuck, went fossil hunting in an old river bed and almost got blown to bits in a roadside blast (they were blasting to build a new road). Another time, it had been raining all day which caused landslides to start happening. Well, the town we planned on staying in happened to be at the bottom of a hill that looked like it was going to go at any second so we had no choice but to press on. We had to do a dash down the trail running around rocks that had already come off the hillside and looking up hill to make sure we didn't get hit by the one's that were still coming down. It was one of the scary things I did on the trek. Death my landslide is not on my list of things to do. We also spent some time relaxing in hot springs, eating 8 pieces of cake in one sitting (after a full meal) between 5 of us, and walked 6 hours uphill one day to walk 5 hours down the next. Eventually we finished the trek which took a total of 18 days. Not record time, but who really cares, we had a great time. We ended up losing Rich, Tom and Jay as well on the trek so only 5 out of the original 9 actually finished the trek. And as John puts it, "one had dysentery (Charlie), one had pulmonary edema (John) and two had knee problems so bad they were taking codeine like candy (Brad and I), and those were the ones that made it!" Blair had some kind of aliment too, but it escapes me at the time. Basically, we were all real beat up when we finished but so proud that we had done it! After we finished the trek we took the local bus (aka the bus of death) back to Pohkara and were so happy to be off the bus, we almost kissed the ground. If you ever take a local bus in Nepal, you'll know what I'm talking about.

After the trek, we spent 5 days just lying around Pohkara and letting our bodies heal. It didn't actually hit me how sore and tired I was until 2 days after the trek. We survived the elections here and found that Pohkara was probably the safest place to be, in fact, you couldn't even tell that bombs were going off in Kathmandu. We also did a little white water rafting with a company called Paddle Nepal. They were amazing and we all had a blast. Of the two rafts, I ended up in the one with the craziest guide. He was stoned faced and serious until big white water came up and then he looked like a little kid at Disneyland. He completely flipped the raft over once and dumped everyone but himself out another time. It was so much fun and we have every dump and flip caught on video!
Now we're back in Kathmandu. It's crazy here. We pissed off a local when we got here cause we didn't want to take his taxi to our hotel since it was only a 10 minute walk up the street. He told us "it is a 2 to 3 hour walk there, you won't make it, just cause you did the trek doesn't mean you won't die. Our city is so dirty that your lungs and ears will bleed . . . what goes around comes around you pompous ass (yes, he did say that, I was impressed by his English) . . . I'm a Maoist, we're gonna hurt you if you don't respect me!" Welcome to Kathmandu! It actually not that bad here, but you always have to be on guard so you don't get run over by a taxi, motorbike or rickshaw, while making sure a little kid doesn't pick pocket you and trying to avoid the Tiger Balm salesmen. Tomorrow I leave the great country of Nepal to go back to Oz and then to New Zealand. It should be great and then I'll be home before all of you know it! Sorry this is so long but I'm having so much fun over here, I just wanted to share it with you! Ok, take care and look forward to another blog in the distant future.xi, motorbike or rickshaw, while making sure a little kid doesn't pick pocket you and trying to avoid the Tiger Balm salesmen. Tomorrow I leave the great country of Nepal to go back to Oz and then to New Zealand. It should be great and then I'll be home before all of you know it! Sorry this is so long but I'm having so much fun over here, I just wanted to share it with you! Ok, take care and look forward to another blog in the distant future.

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Photos

We did it!
And the happy little family as a whole, with clothes on and all!

But's where's the rum gone?
The yeti drank it!

Take that!
Maybe Tom and Jay drank the rum instead

Surround by giants
Hiking up to the pass surrounded by massive mountains

It's snowy!
Brad and I trying to stay on the trail

Nice view
Me, trying to not look exhausted, while hiking up to the pass. isn't the view sweet!

Don't look now . . .
It's Tom, Rich and Blair spicing up the view.

Fuzzy yaks
And for a fee, you could pay to ride one of these guys over the pass

It might not look steep
but at over 5,000m it's a killer

Ta-da!
I did it! Photographic evidence!

Sexy boys
What else needs to be said?

Looking back
Just think, I walked over that! This is a picture looking back towards the pass after we dropped the 2,000 meters

Comments

[jesse]

Love it!!
You rule sister!!! -Jesse

[Aunt Suzie]

WOW ! ! !
You did it ! ! ! Ya know all of us Zirkelbach's know you as "Katie Jo Webb" . . . . . . . . but I am now going to change your name to "Krazie Jo Webb". You be careful girl. I want to see you back in the U.S. in one piece.