THE TRIP (Trekking in Nepal- Post 3)

(To read the other posts in this series click on the label 'Nepal'.)

The air was getting noticeably thinner by the time we hiked into the booming town of Samagaon.  Perched in a surprisingly level section of the Budhi Gandaki river valley at 3530 meters high (11,578 feet), Samagaon was the staging ground for all Mt. Manaslu expeditions.  It was an intriguing town filled with mountaineers, various tea houses, and many rustic homes and farms.  Other towns (if you can call them that) only had one tea house and a hand full of  precariously perched homes on the edge of the cliff dropping straight down to the raging mountain river- though even the mighty Budhi Gandaki was beginning to dwindle to stream size the higher we climbed.  In spite of Samagaon's size we were about a week's hike from the nearest road and the town itself didn't have electricity.  When Dave and I peered into the only medical outpost it was empty with no doctor, nurse, medicine, not even a table- it was empty.  We were truly up in the Himalayas, remote from modern civilization and all the while Mt. Manaslu loomed overhead.

At this elevation many things were changing.  The semi-tropical terrain was far far below us, we had passed through alpine forest to get where we were which was a combination of grass lands and rocky terrain.  Not only was the land changing but the people were changing too.  We were mere kilometers from Tibet and the China border.  Most of the donkey trains we had seen were now replaced by massive, long haired yaks which were surprisingly quick and nimble for their size. "They call them mountain cows" my brother explained when one woolly beast scaled a ledge to pass us.  Ice clung to Tibetan farm houses built atop stables for the family's yak.  The body heat produced by the yak would actually keep things thawed in the house above.  And the Tibetan people proved even more nimble than their mountain cows as we watched one elderly lady glide up a narrow board to her second story home.

This was the place where legends of the Yeti came from- an arctic Sasquatch that some mountaineers swear they have seen.  Though no proof of this abominable snowman has ever been produced Dave and I couldn't help but keep our eyes out for the infamous Yeti.  On one particularly steep climb either the clouds descended or we rose to meet them until we were shrouded in mist.  My brother had pulled ahead as I gasped for oxygen and labored up the long slope.  When I emerged at the top I caught sight of a silhouetted figure in the distance.  It stood on two legs like a man but its movements were slow and heavy.  The figure was large and ominous and surprisingly hairy.  As I cautiously drew nearer I realized to my great relief that the mountain man was none other than my brother.  He looked as though he had been waiting for me as I breathed heavily recovering from my climb.  Though Dave is not a Yeti he can certainly climb mountains like one!

They say that the best way to acclimate your body to higher altitudes and avoid getting altitude sickness is by ascending during the day and then descending again; spending the night at a lower elevation.  During our three days in Samagaon I learned that this is why it takes mountaineers weeks to ascend a peak.  I addition to waiting for deadly weather to lift they must ascend and descend spending time to acclimatize at the various camps.  In 2012 an avalanche swept camp 3 off the side of Mt. Manaslu.  After our first night in Samagaon Dave and I would climb 2000 feet to Mt. Manaslu's base camp and descend back down to spend a second night in the mountaineering town.  Ascending and descending again would help our bodies adjust to the higher altitudes.  To get to base camp we would have to hike around beautiful Birendra Lake and traverse along Manaslu Glacier.

The next day, as we began the climb we could see the town of Samagaon over our shoulder beyond the glacial lake.  We would stop to listen each time Manaslu Glacier moved breaking loose giant chunks of ice which rumbled down into the lake.   Stopping to listen was also a welcomed opportunity to catch our breath.  Though we were only crawling up the side of the mountain we were breathing as if we were running a marathon.  If we skipped a breath to take a drink of water we would come up gasping for air as if we nearly had been drowned.  When I pushed myself hard I found that I couldn't make my legs move and they would quickly begin to feel like concrete blocks.

Always in the back of my mind was the fact that altitude sickness was the greatest threat to our making it around Manaslu and back to our families on the other side.  The only cure to altitude sickness is to descend and if we had to go back down we would loose days and it would become increasingly difficult for me to catch my return flight.  My head pounded and my body trembled and once again Dave pulled ahead.  As I studied my brothers Yeti-like movements I realized that if I took one breath for every step I could pace myself.  This enabled me to climb for much longer intervals and keep up a steady pace.  After what seemed like hours, through the mist, I spotted something bright.  It was a tent; I had made it to base camp!

As I dragged my ragged frame into camp I found my brother who of course appeared as though he had already been there for hours.  The clouds lifted revealing the eighth highest mountain in the world... and we were right at its feet!  Manaslu's spire appeared close enough to touch and yet at 8,163 meters (26,774 feet) the peak was more than two miles above our heads.  It had taken us a week to climb half that height and from base camp the remaining 4,000 meters seemed like they were straight up.  Dave and I were standing in a Chinese base camp and two mountaineers were standing with us, also staring at Manaslu's spire.  One of them was peering through a pair of binoculars.  Dave was talking with them in Nepali when the one handed Dave the binoculars revealing a group of 30 mountaineers more than half way up the mountain.  Even through the binoculars the large group looked like a black speck on the white side of Manaslu.  In the next few days the group of mountaineers would be attempting the first summit of the season.  

In the days to come Dave and I would be making a summit of our own; not a peak but a pass.  Larke La pass was 2,000 feet higher than Manaslu's base camp but the climb to it would be much more gradual.  I descended back to Samagaon feeling triumphant.  I had made it to base camp and felt confident I could make it over the pass.  Though we didn't fully realize it at the time, many challenges still awaited us.  It would take us a full day to cross the pass without any shelter or water between camps.  'One of the longest passes in the Himalayas' according to our guide, Logan.