A Wet Descent
Khare (16205 feet) 17th October
As I looked out from my tent in Khare at that nasty
steep slope leading up to the glacier, the Mera La and High Camp, I felt a great
sense of relief that I would no longer have to stumble up it in my plastic boots.
I had had a good night's sleep, I was fully refreshed, my courses of medicines
had come to an end and I was looking forward to the long cool beer we had promised
ourselves in Tagnak.
Andy came around the tents to say farewell. He was cutting
across country to meet the climbers arriving at Lukla for the next trek he wais
leading, covering three of the more technical trekking peaks. As he left, he
suddenly turned back to me and said "You did well".
Politeness it might have been, but I was secretly delighted.
Andy also decided to take with him most of the Sherpas:
Mingma, Puri and Ringji (probably still having difficulty with his eyes), leaving
us just with Gumbo. In normal circumstances that would have been fine, because
we just had three or four days of descent to do, but this decision would turn
out to have unforeseen consequences.
Our descent to Tagnak was highly enjoyable, with
the weather being dry and sunny most of the way. I walked down with the speedy
Lee and we got there by noon.
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Tennis
Ball Boy
One of the children from the nearest lodge was curious,
gregarious and inexhaustible. He had acquired a tennis ball from someone
and was content to throw it and fetch it all morning.
Then he discovered one of our trekking-poles and
used it as a golf club with the tennis ball - it was a devil of a job
getting the trekking-pole back again!
Only when a new audience appeared (the Himalayan
Kingdoms people pitching their tents right outside his lodge) did he desert
us.
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Tennis ball boy holds court at Tagnak
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I was quite unused to arriving first - I was turning around
and searching for Colin for the next hour and a half, when he appeared, explaining
that he'd been watching some rock climbers on a multi-pitch climb in the nearby
cliffs.
We all enjoyed the drop in altitude. The first thing it
affects is your appetite and thus dinner was wolfed down greedily. Afterwards
we walked to the lodge where Lee had been taken when he was ill - that seemed
a long, long time ago! We crowded around the fire in the candlelight and had
a couple of beers. Gumbo, on the other hand, was
negotiating hard in terms of marrying Lee off to either (or both) of the lodge
owner's strapping daughters.
In the middle of the night I had to get up and relieve
myself. I was staggering all over the place. I couldn't believe it, I had only
had a litre of beer. That just goes to show the effect that alcohol can have
at altitude.
Tagnak (13,580 feet) 18th
October
Today had been decreed a rest day, with breakfast put
back to 8 am to give kitchen staff a rest also. We had a novel substitute for
porridge this morning: rice pudding. It had been augmented with some of the
rough Nepali muesli stuff, with pieces of nuts and so on. It wasn't very sweet
and there was a strange powdery taste to it. Some of the others were much stronger
in their criticisms, like "Never again!"
Some days afterwards the secret emerged: one of the kitchen
boys had put ground garlic into the rice pudding instead of sugar!
The Himalayan Kingdoms people elected to go down further
today which meant we were again exposed to tennis-ball boy, his latest trick
being playing peek-a-boo through the windows of the mess tent - again and again
and again.
We thought we would go for a long walk today, but it rained
all day. It is depressing to be talking about incessant rain at this stage in
the trek.
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Tagnak
(4140 m/13,580 feet) 19th October
I woke up to see the tent bulging inwards - more
than a foot of of snow had fallen in the night.
Some of us didn't want to set off today, but Gumbo
argued that we had used up our spare day, and as Khote was over 2000 feet
lower down, we might get below the snow line. (Gumbo was right. If
we had stayed at Tagnak anothe day we would have been trapped there by
deep snow ).
Today we gave over our walking boots to the porters
for the rest of the trek because of the execrable conditions underfoot.
It was quite strange seeing one of the Sherpanis walking around in mine.
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Under snow at Tagnak
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About to set out at Tagnak in nasty conditions
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We joined a very long snake of climbers and porters
from all the different expeditions based here. We had all come to the
same decision, to descend.
The paths through the snow were very slippery (the
person who had broken trail hadn't always found the precise path) so it
was a tiring journey. At length we got below the snow line - only to go
from frying pan to fire.
We had again reached the hideous walk along the
big rocks in the centre of the gouged out Hinku River valley. Several
times we lost our way and had to retrace our steps back to get across
deep bits of the river.
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Colin slipped once on a treacherous rock and just managed
to shield his head so that he received light bruising rather than a very sore
head.
We heard several avalanches high above us. There was one
very scary moment when we heard the sound of an avalanche coming exactly in
our direction, but mist prevented us from seeing where it was coming from, or
how far away it was. We didn't know whether to try to run or go back, but because
we were on slippery big rocks, we would not have got anywhere fast and so we
just carried on our way. Thankfully, it petered out long before it got to us.
We didn't get back until about 2 30 pm. We sheltered in
the one lodge, as it was again wet. The lodge was only half built, with walls
of vegetation rather than stones, so it was very draughty and chilly - especially
if you were a late arrival like Colin and me when you couldn't get very close
to the little fire.
Nevertheless when our dinner arrived, there was a surprise,
a home made pizza, and rather good it was too.
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There was very little room outside for pitching
tents. The tent for Colin and I was about two feet from the edge of the
riverbank with the entrance facing the bank.
No wandering around in the middle of the night
tonight! But the lower altitude (around 11500 feet) did promote a better
sleep, despite the rain.
We had two days left to get up and down the Zatraya
La pass - and that meant getting up to 15,000 feet and back down again.
It looked very unlikely that we would make it -
the Himalayan Kingdoms expedition attempted the 'high' route to the pass
today and had to turn all the way back to Khote, having wasted nearly
3000 feet of height gain.
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Our tent at Khote is right at the riverside
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No wonder their trek leader (another Andy) chose to sit
most of the time in the lodge with us, although he was also rather fond of Nicky!
To get to Lukla in time for our flight, we needed two dry sunny days, otherwise
the snow would be impassable on the pass and there would have been a backlog
of flights unable to land at Lukla.
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