Luckily on the 5th day the rain stopped. I had woken up early in Tamang (6.15am) in order to check and seeing the windows still rain streaked grumpily snuggled deeper into my sleeping bag. It made me jump when just 10 minutes later our guide came knocking on the door telling us we could see the mountains for the first time and that we would be making the early start that we had agreed on if the weather was good. I leapt out of my sleeping bag in t-shirt and shorts, threw on a coat and flip flops and went in search of the mountains I had almost started to doubt ever seeing. Here is a picture of my first glimps of Monasolu in the early morning from our guest house in Tamang (around 2000m).The days walking showed us that we come arrived up and out of the valley and the walking was now easy going on a wide path through pine forests that rose gently reminding me uncannily of family strolls in Ashdown forest (the setting of Winnie the Pooh) . Mountains would appear on either side, majestic and astounding, even more impressive for their extra coat of snow and the days were short. We would start early while the skies were clear walk for 3-4 hours and arrive somewhere early enough to get a good room. October is peak season here and the trails were busy, even more so because so many had been held up in the rain, and others with limited time to compete the trek were having to come down because the pass had been closed when they arrived, those who arrived late sometimes could not find space.
On our 7th day we arrivd in Brackha, a small village just 20 minutes short of Manang, the district capital (although still supplied only ny mule train and the occasional helicopter). At 3500m this was the start of Yak territory and a popular place to stop and spent 2 days acclimatising to the high altitude. From here we took 2 trips, one to the Manang view point and the other to ice lake. Here is a photo from the Mananag view back towards Brackha and along the trail we arrived on.
On the second day we decided to take a hike up to Ice Lake, at a height of 4600m which would take us well into the snowline we had been watching for so long. This turned out to be quite an epic undertaking. It was a climb of 1300m, roughly equal to Ben Nevis, but at altitude and much steeper than the way hills are formed at home! We started early, around 7.30 and reached the lake one packet of bisuits and 2 mars bars later at 12.00. The high altitude luckily wasn't making either us of feel ill but it was difficult to reathe enough and I found myself panting after just a few steps and my legs seemed to burn anaerobically however much panting I did. Still, reaching the lake we felt like we had really climbed up into the Himalaya for the first time...here I am on the way back down.
3 days later we reached Thorung Phedi, which is the final camp, at aroind 4400m before crossing the pass. The highest point of the pass is 5416m, higher than the highst of the alps and still a low point here. Here we started at 4am, incase of slow progress or altitude problems and to be sure of reaching the pass early before it gets windy. The climb this time was only 1000m, less than that to the ie lake but the extra 1000m of altitude made it much more difficult. Eating breakfast at 3.30am I felt a little quezy and by this time just looking at a hill I felt out of breath. The first hour of the climp was a constanlt steep scree slope and at the top we had a brief stop. The combination of an early start, an undigested breakfast and a sli
ghtly dodgy stomach had left me feeling pretty ill and we took a tea break at "high camp" the last place to top before taking on the pass. The second hour brought us out in to more open terrain with sharp climbs interspersed with flatter ground, but thi alo brought more wind and the temperatures were below anything I had experienced before, the snow on the ground was frozen so solid that our boots made no impact. I was breathing constantly as though I had just done a 2k erg test bd every breath the cold ear burned through my chest. Constantly walking uphill with 4 4 jumpers on, a coat, hat and gloves I was still cold. I was well out of my own temperature guage but a Canadian couple I asked guessed it might be around -10C. Cold. After this the sun started to come up and walking in the sun me and my mars bars gradually started to thaw. At 9.15, 5 hours after starting we reached Thorung La.
The view from the Thorung La was immense. Behind rose the gentle snowy slopes of the way we had come, where many trekkers were still trickling up. On the other side was a surreal window down into the world through the cloud, and across to another mountaing range (the Dhulagiri mountain range) which it felt like we were level with (although realistically we were a a couple of thousand metres lower). This was the way we would decend, down a full 1600m of snow and scree, at one point passing through a smoothed down half-pike of slippery ice until about 6 hours later we reached civilisaion again in the town of Muktinath.
No comments:
Post a Comment