The Final Stretch

"I am a lucky man.  I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men."

- Sir Edmund Hillary  

Just a week ago there’d been jungle vegetation growing from the hillsides and valleys - green all around - and now snow built up everywhere like a warning to stay low, turn back.  That wasn’t going to happen; at least not for us.  Not now anyway.  The same couldn’t be said for a group of young trekkers from California and Hong Kong though.  One of the members of their party came down with a severe case of altitude sickness our first night in Dingboche.  She was feeling sick to her stomach and light headed but her worst symptom was the loss of her vision.  She repeatedly complained that her eyes were swollen with pain.  When she went to open them she agonized.  I asked her if she had been wearing sunglasses during the day out of fear she’d been victim to snow blindness but she assured me she’d been wearing a pair.  The only thing we could do was give her a warm towel and offer pain medication.  Her parties plan was to wait it out and see if her symptoms improved by sunrise the next morning; if not, a helicopter would be called to take her back to Lukla where she could receive treatment.  The event played out slowly, hour by hour, while we relaxed and ate dinner in the teahouse; an uneasy feeling hanging in the atmosphere.  All we could do was to wait.  Every time we checked in it seemed her condition had either stayed the same or got worse.  Very well, I thought, they’d have to make the inevitable decision in the morning, on their own.  I felt sorry for her.  She had come so far to get to Everest Base Camp, put in so many hours of planning and training, but this is a reality in the Everest region, and would remain a reality long after the helicopter came the next day to bring her and her boyfriend to the hospital.  You deal with the facts at hand in the Himalayas, and the fact now was that they were descending while Pancha and I were going on, our fate undetermined. 

                Of course we still had another full day and night in Dingboche.  Now more than ever we felt the need to acclimate and not push too far too fast.  Why would we not succumb the same way the young lady from Californian did?  Were we special in some way?  The answer was as clear as the view to the north had been up until now.  Presently we looked up and saw nothing but clouds and snow.  The forecast, as reliable as a forecast can be in the Everest Region, called for another two days of snow and clouds, with possible high winds, gusts upwards of what we cared to imagine.  As I purified water in a small stream I wondered how our journey might end.  Would we come all this way and have our views of Everest shrouded in storm squalls and snow drifts?  Would we even make it to base camp?  Was the young lady a sign to slow down and wait out the weather?  If we did wait out the weather there’d be a chance we didn’t make it back in time for our scheduled pick up in Phaplu.  Also, if we waited for the storm to pass and it didn’t, we’d now be running late and in no better shape than if we’d continued on as planned.  It was my first big decision as de facto party leader.  Sure, Pancha was the guide and had the experience, but I had the final say so concerning big decisions; regardless of Pancha’s advice.  After all, I had some experience myself and I was the one funding the expedition, small as it may be.  Pancha vehemently advocated for moving on as planned and when I had questions about it he became incoherent.  So much so he nearly shut down altogether.  In the end I came around to the idea that we should probably move on as scheduled and pray that the weather improved instead of staying another day in Dingboche, but I didn’t come to the decision lightly, and it took us half of the next day to return to terms as usual.  In hindsight it proved to be the right decision and what’s a three week expedition without a little drama? 

                  It was now day 13 and we were hiking through blowing snow and fog.  The trail from Dingboche to Dughla and on to Lobuche was a steady grind uphill with no views to speak of.  At times it was hard to tell where the ground ended and the sky began: a true whiteout.  Above Dughla, where we stopped for lunch, on a rocky slope just after the pass, we hiked through a memorial of fallen climbers; huge rock piles draped with colorful prayer flags and snow.  Most were Sherpa’s or European climbers, but there was one in particular I wanted to find.  It was Scott Fischer’s memorial, the California climber part of the 1996 Everest expedition which ended in disaster when 8 climbers died after a storm rolled in near the summit.  Scott Fischer was one of the guides who perished due to exposure, along with fellow guide Robert Hall of New Zealand.  John Krakauer was on the expedition and fortunately lived to tell about it in his book “Into Thin Air”.  Years before, in college on a ski trip to Vermont, I’d read the whole book over the course of three days.  Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d be standing next to a memorial of one of the climbers in the book.  Life is certainly a trip.  I won’t lie and say Scott Fischer is a hero of mine.  I’m not a mountain climber.  He never impacted my life as did Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Roosevelt, or even if I may be completely frank, Drew Brees, but he did hold a special place in my heart when it came to my limited knowledge of the history of mountaineering.  I took my gloves off, touched one of the stones and gave my best shot at a prayer which I hadn’t said since middle school.

                In Lobuche, at 16,207 feet, there is nowhere to hide from the cold.  Trees don’t grow anywhere near the village, and so yak dung is the only fuel to burn in the wood stove.  The Sherpa’s do their best to conserve fuel until the sun has set.  Then they get the stove as hot as possible for dinner.  Moving around and putting on as many layers as you can is your best bet not to freeze before the fire begins for the evening.  By now the altitude had taken its toll on me and my head was pounding.  Apparently, as I was told, a headache that aches in the front of your head is nothing to worry about.  It’s the headache that aches in the back of your head which should concern you.  I guess this is because it’s closer to your brain stem and means you could be experiencing signs of cerebral edema.  Mine hurt in the back of my head – Wonderful!  Suffering from cerebral edema ends a trip immediately.  There is no cure besides to descend.  Basically, your brain swells and pushes up against your skull and since there’s nowhere for it to expand after a period of time, you begin to act drunk, then pass out, then die, in that order.  Naturally this worried the heck out of me, and if it wasn’t for everyone else complaining about their own headaches, I may have turned around.  Above 16,000 feet it’s nearly impossible to be spared mild headaches from the altitude, and since we weren’t going any higher than base camp, a couple thousand feet higher, I figured I was ok.  Still though, it was the first night of the hike that I slept poorly.  Between the cold and the headache I woke up every hour or so.  I could feel the aching in my eyes.  Every time my head throbbed so did my vision.  At times I didn’t know if I was dreaming or not.  It wasn’t all bad news though, because the next day, after apple pancakes at 5:00 am, we went outside and the fog had lifted.  Mt. Nuptse (25,801’) – the 20^th highest mountain in the world – rose above Lobuche like a white mirage in a desert of blue and bode us farewell on our way towards Gorak Shep, the last village we’d sleep at before reaching Mount Everest Base Camp.

                The cold at this hour of the morning, before the sun’s rays have a chance to warm you, is biting.  With the wind in the valley coming off of the Khumbu Glacier - which we were now hiking next to – the cold pierced through our layers like arrows through butter.  As we hiked we heard an occasional “crack” from the glacier slowly adjusting itself downhill.  I say we heard it, but it was more that we felt it.  Whenever it moved it let off a deep vibration that moved the earth.  What we were able to hear, however, were the avalanches that broke loose on the other side of the glacier.  These sounded like thunder and occurred at a surprisingly consistent frequency.   Finally, at about 7:45am, the sun poked up over Mount Nupste and we were bathed in warmth.  As rays came in, layers came off and we enjoyed the next couple hours of hiking before reaching Gorak Shep.  It was now as clear as it had been before the storm hit.  I turned to Pancha an admitted that we’d made the right decision following his advice the morning we’d left Dingboche.  He was happy.  I was happy.  The world seemed happy.

                We reached Gorak Shep (16,942’) at 9:30am.  It’s a tiny village of only a few buildings set next to what is otherwise high desert.  A long, flat stretch of sand lies off to the west just at the base of Kala Patthar (18,514’).  Yaks leisurely wander around soaking in the sun from the sky and warmth radiating off the sand.  The original plan was to keep going to base camp and come back to Gorak Shep for the night to climb Kala Patthar the next morning, but weather is unpredictable in the high Himalayas and so we decided to take advantage of the sensational clear skies to hike up Kala Patthar that day and save base camp for the next morning.  Understand, Kala Patthar is a hill – the highest hill on the planet, but a hill nonetheless.  And being the highest hill on the planet next to the highest mountain on the planet, views of Mount Everest from its top are as grand as you’re ever apt to see outside of climbing one of the many dangerous mountains in its vicinity.  A clear blue bird day is a blessing, one that we recognized and wanted to capitalize on.

                So we had some late breakfast/lunch in Gorak Shep, and then, warmed by coffee and tea along with hot apple pancakes, started ascending Kala Patthar.  The climb was a steep and steady one up 1,572 feet.  Though I had shed layers at Gorak Shep along with a heavy backpack, it was as exhausting a climb as any I can remember.  The elevation was steep, but I’d hiked steeper; the terrain was rocky, but I’d hiked rockier.  It was the thin air more than anything that exhausted me.  My mind was willing to climb, but my body refused.  Every 10 to 20 steps I had to stop and catch my breath.  The most frustrating of all was it seemed as though we were right there, right near the summit after every section, and yet I couldn’t will myself to continue beyond a few yards every time.  The higher we went the worse it got, until finally, hours later, like out of a dream, I made it to the top and collapsed.  When I stood up and turned around I was speechless.  There was Mount Everest rising above the Khumbu Valley, towering over Mount Lhotse and the rest of the planet like an undisputed heavyweight champion - not only tall but thick and massive covered in snow, rock and ice - victorious.  I turned to Pancha and he smiled at me.  I smiled back and gave him a big hug and then a violent high five.  Seeing it so close was a new experience.  Instead of the emotions I had felt when I first laid eyes on her a week before, I now felt mostly pride.  Only months before the idea sprang into my mind “What if I go to Everest?”, and now here I was at my ultimate reward.  Anything is not possible; to think that anything is possible is naïve and just ain’t so, but for me, it turned out hiking to Mount Everest was possible and now I knew it.

                Mount Pumori, another giant, looked down on us as we descended back to Gorak Shep, almost like she was making sure we made it safely.  Mount Everest, on the other hand, grew more hidden with every step downhill and eventually disappeared altogether, yet again, posing the question if I’d really seen her at all.  Turning in at night was a relief.  I was tired and the next morning we’d wake up before sunrise to set off for base camp.  Sleep was hard to come by - again interrupted by headaches and cold - but the knowledge that this was the last night before descending made it easier to get through.  The excitement of the next day added to the restlessness.

It was the 15^th day of the trip and we were out the door, sharp, at 5 am.  We were greeted in the early morning dark by the moaning Khumbu Glacier and adjacent mountain avalanches.  Thank God the trail was on this side of the valley I thought.  The trail weaved through boulder fields of the lateral moraine which made the going slow.  At times I wasn’t sure we were on the trail at all, but if we’d been on the other side we’d have to worry about dodging oceans of snow careening downhill like class V rapids; rapids which would suffocate rather than drown you.  We found our stride but even now it was hard to breathe.  The oxygen at this altitude is half what it is at sea level, so you need to take two labored breaths to get the same amount of oxygen as someone who takes one hiking in – say - the woods of the Eastern United States.  Even Denver, known for its thin air, was 13,000 feet below us.  I paused to guess how long an NFL kicker could make a field goal on the Khumbu Glacier – 80 yards at least. 

                 As we approached Everest Base Camp a city of yellow expedition tents came into view.  I’ve heard somewhere that the population of Everest Base Camp during peak climbing season can reach anywhere from a thousand to two thousand people; if not a city of tents then certainly a township of them.  We were early and many expeditions were asleep, acclimating as they would for upwards of 40 days in an effort to climb the mountain.  I understood the need for acclimatization now more than ever.  These mountaineers were starting where I was finishing.  They had another 11,000 feet to go!  The thought of it made me uneasy.  I determined then and there that I’d never be a mountaineer.  The closest I’d ever get to Mount Everest was now, and I was ok with that.

                For some time I explored base camp.  I walked up and down the “streets” and dodged through multitudes of prayer flags.  I walked into the hellish crags of the Khumbu Icefall.  The only way to describe it is to compare it to a Dr. Seuss story set in haunting ice formations - peaceful, but exciting; safe, yet dangerous.  Every now and then it would “crack” and I’d be reminded to go no further; after all, hundreds if not thousands of people have died inside, some bodies carried down in ice from above still thawing out to be discovered at base camp, others lost forever.

                We spent only an hour at base camp before we had to turn around and begin the week long descent towards Phaplu and ultimately Kathmandu.  On the way down we’d have plenty more exciting adventures, including making it out of a storm just in the nick of time - the home we took shelter in getting struck by lightning 2 minutes later – and meeting Hollywood actor Andy Serkis who played Golem in Lord of the Rings as well as starring in many other films such as Avengers and Planet of the Apes.  I gave him some advice about what to expect above Dingboche and could tell he was already starting to feel the effects of high altitude.

                Pancha and I parted ways in Kathmandu most likely never to see each other again.  We spent every waking hour together for the previous three weeks and now it was all over.  I thanked him again and he thanked me.  We’d had our differences but eventually reached Everest Base Camp together as a team, and along the way we’d really gotten to know each other and share many spectacular moments.  Saying goodbye to the Himalayas a few days later was even harder, though I suppose they’re going nowhere anytime soon so they should be easy to find again.

The End.

Onward and Upward

 "The way to Everest is not a Yellow Brick Road."

- John Krakauer

Day 8 began at a moderate 8,700 feet in Phakding.  We strapped on our muddy, dung covered boots and continued in the valley until reaching the Sagarmatha National Park entrance after the village of Monjo.  “Sagarmatha” is the Nepalese word for Mount Everest.  The Park entrance was clogged up with hikers, climbers and porters and I had to wait some time before Pancha was able to secure all the proper permits and licenses to hike further into the park.  It’s a choke point for everyone who plans to do anything recreational in the Everest Region of the Himalayas.  I sat down on a wooden bench in the shade and relaxed for about an hour while Pancha stood in line.  The check point is guarded not by national park rangers, but by the Nepalese military who carried old M16’s and wore state issued camouflage.  Clearly keeping hikers safe and poachers out was a priority in Nepal.  They also had to watch for illegal guide services and phony hiking permits.  It was a busy place, especially after being isolated the week prior.

                After we’d entered the park the trail continued along the Dudh Koshi River and over it three more times using high suspension bridges.  When crossing suspension bridges you had to be very careful because of high winds from up the valley and the narrow lane for foot traffic.  Prayer flags hung from the railings and helped as you walked - for wind direction and moral support.  The last bridge crossed high over where the Dudh Koshi meets the Bhote Koshi.  From then on we wouldn’t cross another river for a few days.  We were finally about to rise above tree line.  The surrounding woods were full of Hagas Pines and other evergreens, spread out like the trees surrounding Lake Tahoe.  A steady 2 hour climb through them and suddenly our world gave way to nothing but air.  The sky opened up and for the first time since I began hiking I was struck with that feeling you sometimes get when nature doesn’t make sense.  No longer was Mount Kongde peaking at us through the trees and the hills, but now she was towered over us with nothing to hide her.  Every ridge and every glacier laid so near I could have reached out and touched them.  Never before had I seen such a colossal mountain.  Of course that would soon change. 

                So we had made it to the legendary Namche Bazaar which sits at 11,286 feet.  Now it was time to rest.  Pushing any further without taking at least 24 hours to adjust would put us in danger of altitude sickness.  It was a welcome change of pace at night knowing I would be relaxing the next day.  It was beginning to get cold now that we were higher up with no trees to block the wind.  Clear skies at night meant the following day would be even colder with no clouds to trap the heat radiating off the mountains.  I didn’t explore Namche Bazaar much before turning in for the night.  I figured there’d be plenty of time for that the next day.  I slept like a rock.

                Day 9 saw us get up around 7:00am and on the trail by 7:30am.  We left our packs at the teahouse.  The plan was to do a very short day hike up to the Mount Everest View Hotel and come back down.  After all, it was a rest day; we didn’t want to push it.  It’s challenging to describe how big these mountains are.  As we walked uphill above Namche we began to see - one by one - the highest mountains on the planet: first, of course was our old friend Kongde Ri, then came Thamserku and Ama Dablam.  Tabuche and Kangtega were present.  Mount Lohtse, the fourth highest mountain on Earth came into view a few hundred yards later.  Though we could see Lohtse as clear as day, just over its shoulder there was a mass of clouds where Mount Everest should have been.  I guess she decided it was not the day to reveal her-self.  Still, the others were beyond impressive.  Ama Dablam in particular; she is so steep it’s hard to imagine people have climbed her… but they have; at least that’s what I was told – what proof is there?  What I saw suggested it was impossible.

                 So we walked a bit further under the invigorating rays of sunshine and then stopped for some coffee and tea at the hotel.  It was nice to get some shade and to sit in a chair for once.  So far everything I had sat on was either a rock or a wood bench.  It’s amazing what a little back support can do for your moral after 9 days in the mountains.  We waited as we sipped our coffee for the clouds to clear and a good view of Mount Everest, but nothing changed.  It was obvious it wouldn’t any time soon.  In the afternoon I took a nap and woke with a slight headache, no doubt due to the elevation.  It was getting colder too.  Some hikers on their way down told us it only got colder the further up you went, reaching temperatures as low as -19° F at the village of Gorak Shep.  I was careful not to believe their numbers exactly, but it was a good reminder to buy an extra fleece layer before I left Namche Bazaar the following morning.

                The trail went level on day 10 as we hiked above Namche once more, this time more to the east.  The hill we ascended was to our left and the valley dropped off to our right.  We continued like this until making a turn just below a spectacular cliff-side.  Once again the valley was straight ahead.  Ama Dablam was ever closer, as was Lohtse.  And just beyond the summit of Lohtse, clear as day, unimaginably high, iconic, was the summit of Mount Everest.  I wasn’t prepared to get emotional, it just sort of happened.  Tears of joy began to well up just as Pancha slapped me on the back.  I turned to him and gave him a high five and big hug.  We still had a long way to go to Everest Base Camp, but it was a moment for celebration none the less.  Snow drifted from the summit and shot off to the east.  I could only imagine how different it was up there than down where we were, bathed in sunshine and what passes for warmth in the Himalayas.  Perhaps it was the proudest moment of my life.

                It was short lived however, because after the next few miles, we again descended to a valley crossing and began a long march – the longest and steepest of the trip so far – up to Tengboche village which sits at 12,664 ft.  On the way up we passed many hikers with the question “when does this end” written on their sweaty faces.  “Bistari, Bistari” means “Slowly, Slowly” in Nepalese, and it is the most useful thing to remember if you only remember one thing.  It was downright cold in Tengboche when we visited the monastery across from the tea house.  Clouds had set in and light was

fading.  Monks were praying and we went in to listen.  Sitting in a line were five of them droning out prayers in a low murmur.  Pancha walked down the aisle to make an offering to Buddha while I sat cross legged on the cold floor for a half an hour entranced by the ritual.  Huge prayer wheels the size of trucks rang outside the monastery.  The clouds rolled in even more.  At this point I’d say it was fog.  We couldn’t see the tea-house 50 yards away, or the yaks grazing in front of it.  After some more tea and a quick dinner, I settled in for what would be the coldest night so far.  When the sun came out the next morning and the fog had lifted, I sat down outside and did nothing but soak in the sunlight for every last degree it had to give me.  Every now and then I felt something that’s hard to explain but amounts to a very peaceful feeling.

                Some parts of the trail from Tengboche to Dingboche were treacherous, though not particularly steep.  They cut through fresh landslides that no doubt were the result of the earthquake a few years before.  The rock and debris was a lighter color than the surrounding terrain and still clearly unstable.  I caught myself holding my breath as we traversed it, worried that at any moment it could give way and send me rolling in a dry avalanche all the way down to the valley below.  At least I’d have one hell-of-a final ride, I thought.  At this altitude, yaks replace mules and donkeys.  They’re the pack animal that brings it home to the finish line for all those expeditions to Everest Base Camp.  They’re ideally built for the cold air and high altitudes above tree-line.  It gave me some peace to know that if any of these landslides were ready to go, it would probably be the yak trains that triggered them and not the 120lb soaking wet Pancha, or myself, even with a pack that was probably too heavy.  We made it to Dingboche at 13,976 feet just fine, and in time to beat the incoming weather that would drop a fresh few inches of snow in the mountain passes.  We were scheduled to acclimate here just as we had in Namche, for two nights.  It would be the highest elevation I’d ever slept at, beating out Soraypampa Camp in the Andes a few years back.  I was now in uncharted territory.

Away to the Himilayas

 "People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe to little"

- James Hilton, Lost Horizon

               

                  I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the idea of hiking to Mount Everest Base Camp got stuck in my head somewhere along the line and got lodged in there so deep I couldn’t get it out, like a stubborn pop-corn kernel in between your teeth.  The difference was that I had nothing like floss, nothing to get it out, besides of course going.  And so I did.

                Arriving in Nepal’s capital city of Kathmandu, I was once again thrust into an unfamiliar place where cab drivers regularly missed oncoming traffic and walking pedestrians by the width of a hair.  In some cases - one that I witnessed at least – a vehicle hit a pedestrian outright; as when I saw a motorbike sideswipe a little 8 year old boy near the famed tourist area of Thamel, where I would stay while in Kathmandu.  By their reactions - the driver’s and the boy’s - they had both gone through that drill many times before; no hard feelings and no crying.  Life went on and both went their separate ways, one limping a bit while rubbing his shoulder, the other driving slightly slower than before.

Overhead power lines draped like jungle vines above the streets, in some places piling up into coils on the sidewalk, in other places tangled into what looked like gigantic bird’s nests.  There was dirt and debris everywhere.  Stray dogs ran into and out of traffic at their leisure, and at night barked persistently at rival packs.  Every now and then you’d see a cow in the median between two major roads.  This was Kathmandu at a glance.

                I left Kathmandu for Phaplu at 4:30 the next morning with Pancha, my recently introduced guide for the 20 day hike to Mount Everest Base Camp.  He was in his early 50’s, spoke broken English, but looked healthy enough.  He’d had 20 years of experience hiking in the Himalaya’s so I assumed I was in good hands - a year of experience for each day of the hike, I figured.  The jeep we drove in was built for the roads we drove on; much like safari vehicles are built for driving through the dense brush of Africa, and armored humvees through warzones.  It was a raised 4 wheel drive conglomeration of rubber, metal, dust and dirt.  The windshield was smashed right in front of the driver’s seat.  I asked what it was from and Pancha said “No big deal, probably falling rock.”  If the streets of Kathmandu hadn’t confirmed it, it had been confirmed now - I was in the Himalaya’s. 

                Phaplu is a small village that sits southeast of the Khumbu Valley but is connected to it by a series of trails through remote mountain villages.  Many years ago - in the 1950’s - this was the only way to access the Khumbu Valley and Mount Everest from Nepal, but now you can fly into Lukla via the Tenzing-Hillary Airport which is considered the most dangerous airport in the world – and for good reason.  Many fatal crashes have occurred there and the pressure to get more and more people into the valley, combined with the sudden changes in weather and the short - almost cartoonishly short - runway create for a concoction of factors that scared me away from flying into it.  That, and hiking up from the lower elevations of  Phaplu would give me more time to acclimate to the higher elevations and get my “trail legs” for when I connected with the main Everest Base Camp (EBC) trail. 

                So on we drove to Phaplu.  What I was told would take 9 hours ended up taking 14 hours.  A small portion of the roads were paved, but most were dirt roads, and many more were not roads at all, but rather dry river beds or flood plains.  We made 3 stops along the way for jeep repairs and many more for general maintenance.  At one point I was worried the axel might snap like a Laotian bus I had taken did one time.  At last though, we made it to Phaplu in one piece.

                After 3 endless days of travel by plane and jeep, I was finally ready to begin hiking.  We woke up before sunrise and took some time stretching and drinking coffee in the teahouse.  The day promised to be clear with a bit of haze from dry dust and pollen that seems to drift endlessly in the air during the pre-monsoon season.  The first part of the day we walked over gentle dirt roads and flat paths that connected one village to the next.  The rhododendron’s were in bloom and painted the hills with hot pinks and bright reds while the magnolia trees painted them with light purples and whites.  Together with the bamboo patches and occasional evergreens, under distant snow capped peaks, it was as if we had found the fabled Shangri-La.  We stopped in a village called Ringmu for lunch and then started climbing the 750 feet up to Trakshindu Pass where we made another stop at the monastery there.  I’d bought brand new Vasque hiking boots for the trip, and along with wearing “darn tough” socks my feet felt good for the terrain and the mileage we’d covered.  I felt no hot spots on my feet and my legs weren’t stiff at all; apparently, for once, I’d bought the right equipment for the job.  At the monastery, Pancha and I entered quietly after taking off our boots and meeting with a young monk.  The air was cooler inside and dark because there were no windows.  The young monk showed us into the prayer room and then into the master’s chamber passing by murals of colorful artwork on the walls.  There was no sound at all.  Every time I spoke I found myself whispering, and even then it felt like I was yelling.  The young monk and Pancha took turns trying to enlighten me as to the ways of Buddhism.  I learned a lot.  For instance, apparently I have 100 Gods in my body, who knew?  42 of them are angry Gods and 58 of them are good Gods.  The angry Gods live above my heart and the good Gods live below my heart.  I asked them politely if it wasn’t the other way around and they assured me it wasn’t.  I suppose that explains a lot. 

                From the monastery at Traskshindu we descended 2,000 feet through magnolia forests along cliff-sides to the village of Nunthala where we’d rest for the night after some tea and Tibetan bread.  My spirits were high and my body felt good.  I guess two months of training was paying off.  The only thing that hurt - maybe odd to some - was my left shoulder which had always plagued me on backpacking trips in the past.  Something about my posture doesn’t agree with heavy backpacks.  After awhile I accept the pain and embrace it but it always bothers me the first night.

                The next morning we descended even further all the way down to and across the Dudh Kosi River, and entered the Khumbu Valley.  The Dudh Kosi River drains the Khumbu Valley and most of the high alpine glaciers above, including many around Mount Everest.  We’d remain - more or less - in the valley for the next two weeks, ascending to where it truly opens up for magnificent views above Namche Bazar in a few days.  Until then we’d hike in the forested lower valley below treeline.  It was day 5 and we were now on a steep and steady ascent up through the village of Jubhing and further still to the village of Kharikola, where we took an hour for lunch and to rest up.  After, we walked lengthwise through the village and up to Bupsa where we’d spend the night in a ridge top dwelling looking down on mules and sherpas packing up supplies for an international Everest expedition we’d been leapfrogging throughout the day.  Of course, the climbers were not with them yet, because they had the money to get to Everest Base Camp without carrying their own things or doing their own work.  This I came to realize is a way of life in the Everest region: money dictates who labors two weeks over muddy trails with heavy packs for no glory versus who gets all the glory for being carried to the summit.

                After Bupsa, on day 6, we ascended further still to Kari La Pass where now we had our first glimpses at the high peaks, and high they were!  It took a few minutes to comprehend how high they rose.  We enjoyed them for a half hour or so and then descended for the first time in a couple of days over the muckiest trails yet.  They weren’t only mucky with mud and leaf litter but with mule dung.  I tucked my pants into my socks and accepted my fate.  After an hour or two of walking in wet mule droppings you tend to forget what you’re walking in anyways.  Every step I took I sunk in up to my ankles.    Eventually, the trail dried up and we made it to the tiny village of Surkey, which was set at the bottom of a steep valley that had clearly seen landslides from the 2015 earthquake.  I took my boots off to let them dry, but the smell they’d soaked in all day was now a part of my life.  As I was waiting just outside the teahouse, reading a book to pass the time, a pack of mules made their way by.  One by one, heads down, they trod forward oblivious to me, focusing only on their next step and the mule directly in front of them.  I suppose over the years they’ve stopped caring much about their surroundings.  They’re pushed forward by a seemingly irate mule driving villager and don’t seem to mind.  If they stop, they understand they’ll either be screamed at or whacked with a bamboo stick, so they don’t.  Such is the life of a Nepalese pack animal.  I don’t make the rules.  Which is why this particular event was somewhat alarming.  For some odd reason, maybe because I was bored of waiting for my boots to dry or had reached a lull in the book I was reading, I began counting the mules in the train.  I guess I was curious how many there were.  In the end I counted 60, and 59 of them behaved just as they were told, as usual.  It was the one that didn’t behave that way that alarmed me, and only because I was counting.  He was the 13^th mule.  As he walked by me, he paused, straightened up, and turned his head, directly acknowledging me with eye contact.  It sent shivers down my spine.  A couple of seconds passed and he was whacked by a stick and kept moving along like all the others.  That night I slept anxiously worrying about landslides, praying not to hear a rumble, counting the minutes every time I woke up to when I’d climb out of the unstable valley the next day. 

                When dawn came on day 7 Pancha and I packed our things as fast as possible and climbed out of the valley, safe at last.  I guess the 13^th mule was full of it.  A few hours later we linked up with the main EBC trail.  After a week of hiking through hillside villages we were now hiking with other westerners who’d flown into Lukla airstrip.  I could tell they were raw.  Many of them were suffering already from the elevation and difficult terrain. It would take time for them to adjust.  Just then Pancha received bad news.  Apparently, there had been an accident and 7 people had been killed on the road from Kathmandu to Phaplu the previous day.  They’d been in a jeep too, on the same road we were on just 7 days ago.  Maybe the 13^th mule wasn’t full of it after all.  Just after we reached Phakding, where we’d stay the night, it began to hail, passionately.  It had done the same just after arriving in Surkey the night before.  I was beginning to think we were being looked out for, but by who or what I didn’t know; all I knew is that I was happy we'd stopped at the monastery.

Aurora Borealis

"Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need."

- Richard E. Byrd

We finally had a clear day so we drove out to Vatnajokull National Park on the south coast to see the Skaftafell glacier.  It took us 4 hours to get there from Reykjavik.  There’s really no rush when you’re driving endlessly on one road with no cars in sight for miles.  When we felt like stopping, we stopped; when we felt like going, we went.  That was our formula.  It seemed to work.

Unlike the Golden Circle, the ring road on Iceland’s south coast is not “touristy”.  Sure, some adventurous tourists find their way out there, but not in the swarms like around Reykjavik.  It pleased me very much.  I appreciated the silence of Iceland’s vast and foreign landscape.  I don’t know the exact number, but I read somewhere that the percentage of Icelanders who believe in elves, gnomes, and trolls was as high as 65%.  Grown adults polled, mind you.  I thought they were nuts until we drove through the lowlands of Iceland.  Everywhere was one outlandish scene of volcanic rock, waterfalls, and tundra after another.  We didn’t have to try hard to imagine a little creepy thing in a pointy hat singing a high pitched  ballad as he jumped from rock to rock just out of view.  I’ve camped in the Grand Tetons among grizzly bears and the Mojave Desert among rattlesnakes but there’s no place I would be more scared to tent camp than in Iceland.  Just one gnome in the middle of the night and I would never recover, I think.

 

Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss are two of the seemingly thousands of waterfalls that contribute to Iceland’s magic.  Just off the ring road you see them falling from the lush green hillsides, spraying mist that occasionally creates small rainbows.  The water collects then runs into braided channels that flow towards the ocean.  One day if I ever come back to Iceland, it will be in the Summer time with my fly rod.  We walked to Seljalandsfoss and spent some time appreciating it up close.  There’s a path that goes beneath the falls but it was iced over and looked dangerous so we didn’t try it.  One woman tried it and kept falling over.  Every time it looked like she had her balance, over again she fell.  She could have used a pair of microspikes I think, like the ones that were sitting in the trunk of our Suzuki 4x4 unused. 

We didn’t drive down a back road to Skogafoss because we needed to cover some distance before nightfall so instead we kept making stops to take pictures, see sites, and relish in the Icelandic countryside.  There’s no other drive I’ve ever done quite like the ring road, and considering we at last had good weather, we were going to take advantage of it.  Skogafoss looked brilliant from the road, and if we’d have seen it up close I’m sure it would have been brilliant all the same.

I’m not sure I’d call the Icelandic horse a horse at all.  When I think of a horse I think of a mustang or

a Clydesdale, something with shining fur and rippling muscles; a statuesque symbol of purity.  The Icelandic horse is more of a furry pony; still technically a horse according to taxonomy, but doesn’t pass the eye test.  Let’s put it this way, I shouldn’t be taller than a horse.  If I am taller than a horse, that horse is not a horse.  Simple.  New rule.

We had that rare sunshine and so we stopped along the side of a pasture where we saw some grazing ponies.  I’d say there were at least 15 of them.  Some were shy but a few came over to us as we took their pictures, I would assume to pose.  They were friendly and docile.  They allowed us to pet them which made me miss my dog back

home.  I couldn’t believe how soft their fur was for a wild animal, and how clean.  It was as if they’d been using conditioner all winter.  Some of them were brown, some white, some white and brown, but they all had that mane of hair that blew in the Icelandic wind like Fabio’s in a perfume commercial.  A few of them had blue eyes.  These ones looked fake, like puppets.  Certainly the Icelandic horse is an odd creature.  We couldn’t stay too long with them, so we said our goodbyes, laughed at how weird they looked, and drove off to the next attraction.

Reynisfjara Beach (aka the black sand beach) is another quick stop just outside the town of Vik on the south coast.  It’s known for a lot of things: the basalt columns which create caves under the cliff faces, the swarms of birds that nest above those cliff faces, the rock formations in the surf said to be two trolls frozen solid by the sun, and of course the massive coastal waves.  This last one I’ll focus on because it gave us an event that was both horrifying and hilarious at the same time.  My guess is it will be more entertaining than hearing about geologic formations or the life cycle of Puffins. 

Before you walk onto the beach there are several signs as clear as day warning tourists about the dangers of the surf.  “Beware of Dangerous Waves”, “Strong Current – Be Aware, “Keep Your Eyes on the Ocean” – signs like that, mostly in cautioning yellows and alarming reds.  They even go as far as blowing up pictures of tourists in the past that have been caught by “sneaker waves” and dragged out toward the unrelenting North Atlantic Ocean.  Tourists being tourists - pleasure seekers by definition, oblivious by nature – pay no mind to those signs and elect to believe the world is one giant backdrop for their pictures.  Praise the Lord for Reynisfjara Beach!  At last Mother Nature sets the record straight. 

On our way back to the car, after exploring the area ourselves, we noticed an aggressive wave breaking just behind us.  It was one of the most violent waves forming out of one of the most violent surfs I had ever seen, and it came out of nowhere.  Luckily we had paid attention to the signs and kept our distance from the ocean.  We were safe.  The same thing can’t be said for a few middle aged Chinese tourists that were on the beach with us.  Not only were they too close to the ocean, they had their backs turned to it while they snapped away at the cliffs with their expensive cameras atop expensive tripods.  I wouldn’t say the wave hit them as much as I would say it absorbed them; camera gear every which way - other tourists laughing, some screaming, no one doing anything.  My initial thought was that if the wave pulled them back into the ocean there wouldn’t be a lifeguard on Earth that could save them.  Michael Phelps would have been rolled around like dirty laundry had he gone in himself.  I debated quickly whether to do something and realized I was no Michael Phelps, so I watched in horror as I imagined the wave brutally drowning them a few hundred feet from where I stood.  Luckily they were able to find footing and get out as the wave receded.  After that it was simple fun.  Once the adrenaline went down I don’t think I’ve ever had to try so hard not to break into uncontrollable laughter.

We didn’t make it all the way to Skaftafell before nightfall.  This meant it was time again to search for the northern lights.  Thus far we hadn’t any luck, but we gave ourselves a 30% chance of seeing them out in the dark wash plains of southern Iceland, parked on some side road that we were barely able to access in our Suzuki 4x4.  Clouds rolled in, clouds rolled out, stars appeared and disappeared, the whole time we had our eyes on the sky.  As each hour passed our hopes waned like the crescent moon that we thought might be responsible for reflecting too much light to see the Aurora.  We kept track of the Kp index.  It was shifting between 2 and a 3, just high enough to see the lights, but still no luck.  Finally, after 3 hours of waiting, reading by red headlamp light in order to keep our night vision, taking turns looking at the sky from inside the car and outside, there they were.  A streak of out-of-place light we’d never seen before.  It grew brighter and brighter until we were sure it was them.  The northern lights!  They stayed a constant streak across the sky until finally they broke into S-shape curves.  The arctic display lasted on and off for a half hour or so, and though we were on a windy plain of ice in the middle of the dark, we were happy.

The next day we drove to the Skaftafell Glacier but didn’t stay long.  We heard the weather would take a turn for the worse, so we turned around and made our way back to Reykjavik as soon as we saw the glacier’s nose.  No doubt it was a spectacular phenomenon that would have been even more spectacular if we’d stuck around and explored it up close, but we favored staying safe and limiting our chances of being caught on the ring road during an ice storm.  It was the right choice.  The next couple of days we leisurely walked around Reykjavik to museums, shops, restaurants, and art galleries while the grey weather continued to blanket Iceland. 

On our last night in Iceland we drove out to the Blue Lagoon.  It was $60.00 per ticket to enter.  After we came out of the lockers rooms dressed in our bathing suits we melted into the smooth silica rich waters like walruses into the sea.  The air was cold and so we tried to stay submerged with just our heads exposed.  Every now and then we’d stand up and instantly freeze.  The water is super-heated sea water that’s guided into what amounts to an adult size lazy river.  Here there’s a waterfall to shower in, there a bridge to swim under.  A spa where visitors lather their faces in silica mud to exfoliate their pores lies in the middle, and a sauna for those who aren’t hot enough in the water just outside that.  There’s even a bar serving drinks, albeit priced as if they were being sold on the moon.  Steam rising off the surface of the water and into the dark Icelandic night lends the lagoon a mysterious aura as if you were on the set of Blade Runner.  Dim lights glow on the surrounding walls and in the various tunnels.  As we lounged about we noticed people from all over the world doing the same.  Europeans, Asians, Americans, Australians, all enjoying the relaxing lagoon a short drive from the Keflavik International Airport.  Every now and then I like being a tourist, I thought.