Stroggoz New Zealand. Nov 03 2012 10:11. Posts 5299
Not much poker results for october, played about 15k hands and broke even. havn't proof read this because i can't be fucked. I wrote this over a few hours and it's recollection of most memorable parts of the trip with some pics to go with it.
During the first half of 2012 i was grinding poker in a flat with silver on lp, with our lease ending in july i didn't really know what to do with my life after that. Around about the time my lease was ending my Dad, who is a bit of a mountaineer asked me if i wanted to come to Nepal with him on a 24 day trek. Given my apathetic nature i thought to myself: YOLO and it's only a month out of my life.
So after several training trips on New Zealand mountains, getting to know how to use ice axes and crampons and getting my fitness levels up, we depart for Kathmandu. Our objective is to trek around the Himalayas until we get to Mera peak. A technically easy mountain to climb but at a high altitude of 6400m, after that we would walk through more valleys and cross amphu lapcha, a 200m wall where we can walk up one side and belay down the other. More technically difficult than climbing mera peak, but at a lower altitude of 5800m. Then the rest of the trip would be an easy walk back down from the mountains.
We arrive in Kathmandu, a dusty, dirty city where there are seem to be no road rules. The infastructure of the entire city seemed pretty disorganized actually, with internet/electrical wires bundled up above ground, little supply of drinking water, one lane streets with people, bikes and cars trying to squeeze down all at the same time.
After getting to a hotel we meet up with the sherpa guide who will be coming with us on the trip, a funny 34 year old guy who's name is peme sherpa. He goes through our gear and checks we have everything needed to survive in the mountains.
The next day we fly to lukla(2800m). On the flight i look out of the window and it seems that in every flat part of the land there is a house built with farmland, over 80% of nepals population is in rural areas. lukla is a village in the mountains with the most dangerous airport in the world. The air strip is carved into the mountainside, with a 200m drop off the edge of it, and it's also only about 200m long with a stone wall at the end of it. Since the air strip is so short, it is angled upwards to slow the plane down when it lands. The airport is very busy, with planes leaving within seconds of another one arriving. It's the gateway to most of the trekking done in the Himalayas.
We also meet up with the rest of our sherpas that we travel with us. Now with us is peme , our guide, Dende our cook and kaji our porter.
in the sherpa heirachy you start off as a porter, carrying huge loads of 30kg+. Some of the porters we saw seemed like 13-14 year old girls, some were old women. Our porter kaji carried about 30kg, our cook carried about 10kg and our guide/leader who had climbed everest 3 times only carried about 7kg. The more prestige you have, the less you have to carry.
pics of lukla airport, landing and taking off. and the streets of lukla. Standard porter load even for little girls.
in the first several days of the trip we travel between 2500-3500m altitude, i don't feel the effects of altitude on me yet. We stay in tea houses with welcoming, warm hearted sherpas. learning sherpa language as well as nepali langauge. we walk across an array of valleys that are connected with trains of mule and yak hybrids. Smiling sherpa children run out of their houses to greet us 'namaste', pressing the palms of their hands together as we walk past.
After 4 days or so we see mera peak for the first time, but we don't go towards it yet. instead we cross the valley and take a detour. This detour will take us over a 4500m high pass, getting us used to thinner air and acclimatizing my body. once we cross the valley we are in a much more isolated, less touristy civilisation. I take what might be my last shower for the trip. We sit around the fireplace in the sherpa houses, it's high enough for me to feel the cold now. I start to wonder how/why people have come to live up here in such harsh places. In this part of the trip there was only a few foods we could eat, no fruit can grow in these places. We have dal bhat and potatoes. Dal bhat is rice with lentals, but apparently the lentals are so expensive that it's just 99% water.
Our first sighting of Mera peak. pics of porters drinking tea after a hard days work. One of the sherpa children living at 3600m. Our accodomodation with a 4500m high U shaped pass in the background.
Then we cross the 4500m pass, up from a town that is 3600m altitude. I start to notice it's harder to breath and walk. Our porter kaji starts to catch up with us and can almost keep up with us. he is used to the thin air, but i start to breath for every step i take.
The next day on the way down from the pass i start to feel pain in chest whenever i breath. it becomes worse and the sherpas carry my bag for me. I breath harder and harder and by the time we reach the town we are staying at i have to stop and it takes me 10 minutes to recover my breath. There are no doctors around so we wait to see if it gets better or worse before deciding if we should have a rest day or not. We have connected back onto the main track now and the villages are bigger with lots of other expeditions going towards mera peak.
over the next couple days it's an easy walk up the valley and i recover from my breathing problem. We decide it's best that i have a rest day at as high of an altitude as possible. The longer i stay at higher altitudes the easier it becomes to cope with it. And i don't have any altitude sickness at all so far.
We reach Khare(4900m). I'm taking 1 step per breath already and we havn't even reached the snowline yet. We use the rest day to explore the surrounding area and take pictures. I look at the west face of Mera peak, it's amazing. A huge square slab of rock, covered in glistening glaciers, rock and blue ice. And we see people, like tiny little ants walking down from the mountain. In khare we meet people who've attempted the summit. Some of them made it, some of them say it became too cold when people in their group stopped for a rest, so had to turn back. based on this i start to formulate a strategy of how im going to get to the top. I decide im going to walk up very slowly without rests. peme decides we will walk from khare to mera la(base camp) for 1 night. Then to high camp. Then we will get up at 2am at high camp and attempt the summit in the night. Walking during the night is essential as the sun will burn your face off quickly in glacial snow at high altitudes. And it also allows us to avoid other expeditions, who will slow us down in the areas where rope is needed and risk us getting frost bite.
pics of mera, peak 41.
After our rest day we walk to mera la, i wake up to rescue choppers and get diarrhea during the morning. Unpleasant when your sharing the worst toilet ever with 50 other people. But fuck it, keep on going anyway. After spending a night at mera la we walk to high camp(5750m). High camp is a pretty shitty place, literally. There is little space for us to put our tent, it's freezing cold, the air dehydrates me quickly. Every step i take is exhausting. After ten steps my throat becomes dry. that night i wrap my water bottle in what little warm clothing im not wearing. Im wearing 4 layers on my legs, 5 top layers. 2 balaclavas + sleeping bag and sleeping bag liner. The sherpas serve me some tea and are wearing jandles. That night i go to sleep excited in anticipation of summit day. While im just lying there, breathing hard i think about how im going to summit next day. It took 3.5 hours to walk from mera la to high camp, and it was a short distance and only a 400m climb. By the end of the walk i was going at 2 breaths per step. With a 700m climb ahead of us, it will take me 6+ hours to reach the summit.
We wake up at 2am, my piss bottle, sunscreen are frozen. My water bottle is about 4/5 frozen.
high camp, sherpas chopping for water with an ice axe.
it takes us about 1 hour just to get ready, putting climbing boots on without gloves is the worst part. Then at 3:30am we leave, there are 4 of us linked together with rope. Peme, me, my dad, and Dende. As soon as we begin to walk im already exhausted. It's just so hard to breath while going uphill. for the first hour we have good pace though. I turn to look behind me and see a sea of maybe 20-30 headtorches wandering in darkness, and stars above me. The snow is hard but not icey, it sounds like polystyrine when we step on it. Our sherpa leads us up a hill in darkness, it seems endless. All i'm thinking is this: breath, breath and lift right leg. Breath, breath and lift left leg. Wiggle your toes or they'll go numb. Wiggle your fingers. Breath. BREATH, dont stop.
This goes on for about an hour and a half, until we get to the top of this steep ascent and have to jump across a crevasse. Whenever Peme stops i tell him 'lets go' in sherpa language. i don't want to stop, and for him it's easy. He is well aclimitzed, and extremely fit.
The sun slowly rises, and we get to the bottom of the peak. All we need to do is walk up a steep bit for another 50m, then there is an ice wall about 10m high. Im so exhausted, it takes me 3 breaths for every step to walk up this 50m climb. Once we get to the top of it i rest on my back and try to recover my breath for the next few minutes. But Peme immediately busts out his ice axes, dual weilding them he gets up the ice wall very quickly and fixes the rope from the summit. Then it's my turn, my arm has gone numb as i forgot to wiggle it. I use the front points of my crampons to get up the ice cliff as my arm and hand is merely used to hold onto the ascender. It takes a long time to get up to the top, and once i do i feel euphoric and in awe. The most epic music fills my head during this moment. It quickly washes off and we look around, taking pictures. we can see 5/6 of the worlds highest mountains from the summit. We are the first group on the summit for the day at 7:35am, followed by a swiss man and 2 danish men, which was a group of 5 when we met them in Khare. We quickly walk back down the mountain to high camp in an hour, now racing against the sun as our sunscreen is still frozen. After that euphoric feeling i feel a sense of pride for about 2-3 hours, we meet the other expeditions as we are walking down, all congratulating us. Once we reach high camp i collapse into my tent, having done the most physically exhausting thing in my life. I caugh hard for about 30minutes straight then pass out withouting eating any food.
I come to with Peme telling me it's the afternoon already and we need to get off the mountain, now i have a massive headache and im hungry. I've only had a bowl of cornflakes that day and it;s the only thing i had to eat that day until we got completely off the mountain and down into a valley at 4800m. We rest there for another day.
pics from the summit, everest, lohtze with its 3000m high vertical south face. My dad and me holding Peme's ice axes and Buddhist prayer flags, me climbing back down. After we climbed down to mera la, lower base camp.:
After our rest day we walk through a valley towards amphu lapcha: the last hard part of our trip before we have an easy walk past everest and lohtze's dramatic south face. ( a 3000m high wall of ice and rock, more impressive than anything in westeros tbh)
Unfortunately over the next day i lose my appetite, my breathing problem arises again and i have no energy. we still walk to a camp that's 1 day from amphu lapcha. I get diarrhea again during the night, shitting out what very little im eating, with peme and my dad telling me i have to eat to be able to walk tommoro. Skipping lunch and drinking half a bowl of soup for dinner. We meet a group that is planning to climb peak 41 and buruntse, they must be insane.
The next day i feel even worse. we walk towards amphu lapcha, very hungry and thirsty. It takes us hours, it hurts to breath and it's hard to breath. I must have strained some muscles i use to breath on mera peak quite badly. At some points i walk 30m on near flat ground, take a rest. Then walk another 30m and rest again. later on we see a constant stream of rescue choppers flying over our heads in the valley from buruntse.
walking through sand at 5000m, me feeling quite weak in this pic. Everest and Lohtze in the background as the rocky mountains. Baruntse as the snowy one to the right.
After a painstaking 6 hours we reach the base camp of amphu lapcha at 5500m. I have had no food today apart from breakfast and don't want to eat, but i have to.
Dende gives me some noodle soup, smelling it makes me hyperventilate, it's unbearable. But i have to climb 300m tommoro so i can cross amphu lapcha.
Dad tells me if i don't eat it i will have to walk back to Khare, a 3 day walk and i know he's right. I begin to cry as i attempt to eat it. I manage to finish the whole thing after a while, and instantly start feeling stomach pain but still somehow manage to sleep. Then i wake up again in pain after a couple hours, my dad is worried and doesn't want to take any chances. Our sherpa has a satelite phone on him but the battery has run flat. They run off and try to find another group that has a satelite phone to call in a rescue chopper Dende gives me some hot water, i drink about a litre of it and then throw it all up, then i throw up all the food i've had that day, and keep throwing up until there is nothing left. I feel much better after that, but the rescue chopper has already been called in to pick me up in the morning. That night my dad gives me a diamox pill when we are in the tent. I eat it and both of us forgetting that im sick, throw up immediately and he gives me a bottle in the dark for me to vomit in. Only after putting my mouth on the bottle do i realise what it's used for.
FeelslikeBearGryllsman.
I stay awake that night for hours, very thirsty as we are at 50% oxygen of sea level. I have a water bottle beside me and it's maddening knowing that if i drink out of it i will vomit it. So i drink a few drops every hour and it goes down fine. In the morning I get flown back to Kathmandu in an awesomely daring helicopter ride, then change my clothes + have a shower for the first time in 2 weeks and begin my recovery.
The epic music in my head when i reached the summit of Mera
1 votes
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
Last edit: 03/11/2012 10:56
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Nov 03 2012 10:18. Posts 5299
feel free to edit title to nepal trip mods.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
1
morph1 Sierra Leone. Nov 03 2012 10:28. Posts 2352
Stroggoz New Zealand. Nov 03 2012 10:55. Posts 5299
On November 03 2012 09:47 Raidern wrote:
awesome! thanks for sharing
what caused the diarhea btw? the water? was it only you in the group who had problems with it?
not sure tbh. i had it 3 different times total during the trip, and it was pretty mild, so it felt standard and unrelated to the gastroenteritis i got at the end of the trip. I was the only one with gastroenteritis and strained breathing muscles. My dad got diarrhea once.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
Enjoyed the TR. That f airport is dangerous as hell, planes crash and ppl die there all the time it seems:/ Other than that, everyone should experience the Himalayas and Nepal once
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the cleaner Germany. Nov 03 2012 13:56. Posts 3014
What an amazing experience ! Thanks for sharing
there are no facts only interpretations
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NewbSaibot United States. Nov 03 2012 14:49. Posts 4943
I imagine your body is a hardened tool after such ventures. Remind me never to fuck with you.
Are helicopter rides just part of some tax payer service for people who get stuck? Or do you have to pay for it?
United States. Nov 03 2012 11:52. Posts 7471
