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.