Pictures from Nepal

The caption for each picture is below the image. I don't know why the spacing is messed up on some of them.

Kathmandu

The airport at Lukla, this is where we started trekking.

Namche and Kongde Ri.

This was our first view of Mt Everest and Lhotse, Ama Dablam is on the right.

Tengboche Monastery

Island Peak, the route we climbed is around the right side.

Lobuche East, the second peak we climbed.

Ama Dablam at sunrise.

Brian and I on the summit of Island Peak.

Island Peak basecamp, our tent is the only green one.

Everest, Nuptse and the Khumbu Glacier from the summit of Lobuche East.

Our porters descending on Lobuche East.

Brian making friends.

Prayer flags on the way to Thame.

Everest, Lhotse and Makalu from Renjo La.





Ama Dablam

When I asked a passing guide what kind of goat this was he told me a "high mountain goat." It's actually called a thar.

This porter carried all our gear from Namche to Lukla.

Boudhanath, Kathmandu

This is the river we went rafting on for two days.

Riot police tenderly holding hands before they kick the crap out of some protestors.

Kathmandu from Swayambhunath.

Patan Durbar Square

Island Peak Summit

This video is from the summit of Island Peak.

Frustration in Kathmandu

I'm still stuck in Kathmandu but there may be light at the end of the tunnel. I've spent the last several days standing in various lines at various different airline offices being told various different things. I was originally supposed to fly with Thai Airlines back to Bangkok, but because Bangkok is still a mess thats not going to happen. Instead I was told that Thai Airlines would pay for a new ticket for me to a different airline hub, I'm trying for Hong Kong. So I ran all over the place trying to find a flight to Hong Kong, I finally found one on Royal Nepal Airlines and was told to go back to Thai to have them endorse my ticket. I waited at Thai airlines for 4 or 5 hours before I made it up to a ticket agent. The agent takes one look at my ticket and says "I can't do anything with this." A rather loud and protracted shouting match ensued where I very diplomatically explained to the man that it was in his best interest to make the ticket for me, he declined and I loudly voiced my disagreement with his incompetence, to no avail. After this little encounter I walked into a different section of the office, sat down and handed a different agent my paperwork. He took care of my ticket right away, no shouting, cursing or threatening required.

So I have a ticket out to Hong Kong on the 4th of December and then flights on to Taipei and Anchorage on the 5th. So I'm hoping that all that will get worked out and I should be back in Alaska by Friday morning. I'm looking forward to getting back there, it sounds like the snow is already piling up which means I need to get out my skis.

Killing time in Kathmandu

Well for anybody that hasn't heard Bangkok is a mess and I'm supposed to be flying there today, right now in fact I should be seated on a Thai Airways flight winging my way towards the "land of smiles." Instead I'm sitting in Thamel doing a blogpost. A few days ago anti-government protestors stormed Bangkok's international airport and closed it down. It's still closed and will remain closed at least through tomorrow. I'm on a waiting list with the airlines for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, on Wednesday I have a confirmed reservation. So I have no idea when I might be getting home. Well at least Kathmandu is a really cheap town to be stuck in.

Yesterday I went to Durbar Square and to Swayambunath (the monkey temple). Durbar Square was interesting, it has some of the oldest building in Kathmandu and a lot of very intricate woodwork. I went up to Swayambunath just before sunset and walked around the stupa and a few of the other shrines. The view from Swayambunath looks out across all of Kathmandu, or at least all of it that can be seen through the smog. Its a beautiful place. The monkeys are pretty entertaining as well. I watched one monkey snatch a candy sucker out of a kids hand before he could even get it to his mouth.

I have no idea how much longer I'll be here, at least through tomorrow. I'm hoping to be back in Anchorage early in the week, but there's really no way to tell right now.

Whitewater Rafting on the Bhote Khosi

We just got back from a two day rafting trip on the Bhote Kosi river. We had a lot of fun. The river has class IV and V rapids on it. Because its late in the season for rafting the water was pretty low and there were a lot of rocks. We left Kathmandu on the first day and drove about three hours to the first put in. We floated down the river and through several class III rapids. The water was not as cold as rafting in Alaska, but it wasn't very much warmer either. We stopped for lunch along the river and shared our lunch spot with a group of curious cows.



After lunch things got more interesting. Coming into one of the bigger rapids on that secton of river our raft went into a rock, got pinned there and flipped over sideways dumping most of us into the water. The current sucked me under the boat and through the wrong side of the rapid. I popped out of the first rapid and floated on downstream through a few other waves. The other boat came floating by upside down. Apparently my boat was still stuck on the rock and the other boat had flipped on another rapid, so there were about a dozen of us floating down the river. The safety kayakers gathered up some folks and the rest of us climbed onto the over-turned boat and paddled it to shore. Eventually they got the boat I was in unstuck and we regrouped on the bank. No big deal, lets keep going. Some of the other folks were pretty shaken up and two dropped out for the following day. I managed to get thrown out of the boat once more that day but after the ride I'd taken earlier it wasn't a big deal.



We spent the night at the Borderlands Resort. It was a nice place right on the river with beautiful waterfalls coming down from high on the mountainsides. We put in on the upper Bhote Kosi aound 10:30 in the morning. The second day runs more challenging sections of the river. There were definitely some nervous faces in the group before we set off. We floated downstream through some pretty good rapids before stopping for lunch. After lunch we got our boat broadsided on a rock maybe 10 yards from the lunch spot. The boat got pinned against the rock and wrapped around it. Brian fell off the front of the boat and got to go down through a few nice waves before one of the kayakers got to him. The rest of us were stuck on the half of the raft that was out of the water, the left side of the raft was totally swamped. The other guides came back up the river bank to us and threw us a couple ropes. We secured the boat with one (although it was pretty secure against that rock) and used the other to get people off the raft. They would slide off the raft and into the water and then the rope would swing them with the current into shore. Everyone else got off the raft but the guide asked if I would stay and help him get the raft unstuck. We tried a few more useless things before breaking out a rope and a few pulleys to set up a hauling system on the bank. Once the guides rigged the ropes and started pulling they managed to tear three of the sewn D rings off the boat. We rerigged the system to try to flip the raft over. After a few tries we managed to flip the raft and the guide and I dove onto the inverted raft as it drifted by. The rope system swung us over to the shore. We packed up the gear and got back on the water. The rest of the trip down was pretty straight forward. Brian managed to get popped out again, we were both sitting up front where there isn't much to hook your feet under to keep you in the boat. The guides took the rafts through two class V rapids, but the clients all had to walk around. The rapids didn't look too bad but a swim in the middle would probably kill you. When the water is higher they can run those rapids because its less likely you would flip with the rocks deeper underwater. We finished off the day with a 3 hour bus ride back to Kathmandu and most of our boat went out to dinner together.



Just a few days left in Kathmandu. I'm trying to see some more of the sights before I leave. I've had a great time over here, but its just about time to be moving on.

A Bandh in Kathmandu

Brian and I made it back to Kathmandu yesterday morning after wrangling a flight out of Lukla on a different airline than we had tickets on. We landed back in Kathmandu to find the city in upheaval. Apparently two younger guys were killed about a month ago and their bodies just turned up earlier this week. The Maoists are blamed for the killings and since the Maoists control the government, people are blaming the government. So in protest of the lack of investigation into the killings there is a city wide bandh or strike. Nearly all of the shops are closed today. The only place where much of anything is open is the tourist district where I am staying. Its not a dangerous situation just very different from what I'm used to seeing. It took us an hour to get to the guesthouse from the airport because protestors were blocking main roads with burning tires. The ride should have taken 10 or 15 minutes. Because everything is closed a lot of people are out walking the streets, just kind of checking things out. Foreigners and Nepalis are just out for a stroll to see whats going to happen. The atmosphere doesn't feel hostile at all, especially being a foreigner I feel pretty insulated from whats going on.

We were planning on being in Kathmandu for just a day or two but its looking like it may be a bit longer than that depending on how long the strike lasts. I doubt if it will last for more than a few days. I'll probably post again in the next day or two especially if we are stuck in Kathmandu for a few days.

Namche Again

I'm back in Namche again, still trying to beat this lousy chest cold I've been fighting. Every time I go back up to altitude it gets worse so I'm hanging out in Namche for a few days until I can get it sorted out. Brian is still up valley in Gokyo and will probably join me here in a day or two.

The trek that we did was pretty impressive. We went up the valley to the west of Namche through Thame. This valley doesn't have any really huge peaks in it so very few trekkers head up there. For us it was great to escape the crowds that flock towards Everest Base Camp. We spent two days hiking up this valley and then crossed over a pass called Renjo La into the Gokyo valley. Climbing up to Renjo La took about six hours and was over 1000m of elevation gain. The trail up to the pass was mostly stone steps, thousands of never ending stone steps. I was exhausted when I finally reached the pass, but the view was incredible. I think that the view of Everest from Renjo La is one of the best anywhere. All of the other views we had gotten of Everest so far were of just the peak barely peaking above the Lhotse face. The view from Renjo La really put the mountain in perspective. From Renjo La we were far enough away from the mountain to really appreciate its immense size. I can't wait to put up the pictures when I get back. The descent down to Gokyo was steep but the views were great the whole way. Gokyo sits right on a beautiful alpine lake. The lake is a bright blue color, just incredible.

I hiked down to Namche from Gokyo yesterday in hopes of finally beating this chest cold. I'm just hanging out in Namche until I get better or Brian arrives and we decide to head down further. This means I've got some time on my hands so I'll try to post again in a day or so.

Hope everyone is doing well. Just a couple weeks until I'm back in Alaska.

The Biggest Mountains

We arrived back in Namche yesterday afternoon. A lot has happened since I was able to post last, I'll try to back up and at least get all the highlights in.

We left Namche a couple weeks ago and headed up valley toward Tengboche and Island Peak. We stayed the first night in Pangboche and then moved on to Dingboche the next day. The mountain views just got better each day, as we left Namche we had great views of Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam. Eventually we passed right below Ama Dablam and up the valley on the north side of the mountain. Island Peak is bordered on the north side by the Lhotse Face, one of the tallest mountain faces in the world and to the south is Ama Dablam. We reached Base Camp in just a few days and took one rest day before attempting the peak. Our acclimatization was good and we didn't have any problems with altitude sickness on the route. It was strange camping on dirt at 17,000 ft. Things are definitely a little different here. The climb was pretty straight forward with minimal technical difficulties. We left camp around 3AM and got to the top about 10AM. I was feeling pretty sick, but it wasn't the altitude. I came down with a pretty bad chest cold that knocked me out for a couple of days. The altitude and cold dry air just seemed to make it even worse. At least I was still able to climb Island Peak. The view from the top was incredible, huge mountains as far as I could see in every direction. I'll post some pictures when I get back to the states.

After Island Peak we descended to Dingboche where I spent a couple of days recovering from my cold. We left Island Peak just in time as large guided groups arrived and quickly over ran the small base camp. I've got a great picture of a dozen yellow tents surrounding my small green tent. They set up so closely that the porter pounding in stakes for one of the tents poked a hole in my tent. I was less than pleased but laughed it off since there wasn't much I could do and we were leaving later that day anyways. After a couple days in Dingboche I was feeling better so we moved up to Lobuche East Basecamp. This camp was much more to our liking since we were the only ones there. We had dragged a bunch of ice climbing gear up the mountain with us but we talked to a couple of guys coming down from the top who told us the summit ridge was extremely loose, unconsolidated snow. So we left the useless ice gear we had lugged halfway around the world in camp. The climbing was more technical than on Island Peak, but not too hard. It started with some fun rock scrambling up through a series of rock bands then onto steeper snow and finally a steep and exposed snow arete. The arete topped out on the summit ridge. The true summit is along the ridge a little ways, across a deep notch and a corniced subsidiary summit. We passed on both of these because of the poor snow conditions and sat on the first summit for over an hour taking in the views. Across the valley loomed Everest, Nuptse, and the Lhotse Face. Up valley was Pumori and further away Cho Oyu. Such incredible mountains, the weather was crystal clear and dead calm so we just sat up there for awhile and tried to soak it all in. Finally we started the descent. Just above the rock bands I saw a couple of other folks down below us, as I got closer I realized it was our porters. Our porters were supposed to be in Dughla, a small village at the foot of the peak. They weren't supposed to come up to our camp until the following day, and they certainly weren't supposed to be at 18,500 ft on the mountain. Apparently they had gotten bored in Dughla and decided to come pay us a visit, finding our camp empty they had headed up the mountain to see how high they could go. No ropes, crampons, ice axes, plastic boots or any other climbing gear, they had my two ski poles between the three of them, thats it. Brian and I gave them our ice axes to help with the descent and by some miracle we made it back to the dirt without any of them taking a major spill. I still get a good laugh thinking about how ridiculous it was, I got some great pictures of that.

We descended to Dughla that night and then got to Namche yesterday. This morning we said goodbye to our porters and sent them on their way. Brian and I are planning to leave on a 10 or 12 day trek tomorrow morning up the Thame valley across Renjo Pass, down to Gokyo and then across Cho La and back into the Khumbu Valley before returning to Namche. It will be nice to hike without all of our climbing gear and without trying to explain to our porters that we don't really have a plan, we're just taking it one day at a time.

I hope everyone is doing well. I'm having an incredible time in Nepal. Hard to believe that my trip is more than half over. Its so great to wake up each morning and know that all I have to do is go hiking or climbing all day. The good life.

Namche

We arrived in Namche the day before yesterday. Namche is pretty nice but very touristy. Yesterday Brian and I took a long hike up onto a ridge above the village. We started the hike by following the main path up to the Everest View but we quickly tired of the crowds and headed off in a different direction. One of our porters went with us but when Brian and I started hiking off the trail to head straight for the ridge we wanted to be up on he absolutely refused to follow us. We thought it was pretty funny. We climbed up onto the ridge which was at about 4200 meters and got great views of Everest, Lhotse, and Ama Dablam. We are both doing ver well with the altitude and the extra day that we've taken here should help us even more as we go higher. We are both ready to be moving further up the trail.

The hike to Namche was very nice but the trail is incredibly touristy. We've started joking that we're on the GC (Geriatric Circuit) because nearly all of the tourists are older men. Brian and I are hoping to do a trek to a much more remote area with far less tourists when we are finished climbing. I'm really looking forward to that. From Namche we are headed up to Island Peak and then to Lobuche Peak. We dropped Pokalde from our plans because it would have been very expensive to get that permit. We are hoping to scramble a few smaller peaks in the Gokyo Valley or towards Thame. We should be back in Namche in less than three weeks and I will try to post again then. I hope everyone is doing well and I'm looking forward to seeing you all when I get back.

Flying away

This post needs to be brief since we still have a lot to do and our flight is at 730 tomorrow morning. We fly to Lukla and if we are able to arrange everything we will start the trek into the mountains tomorrow. The first peak we are headed to is Island Peak. I should be able to make one more post from Namche before going into the hills. We are both really psyched about the trip and anxious to get out of Kathmandu. Hope everyone is doing well.

Consistently Inconsistent

I met up with Brian on Friday and we've spent the last few days trying to get permits for the peaks arranged and flights booked to Lukla and tying up whatever other loose ends we've got. Brian met a shopkeeper, named Sanjew, of a jewelry shop on one of the main streets here in Thamel (the tourist area in Kathmandu) amazingly he didn't try to sell Brian anything but rather invited us to a party. Neither of us really had any idea what to expect so we met him at his shop and just went with it. His brother picked us up and drove us up to a nice house in a different part of the city. We sat in the garden and talked politics (not surprisingly they hate Bush), religion (arranged marriages are still the norm in many places here), and a lot about American culture (they are surprisingly convinced that Hollywood is the real America). We also met another brother and a cousin, Sidarth. Sidarth is in charge of the business and even though he is younger than the brothers they treat him with immense respect. It was strange because we never sat down and talked to all of them at once, but instead they each cycled through to talk to us and then disappeared to a different part of the house. Strange party. For dinner they served mutton in curry with rice and a kind of bread. It was really good although the meat was still on the bone. We found out later that the bone the meat was attached to was the skull. Delicious sheep head with brain and all, probably better I didn't know that until after the meal. We had lunch with Sanjew the next day and went back to their house on Saturday for dinner. Its been an interesting cultural experience.

So in addition to eating bizarre meals with strangers we've been trying to get our permits arranged for the peaks we want to climb. The only thing that I'm certain of is that if you ask 10 different people the same question you are guranteed to get 10 different answers. Progress has been slow, we have to go through a trekking agency to get the permits. We probably went into 8 or 10 different places trying to get straight answers on our plans. It was incredible how wide the range of answers to our questions were. Finally we settled on an agency today and paid our fees, arranged porters, and arranged our flights to Lukla. Hopefully we will fly the day after tomorrow, but we are not sure yet. I'll try to post once or twice more before we head into the hills. We are having a great time and really looking forward to getting into the mountains.

Holy Cows and Car Exhaust

Well I finally made it to Kathmandu. Pretty good flight over from Bangkok, I got lucky and was able to get my baggage fees waved because I was flying from the United States. If you are flying from somewhere else Thai Airways charges you $4.50 for each pound over 44 that you have in baggage. I had 100 lbs of baggage, so that was a lot of money saved. Apparently Americans travel with more baggage than everybody else, who knew? The taxi I took from the airport was just like my old red subaru, except the taxie had more rust and less suspension. On the ride to the guesthouse I started feeling light headed and nauseaous from all the fumes. I thought it was just being in Kathmandu where the air quality is terrible, nope just he fumes from the taxi leaking inside. I got to see a little of the city on the way over; several holy cows which look like they're fed better than some of the people, a guy carrying a full wooden bedset on his back ( one guy, huge bedset), and more twisting and turning alleys than I'll ever be able to fathom. The guesthouse is not bad, 12 dollars for a king size bed and a private bathroom. I'll probably move to a cheaper one tomorrow to save money. Well I need to see if I can meet up with Brian so I'll wrap this up.

Off to Nepal!!!

On Wednesday October 15th I’m outta here. I fly from Anchorage to Bangkok where I’ll spend one night and then on to Kathmandu the next day. If everything goes according to plan I should be meeting Brian Von Tersch in Kathmandu on Friday the 17th, my birthday. We are planning to try to climb three peaks in the Everest Region of the Himalayas. Island Peak, Pokalde, and Lobuche East are the three peaks we are going to try. This is my first trip to Nepal and the Himalayas. I’m psyched for the trip but I don’t think it has really set in that in less than a week I’ll be on the other side of the world.
I’ll try to email or post on this blog when I can, but I think it will probably be hard to do once we get up in the mountains. I’ll be back in Alaska in about six weeks.








Pokalde



















Island Peak














Lobuche East

Mount Brooks

I just got back from doing a climb of Mt Brooks. Chris, one of the mountaineering rangers, and Josh, a mountain guide, went with me on this trip. This is Mt Brooks from the Thorofare River, two days of hiking away from the base of the climb. Our route, the north ridge, followed the prominent ridgeline running down to the right of the summit.

Chris and Josh looking out over the moraine of the Muldrow Glacier from west of Anderson Pass. Lots of rain and snow on the hike in. It snowed on us almost everyday, but the weather was never bad enough to really stop us from moving.

Steep climbing on very rotten rock. Our base camp was down below the snowline in this picture. The terrain improved dramatically just a few hundred feet above this photo when we were able to move on the ridge proper.

The climbing along the ridge was nice. You can see our tracks down lower on the ridge on the left side of this photo. Down below is the Brooks Glacier.

We dug our camp right into the ridgeline. We had a beautiful spot here. It took us awhile to dig out this spot but the view was incredible when the clouds finally parted.

This section of the ridge was just above our camp. This was one of the steeper and more exposed sections of the route.

The ridge was corniced in several areas. The snow was pretty good for the most part with only one major section of post-holing that Josh broke through like a champ.

Me on the summit. I lead the last section to the top. It was tough to tell exactly where the top was as we came up the ridge and we passed over one major false summit. I was a little surprised when I poked my head above a drift on the ridge to discover the summit. The top was pretty broad and flat with great views of some of the other peaks in the range including the east face of Denali, behind me, and Mt Mather (not shown).

The descent back to the glacier was pretty straight-forward even though the visibility was poor. The few sketchy spots we had been concerned about on the way up were not bad at all on the way down.

Back down on the Muldrow Glacier we found huge rivers flowing on top of the ice. These rivers carve deep canyons that are very difficult to cross. We had to cross three or four major rivers in order to get to Oastler Pass.

Even after we got back to relatively low elevations it continued to snow. This is at about 5500 ft. We were surprised by this sunset after several hours of heavy snowfall.

Two days of hiking, twenty miles, and a crossing of the McKinley River brought us out to Wonder Lake. Mt Brooks is the pointy peak on the left and Denali is on the right. I had a great time on this trip and came back with even more climbing projects to pursue off the Muldrow.

West Buttress Patrol

On the airstrip in Talkeetna. This is our patrol, from left to right Paul (paramedic), Jody (Canadian SARTech and paramedic), myself, Chris (Mountaineering Ranger), Scott (Kluane Park Ranger), John (Mountaineering Ranger).

Kahiltna Basecamp from the airplane on the way in. The camp got much larger later in the season.

Leaving Basecamp. The face in the background is the north buttress of Mt Hunter.

Traveling up glacier to the 11,000 ft camp.

The horde slowly creeping up Motorcycle Hill.

The Lama dropping off supplies to set up 14 camp. The Lama made 9 trips on this day to get us all of our stuff. There is a lot that goes into setting up 14 camp; medical tent, comms tent, cook tent, all our medical supplies food for multiple patrols, rescue gear, extra tents, and so on.

Scott and Jody on the fixed lines above 14,000 camp. We had to replace two sections of worn out line.

Me, Paul and John hanging out in the communications tent at 14,000 camp. This tent was the best place to be lots of room to stretch out, good company, and best of all a heater.

Heading out of 14 camp and up towards the fixed lines.

This is the best part of the climb right along the West Buttress proper. The mountain drops away thousands of feet on both sides of the ridge. The climbing is never too steep but the views are incredible.

This is our tent at 17,200 ft. Denali Pass is in the background, the trail is just visible under the rock band in the center of the photo. The trail leads up from camp to the pass.

No I haven't collapsed, I'm clipping the rope into a fixed anchor on the traverse up to Denali Pass. This is not an especially difficult traverse but its very time consuming clipping all of the anchors. But you do not want to skip any of them because there is a lot of exposure below the traverse and this is the site of a lot of accidents.

Finally on the summit ridge. This was a pretty spectacular part of the climb. Its a shame I was too hypoxic to really enjoy it.

The Top!!!

Back in the tent at the end of summit day. It was a long 12 hour day. A little 2 hours after we got to sleep some other climbers came and woke us up to report a "big problem" up high. It turned out to be nothing but first thing the next morning we had to start an evacuation for another injured climber.

This is just above 11,000 camp on the way back down.

Back at basecamp. The plane landing is coming in to pick us up and drop off another patrol.

This was such a great trip. We couldn't have had a better crew. The guys I got to work with are incredible people and great climbing partners. I'd go back to the mountain with them in a heartbeat. Overall we had pretty good weather with only just a few stormy days. The coldest it got at night was probably between -25 and -30 degrees. I had a great time and feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to participate in this patrol.