A trip to Nepal -- Part 3

... continued from Part 2

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Sightseeing in Kathmandu

Trekking in Nepal

For Day 5, our destination is Khumjung (12,434’). We headed back down the busy main trail (busy, as in hundreds of trekkers daily) for a few hours until we reach the trail junction for Khumjung. You might notice the sign says 2 hours to Tengboche, 20 minutes to Khumjung, for a total of 2:20. We did it in 4:30 flat: yep, a gentle pace indeed. Once we leave the main trail between Lukla - Namche Bazar - Tengboche, there is a dramatic reduction in the volume of traffic on the trail; we don't have the trail to ourselves, but it is much more peaceful.

The village of Khumjung sets in a broad kilometer-wide valley, much different from the ruggedly narrow valleys we've been in from Lukla to Tengboche. Khumjung is home to the Khumjung Secondary School, founded by Sir Edmund Hilary in 1961; it is the only secondary school in the Khumbu region. On a hill outside the village there is a chorten dedicated to Hilary; he is highly revered in this part of Nepal.

Khumjung does have a fair supply of trekking lodges and craft vendors, but much less so than anyplace else we've been so far. It has a much more authentic feel to it; the small farm plots (potatoes, mostly) are ringed by stone fences, and it is clear that the valley is not totally dependent on tourist business. 

Khumjung is also home to a small monastery. The monastery is no longer active (no monks living there) and is only used on special occasions. However, the temple does house a yeti scalp in a locked cabinet (!). After we all contributed some rupees, the caretaker unlocked the cabinet for our viewing pleasure. I won't waste pixels here on the picture I took, you can Google "yeti scalp Khumjung" if want to see some pictures. Some scientific analyses have indicated that it was once part of an antelope rump; but hey, I've paid more and got less ... I mean, how often do you get a roadside attraction tourist trap that is a yeti skull?

In Khumjung, we stayed at the Sherpa Land Lodge and Restaurant, "Internet Service and Wi-Fi available". Surprising, perhaps, but typical of most of the lodges we've seen. We also have great cell phone service, four bars worth. We've had good cellphone service all along the trek, and the guide says there is good coverage all the way to Everest Base Camp. Nonetheless, the toilets are down the hall and there is only cold running water in the sink; I'm not complaining here, just reporting...

On Day 6, we headed up over a low saddle, passed the Syangboche airstrip that we saw on Day 3, and headed up the Bhote Kosi valley to the small village of Thame. Bhote Kosi means "river from Tibet"; this was (and is) a major trade route from the Khumbu region of Nepal over into Tibet and eventually into China.  I'm quite taken with the beauty of this valley, the views east and downstream to the peaks Kangtega and Thamserku, and the peaks Nupla, Tarukha, and Teng Kang Poche to our south. These peaks are all "just" 6000m-class peaks, but they are stunning nonetheless.

Thame is a small village at 12,467'. We stayed at the Everest Summiteer Lodge, which is owned by Apa Sherpa. He holds the record for the most times summiting Mount Everest: 21 times as of 2011. The dining room walls are covered with framed certificates from the Guinness Book of World Records for each time he set a new record, as well as other mementos. He now lives in Salt Lake City, and it was a bit incongruous to also see framed certificates for his children making the honor roll at Alta High School! Speaking of incongruous, there was a television in the dining room, and the innkeepers' two young children (ages 4 or 5) spent hours watching the Cartoon Channel (yes, in English). For the record, we had great views from our lodge room, and the toilets were down the hall.

We had clear skies and spectacular views in Thame. Our guide was equally amazed, he said it was the first time he had ever been in Thame without clouds and fog. I had taken lots of pictures of Everest and Ama Dablam and etc on this trip, but I absolutely fell in love with the views here in Thame. Looks vaguely like the Tetons from the Jackson Hole side, doesn't it?

continued in Part 4 ...

A trip to Nepal -- Part 2

... continued from Part 1

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Sightseeing in Kathmandu

Trekking in Nepal

Our destination for Day 2 was the village of Namche Bazar, at an elevation of 11,286'. We officially entered the Sagarmatha National Park -- I say officially because trekking permits are required, and were checked at the entrance station and periodically along the trail. Sagarmatha is the Nepalese name for Mount Everest; however, that name was only coined in the 1960s to supplant the Tibetan (and Chinese) name Chomolungma which has been in use for several centuries. I've been trying to adopt the practice of referring to places in foreign countries by their "native" names, but saying "Everest" is a hard habit to break... 

The trail spent most of the morning winding along the Dudh Kosi ("Milk River"). A friend of mine was part of the first descent of the Dudh Kosi in 1972; seeing the river firsthand, I'm very impressed and can't help but try to imagine what this area looked like then, and what kind of outrageous adventure it must have been.

Leaving the Dudh Kosi, the trail climbed steeply to Namche Bazar (or Bazaar, but the Nepalese spelling is Bazar). Namche Bazar is a village of some 2000 people; as you might guess from the name, it is the main trading center in the Khumbu region of Nepal, and is also the main gateway for trekkers and climbers going into the Himalayas. Most of the buildings that you see in the pictures of Namche are hotels, restaurants, and shops catering to trekkers. There is also a busy Nepali street market. We stayed at the Hotel Snow Land; Lee and I scored a corner room on the top floor with great views overlooking the village. Alas, only cold running water in the shower; propane-fired hot showers were available in a booth at the back of the hotel for a few hundred rupees (two or three dollars).

 

Namche Bazar is busy enough to support three tourist bars; I couldn't resist the incongruity of having a beer at the "Irish Pub" in Namche, so several of us met there for cocktail hour. There wasn't anything Irish about the place, and unfortunately Guinness was not on draft. In fact, there weren't any beers on draft, which isn't all that surprising when you consider it all has to be carried to Namche on a porter's back. They did have cans of Guinness for some outrageous price (like $7.00 US) so I settled for a $1.50 San Miguel. 

Our itinerary called for two nights in Namche Bazar, intended to let us acclimate to the altitude. On the layover day, we did a dayhike to the Hotel Everest View, at 12,730' it bills itself as "the highest placed hotel in the world". (I wonder about hotels in Peru and Bolivia though...). There was one Everest viewpoint yesterday on the trail up to Namche Bazar, but the mountains were totally clouded over then. The typical weather pattern for this time of year is clear in the mornings, and clouding up as the day goes on. So, we haven't had any views of Everest yet, until we round a corner on the trail, and wow! Cholatse (20,784'), Taboche Peak (21,309'), Everest (29,029'), Lhotse (27,940'), and Ama Dablam (22,349'). Mount Everest is the one with the cloud coming off the summit block.

As you can see, the weather was perfect. We parked ourselves on the deck at the Hotel Everest View, ordered hot chocolate and snacks, relaxed in the sun, and gloried in the view.

On Day 4, we spent 7 hours walking from Namche Bazar to the smaller village of Tengboche (12,717'). Yes, it was a gentle pace. David Shlim (our travel medicine doc in Jackson, who spent some 15 years in Nepal) had told us that, of anywhere in the Khumbu region, Tengboche has the best views of Everest. Well, on a gray cloudy afternoon, maybe not so much. 

Tengboche is home to an active Tibetan monastery, housing some sixty monks. They were conducting afternoon prayers when we arrived, and the temple was open to visitors. There were perhaps fifteen monks participating in the afternoon prayers, and fifty shoeless trekkers sitting on the floor in the back of the room. Of course I didn't understand a word I heard, and had no clue about the symbolism in the elaborate carvings, paintings, and figurines in the temple; nonetheless, it was interesting to watch and listen for a while.

The lodge in Tengboche was more rustic than our previous accommodations. No ensuite facilities here, but there were two toilet rooms at the end of the hall: one with a Western-style throne toilet and one with the typical Nepal porcelain trench on the floor. Lee and I landed a room on the Everest-facing side of the lodge, and we had high hopes for the morning sunrise views. We were not disappointed...

Yes, that was the view from our room: Everest, Lhotse, and Ama Dablam. It had snowed briefly the previous evening, then cleared off to a nearly full moon and spectacular views of enormous snowy mountains on a clear night. The morning was cold, it was 32F inside our room before we opened the window to take pictures. It wasn't much colder outside, about 25F.

After breakfast and "please just a few more minutes here for pictures", it was time to leave Tengboche and head back down the trail for a few hours.

continued in Part 3 ...

A trip to Nepal -- Part 1

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Sightseeing in Kathmandu

Trekking in Nepal

Back in November 2011, my friend Greg emailed to say that viewing Everest had been on his bucket list for almost thirty years, and that he had booked a trekking trip to go do it. Trekking in Nepal has been on my to-do list as well, so I signed on shortly thereafter.

Jill decided to skip this trip. She went trekking in the same area back in the mid-1980s -- before it was spoiled, so to speak -- and didn't want to ruin those memories by seeing how the area had changed. Greg's wife Dianne decided to go, and our friend Lee signed on as well. This trek was a bit too tame for Lee's boyfriend (he summited Ama Dablam a couple years ago), so Lee and I went as roomies. (Thus explaining the blond woman in the hotel room pictures...) Terrie signed up a couple months later, so our crew made up 5 of the 14 slots on the trek.

We bought plane tickets in May, boarded the plane in Jackson on 20 October, and arrived in Kathmandu on the 22nd. Korean Air is my new favorite airline: lots of legroom, comfortable seats, good service, and a USB charging port at every seat!

The arrival day in Kathmandu was mostly unstructured time. After checking in to the hotel and unpacking our bags, the five of us squeezed into a taxi to the Thamel district (the backpackers/foreign-travelers part of the city) to look around, do a little shopping, and find some dinner. Traffic in Kathmandu was crazy, though not quite as bad as I had expected it to be. It turned out that we had arrived during Dashain, a major religious festival/holiday, so traffic volume was much lighter than usual. After a few days I acclimated enough that I could ride in the front seat of a taxi without stomping my foot on the brake pedal that wasn't there.

For the second day, our trekking package included a guided tour of some of the sights around Kathmandu.We visited the Boudhanath, one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Nepal; the picture above is the stupa at Boudhanath. It is an impressive monument, and a serene spot in spite of the crowds. After lunch in a Tibetan restaurant, we were off to the Monkey Temple (named for the sacred monkeys there) and then the Durbar Square area in Patan for more ancient temples and royal residences.

The next morning, we had a break-of-daylight departure from the hotel to the airport. We flew from Kathmandu to Lukla, a 27-minute flight into the most dramatic airport I've ever seen. Landing at Lukla (elevation 9380'),  the very short runway ends in a vertical wall of granite; taking off, the runway ends when the ground suddenly disappears down a 1000-foot cliff. No second chances here... On the left side of the plane we had spectacular views of the Himalaya, and the view on the right side was almost as amazing. The plane was a Twin Otter, a classic short takeoff/landing aircraft. There was no door between the cockpit and the passenger cabin; it was very interesting to watch through the cockpit windscreen during the approach and landing.

After arriving in Lukla, we walked over to a nearby hotel. The porters carried our duffel bags from the airport. We had tea on the lawn, and sorted through duffel bags and daypacks for some last-minute equipment shuffling. At 9:30 am, we started walking and were finally officially trekking in Nepal! 

There are no motor vehicles driving around Lukla except for very few motorbikes. The streets are crowded with trekkers' hotels, equipment shops, and restaurants; it's a busy place. After ten minutes or so, we were outside of the town. Since there aren't any roads in this region, the trail is the main thoroughfare for the Khumbu region. The trail is a busy mix of trekkers with daypacks or backpacks, locals on their way to wherever, porters carrying staggering loads suspended from their heads, and other beasts of burden.

Our group casts a large footprint on the trail, perhaps larger than some other trekking groups because we have our own kitchen team. We have 14 trekkers, 1 chief guide, 3 assistant guides, a cook and an assistant cook, a sirdar (chief of porters), 3 porters, 7 kitchen boys, a dzopio driver, and a packstring of dzopios. (A dzopio is a cow-yak cross, used as a beast of burden). While we're on the trail, it's just us and the guides hiking together, while the support staff is well ahead of us. The guides set a slow hiking pace; not as slow as the pole-pole pace on Kilimanjaro, but noticeably slower than my regular pace. The same two or three of us were usually at the head of the group just behind the lead guide, ready to hike a little faster if only we could.

After five hours on the trail, including a lunch stop, we arrived at our first night's lodging in Phakding (elevation 8487'). The views are spectacular, and we haven't even got to the good stuff yet! Our lodge rooms are rustic twin-bed setups, with a dim overhead light and ensuite facilities. Alas, cold water only.

The lodge routine is almost identical to what we saw on the Kilimanjaro trip. Shortly after we arrive, the porters bring pans of warm "washing water" to our rooms, and then it's time for tea and cookies in the dining room (unlike Kili, we didn't have popcorn daily). Mornings start with "bed tea" (or coffee, or drinking chocolate) delivered to our room at the appointed hour, usually 6:00 am. On the Kili trip we slept in tents and could just reach out to grab the teacup; here in the lodges we have to get out of bed and open the door. Fifteen minutes later the porters bring washing water, and we have time to get dressed and pack our duffels before breakfast at 7:00 am. While we eat breakfast in the dining room, the porters are loading our duffels onto the dzopios. We are usually walking by about 7:45 am.

Continued in Part 2...

Dunanda Falls

Thirty-plus years in eastern Idaho and western Wyoming, and I'd never gone backpacking in the  Bechler Meadows region of Yellowstone National Park. About twenty years ago I went dayhiking there to do some fishing. That trip didn't work out very well; after a two hour drive from home and a two hour hike in to where I wanted to fish, I found that I had left my fly reel back in the truck. Oops... Back in the parking lot, I met a former park employee who had just spent a couple of nights near Dunanda Falls and couldn't stop crowing about the best fishing he'd ever had, not to mention the hot springs that fed some wonderful soaking pools at the base of the falls. Um, not exactly what I needed to hear right then, but I did file Dunanda Falls away for future reference.

The southwest corner of the park is home to some very flat areas (hence the Meadows), and also some lovely rivers, waterfalls and hot springs. The meadows are very boggy, often knee-deep in water through much of the summer; the Bechler region is very much a fall trip after the meadows have dried out and the brutal hordes of mosquitoes have met a frosty death. The classic Bechler backpacking trip is to spend four or five days on the 30 miles between Old Faithful and the Bechler Ranger Station at the southwest corner of the park. 

We had a good weather forecast and a few days of uncommitted time; Jill suggested backpacking into the Bechler. She had never been there, so it would be essentially new territory for both of us. We planned a two-night trip, enough to get a taste of the place. The morning we planned to leave, we woke up to the sound of a thunderstorm and steady rain. We decided against hiking in that weather, and scaled back to an overnight trip leaving the next day.

At the ranger station, we were fortunate to find our first choice of campsites was still available -- Boundary Creek site 9A2, about 6.5 miles from the trailhead, and 1.5 miles from Dunanda Falls. We took the shorter of two routes: the Boundary Creek trail rather than the Bechler Meadows trail. This route is a half-mile shorter, at the expense of two additional stream crossings. Both crossings (Bartlett Slough and Boundary Creek) were easy knee-deep crossings in water that wasn't as cold as I had expected.

After a third stream crossing (this one unavoidable), we reached our campsite, set up camp, lightened our packs, and hiked on to Dunanda Falls. The maintained trail stays high, above the top of the falls. There is a very steep trail down to the base of the falls, it would be dangerous when wet and muddy. The falls are indeed very scenic. We found a couple of hot pools on the edge of the creek, and one of them was just about perfect for a soak. We had the place to ourselves, and stayed there until it was a race against sunset to hike back to camp and prepare dinner.

After a chilly night (29 degrees inside the tent at 8am), we cooked breakfast and waited for the sun to bake the frost off of our tent. We decided to hike out via the slightly longer route through Bechler Meadows, mostly to see more new territory but also to skip two of the stream crossings. Bechler Meadows is a surprising expanse of flat terrain, quite a contrast to the elevation changes we're accustomed to when hiking in the Tetons.

 The Bechler Meadows trail has a suspension bridge across Boundary Creek.

I didn't take fishing gear on this trip; I was lazy and didn't want to carry the extra weight, and also didn't think I'd have enough time to really do it justice. But I do want to go back equipped with a fly rod and more time...

Packsaddle Loop

Today we finally got around to doing a classic mountain bike loop ride over on the Idaho side -- Packsaddle Loop. It's a 15 mile ride in the Big Holes, west of Driggs. The riding is on easy forest service roads, with some gravel county roads down on the flats to close the loop. 

Janet and Lisa were already planning to do this ride, so Jill and I tagged along. We had some gorgeous views east to the Tetons, no traffic to speak of, and perfect weather.

Muddy water in the Big Ditch

Jill and I were fortunate enough to get invited on a Colorado River trip through the Grand Canyon, which might be our favorite adventure. Sixteen of us launched from Lees Ferry on August 17, and we took out at Pearce Ferry on August 31. It was a fast-paced trip; we floated 280 miles in 15 days. I was at the oars on an 18-foot raft. Jill kayaked a few days and shared some time on the oars as well. She had hoped to spend more time kayaking, but the water turned out to be so muddy that kayaking wasn't very pleasant.

For the first week of the trip, Arizona was experiencing unusually wet weather. Some monsoonal flow with afternoon storms is typical in August, but what we got was way over the top. We had rain six out of the first seven days, including some long steady rainstorms that are unusual for the desert. Two significant tributaries to the Colorado -- the Paria River and the Little Colorado River -- experienced extended flash flood conditions for days at a time, dumping huge amounts of muddy water into the main Colorado. Here are the flow graphs for the Paria and the Little Colorado... over ten times their typical flows!

The exceptionally muddy water made it difficult to read some of the rapids; instead of frothy whitewater to highlight rocks and pourovers, the waves were the same brown color as the rest of the river. The waves also tend to be slightly smaller, because the water is denser due to the entrained silt and mud.

We had six rafts in our group, four 18-footers and two 16-footers. One raft flipped in House Rock Rapid, and two rafts flipped in Hermit Rapid. Only the 16-foot rafts flipped, hmmm... I managed to keep my raft right side up, though in Hermit I thought we were going over for sure; the waves were the biggest I'd ever run. Hit it square and hope for the best! The waves in Hermit get largest when the river flow is 17-19000 cfs; it was about 19000 when we ran it. The daily releases from Glen Canyon dam cycled between 9000 and 17000 cfs. Other rapids get easier at these flows, notably Horn Creek and Bedrock. We all ran Lava Falls (nominally the most difficult rapid in the Canyon) on the classic right-hand line without incident.

And what would a Grand Canyon trip be without costumes? Big thanks to Shane for inviting us...

My Google+ photo album for Grand Canyon 2012

Sneaking up on Red Peak

Every time I go hiking in the Snake River range, I think to myself "one of these days I need to go up to Red Peak". Not because it's anything spectacular, but hey, because it's there. On Tuesday I was looking for a off-the-beaten-path hike, not wanting to deal with the peak of summer crowds in the Tetons. I settled on Red Creek, down in the Snake River canyon.

The Red Creek trail gets very little use; the first two miles had many sections that were almost overgrown with waist- to head-high vegetation. Riding a mountain bike would not be an enjoyable proposition here. When you could see, the views were impressive.

After about 1.5 miles, the trail veers northeast up a side canyon, and eventually gains a ridge after about two miles. Getting up into the grass and sage was a welcome relief after the dense vegetation  down in the canyon bottom. The scenery also improved considerably.

In Rebecca Woods' book Jackson Hole Hikes, her commentary on this trail says that the map shows a trail heading north toward Red Peak at the 3.1 mile mark, but she didn't see any sign of it on the ground. I didn't either, some 15 years later, and blithely followed the obvious trail that kept heading east toward Dry Fork Canyon. The views were gorgeous, but the trail wasn't taking me where I wanted to go. 

By the time I realized that there wasn't a junction with a trail up to Red Peak, I was about a kilometer northeast of where the junction should have been. No matter though, there was another gentle ridge that headed toward Red Peak, and the terrain was a mix of grass and low sage that made for easy walking. The weather was warm, winds were almost calm, and in some places the wildflowers were a spectacular carpet of color.

After about a kilometer of easy off-trail travel I gained the main ridge leading up to Red Peak, and found the trail at that point. 

I started fairly late; didn't leave the trailhead until 1:45 pm. I figured that 6pm was going to be my turn-around time so that I wouldn't be hiking out in the dark. Even with taking the long way around, I made it to the summit about 5:30pm.

The summit of Red Peak is 9736', which is a respectable hike from the trailhead at 5800'. The temperature was in the upper 70s, the winds were almost calm; the only minor issue was the smoky haze that spoiled the gorgeous 360-degree views here. I didn't see another person for the entire hike, although there was a band of sheep being herded along the next ridge to the northwest. The plume of dust in this picture (looking northwest) is from the sheep.

The views were spectacular in every direction. This is looking west to Deadhorse Peak; the map shows a trail that loops over to Deadhorse Peak and then back down Little Red Creek. I could see the trail on the ridge heading west, but I decided to save that adventure for another day when I wasn't short on daylight. 

Looking to the north, the Tetons were just barely visible through the haze. I took a picture but they aren't visible in it. Oh well..

I spent about 15 minutes on top of the peak, had a snack and savored the views. Then it was time to head down. I followed the trail down the ridgeline -- it was easy to follow in some places, and totally obscured in others. Eventually I came to the cross trail that I had ascended on, right at an unusual rock where I had stopped for a short break on the way up. The trail up the ridge was totally invisible at that point, no wonder I'd missed it. So, if you're headed to Red Peak and you crest a low ridge and see these unusual rocks, turn left!

It was about six miles back to the car, and I covered it in about two hours; it was of course much easier going downhill! All in all, it took me just over six hours for the round trip. I didn't see another soul the entire route, the weather was perfect, the views were spectacular... wow.