Walking with Giants — Ice and Snow
Posted Friday 12th November 2021
Contents
- Departing Lukla Again
- Beware the Enveloping Cloud
- The Great Snow Caper
- Ascending to Wonderland
- Down to the Goat Farm
- From Goats to Gompa
- Embraced by Maoists and Rais
This part of the trek started off innocently enough, but then we were confronted with three days of continuous snow and ice while traversing some of the most remote and bleak country imaginable…
Departing Lukla Again
This was our third Sunday out on the trek. Despite an early wake up and breakfast our actual departure from Lukla was delayed by the need to recruit additional porters. In the end we set off in the capable hands of Poon, one of Min’s deputies, with the intention that the porters would catch us up later. As it transpired that took most of the day.
The walk out of Lukla, starting around 08·00, was initially across the grain of the land, rising over ridges and contouring between them. About an hour out we stopped at a remote Bhatti (traditional tea house) where we partook while waiting, in vain, for the porters to arrive.
From here on the track started serious climbing up ridge lines with some very steep sections. A log bridge at one point provided a bit of excitement. We met a large number of woodcutter/gatherers en route, this being the beginning of the wood cutting season. Although they became fewer as we ascended their depredations were plain to see.
After a couple of hours, we arrived at small plateau with a few desultory buildings among a lot of rubbish, where we had lunch. Our cook, Purna caught up at this stage having left the porter issue behind. During lunch Martin took out his flute and played, whereupon the local women turned up their radio to no discernible benefit. Forest devastation was obvious around about.
After lunch we continued up a somewhat easier track for an hour or so to Chutanga and a suitable camp site, where we immediately made a fire to brighten the afternoon pending arrival of the tents and gear. While drying sox and underwear in front of the fire two pieces were immolated, causing a modicum of grief for their owners.
The porters finally arrived at around 17·00, not much before dark. By now we had long since returned to above 3050m (10,000 ft) and finished up camping at 3495m (11,470ft) on the way to yet another high-altitude period. An almost full moon rose after dark casting an ethereal light on the multitude of snowy peaks and dark intervening valleys, but also presaging a cold and still night.
Beware the Enveloping Cloud
We woke up to a clear day with very heavy frost. In fact, much of the vegetation had delicate feathers of hoar frost projecting from their leaves, like miniature Japanese fans. Such delicate tracery and patterns were rather unexpected in a place that was such a raw and remote area.
Hoar frost illuminates the ancient forest as we break camp.
The hoar frost continued in patches until we left the trees behind. Once above the tree line we were faced with a huge bare face that looked ferociously steep with no obvious indication of which part of the distant horizon we were headed up to.
Looking back, from near the top, at the huge ascent we had to make this morning.
As is typically the case at high elevation the distances lacked perspective and scale, so that what looked to be a short scramble turned out to be a multi hour marathon. Despite the clear day we were in shadow most of the morning as we climbed to reach the first gap of Zatr La. On the way we met numerous patches of track that were ice covered and were rather treacherous to cross (falling or slipping was not a good idea given the ferocious cross slope).
The first Zatr La gap — we came up on the left and contoured off on the right.
For a change we had a ‘packed’ lunch at the pass, a knife edge place with prayer flags (in some cases shreds of flags) fluttering energetically in the stiff breeze. The packed lunch gave the cook and kitchen hands time to concentrate on getting to our destination after their hard day yesterday. During lunch, cloud was building up in valleys below us, rising in waves until we too became enveloped around the time that we set forth again.
Rising cloud which soon enveloped us, and was a precursor to an extraordinary part of the trek.
Having anticipated an easy final stretch for the day we were somewhat dismayed to find that Zatr La had two gaps, the second of which was another 100 m higher again. Once over the second pass (at 4628m, 15,185 ft) we had a slow descent that sharpened progressively until we came to our camp for the night at Chhatarbuk. As we did so, by now in the middle of a cloud, we were met with a kettle of warm cordial. That might seem strange but where we found ourselves it was a godsend. Our camp was a bit lower than the pass (4300m, 14,100 ft) but well above what we had been used to ever since Pangboche.
In the somewhat desolate high elevation place we arrived at we found a Bhatti being run by two young girls who had overtaken us earlier in the day. As a point of interest, we were also overtaken by a group of eleven Sherpas and porters going to Mera Peak Base Camp to bring back a mountaineering party, but other than these we saw no one else during the day and no other trekkers since leaving Lukla. In total we ascended around 1300 metres today in what turned out to be the longest and most demanding such day of the whole trek.
The Great Snow Caper
I had a typically restless high-altitude night and so was vaguely aware that we were getting a bit of snow. A bit? By morning everything was covered in 40 cm of fresh snow, turning the somewhat dark and desolate place of yesterday into a rather magical wintry wonderland, albeit extremely remote and isolated. The only colour, apart from ourselves, was white grading to dark grey. Despite the unlimited quantities of ice that we had met over the last three weeks here we had a completely new situation.
Curiously, when we set out it did not feel cold, maybe helped by a lack of wind. We were still in cloud as we left although we walked out the bottom of it during the day. In fact, as we descended, we not only walked out of the bottom of the cloud but also arrived back below the tree line. Curiously, the dark forest appeared all upside down — dark overhead and bright white underfoot, providing a somewhat surreal aspect to where we were.
Regular light snowfalls continued throughout the day. The track was still discernible despite the snow but the need to be careful with foot placement became fairly apparent as the day wore on — most of the group crashed to earth at some stage.
Lunch stop in the frozen grey wilderness beside a closed Bhatti.
We stopped at a closed Bhatti, which at least gave a modicum of shelter for an expedition lunch — it didn’t matter where we were or in what conditions, the cook and kitchen always managed to produce a worthwhile lunch.
From there, descending into an increasingly deep and dark valley, we had a further 2½ hours of mainly downhill to Hinku Khola, which we crossed on a low level log bridge covered in snow. The valley, made up of glacial detritus, was all shades of grey with the inky black river being the standout in terms of variety.
We camped on the glacial detritus in river bed in a fairly difficult location. I shared my tent space with a very large rock that reduced the interior to half its normal size. The kitchen, once again, set itself up under a tarpaulin strung between two huge glacial rocks, while a roaring fire was set to keep everyone at least partly warm until turning in.
Over the other side of the river the porters had their own fire going and it appeared at one stage there might be some sort of competition going on with our fire which was tended by the kitchen hands. Intermittent snow kept falling as if to remind us where we were. We descended almost 1000 m today, all of which plus some we will have to re-ascend tomorrow.
Ascending to Wonderland
In the morning light the valley looked almost as bleak as it did the night before, despite the intermittent patches of blue sky. Broken low cloud only added to the atmosphere, which was at barely two thirds of the air pressure that we are used to in any case. The river valley, completely remote and with no sign of life other than ourselves, had a magic atmosphere about it, something like living inside a rather impressionist painting, albeit one with very little other than shades from white through to very dark white.
The bleak but magic, beautiful but menacing, Hinku Khola valley. We camped near here.
We had choices today — a very short day to a low level camp or a very long day to a stark and remote high level camp. We set out along the river bed, having difficulty finding the track under the persistent snow, and more importantly having some trouble finding the point where the track took off into the forest. The valley was an unbelievably beautiful place but was equally with a touch of menace in its rawness and remoteness — intimidating picture postcard stuff.
We arrived at Bargar, the low level campsite, at around 10·00 and fairly quickly decided to go on. We had an early morning lunch of sorts prior to continuing. By now we had re-joined the inside of a cloud.
The relatively fine day didn’t last, nor did the fairly easy walking. The track took two successive enormous climbs through mist and snow, twisting and twining about while ascending a ridge line, but of course all but our immediate surroundings were unseen. Rather than views we had a series of small vignettes of the ascending track, snow laden shrubbery and ice, in all tones of grey, or perhaps more accurately, dull white.
By degrees the vegetation dropped behind (or under snow) so that by mid afternoon we found ourselves well above the tree line in clearing cloud at a gap at 4415 metres (14,480 ft) in one of the remotest and loneliest, but never-the-less awe inspiring, places imaginable. The vista, as much as the cloud would periodically allow, was all white with a few bare rock slabs providing a bit of contrast. Shades of white and nothing much else to infinity. A view with no end.
After a bit of a break, we continued on, contouring for another two hours and crossing a couple of active rock slides, until dropping down to Chanbu Karka. Here was an uninhabited and ice covered small ‘U’ shaped valley (cirque?), completely devoid of vegetation, surrounded by towering peaks, with a couple of roofless and ruined yak herders huts the only sign that humans had ever been here.
Most of the group arrived just on dark after a nine hour day even though the horizontal distance was barely six km. For the second day in a row the whole day was in snow and ice, during which we climbed almost 1100 metres. We were intermittently joined today by a young couple with a baby, heading our way to their winter abode at Boksum Gompa. They, and the porters, slept in a cave nearby overnight.
In the middle of the night, when the temperature had to have been well south of −20 deg C, the vista was quite beyond description; ice and snow in every direction, glittering in the light of the full moon with no artificial light or in fact sign of life at all — neither animal or vegetation of any sort was in evidence, other than that of the ethereal glitter of frost riven tents nearby. In fact, there was nothing to distract from the nocturnal beauty of this extraordinary location. It was wholly a setting of nature in the raw, hard and severe but indescribably beautiful at the same time.
Curiously, the only other time I have experienced similar nocturnal lunar luminescence was in the middle of the Nullarbor under a half moon which lit up the silvery grey saltbush in a similar stunning manner, although in every other respect in a completely different environment.
In the seriously low temperature, the snow had frozen solid — it had no give or purchase at all — creating a serious impediment to movement and making nocturnal out of tent visits rather more fraught than normal. Inside the tent, in the sleeping bag, was adequately comfortable despite the temperature being by far the lowest I have ever been in, let alone slept in or on.
Down to the Goat Farm
This morning was clear but very cold with a hard frost, which was conspicuous in that the tents were rigid with frozen condensation. After breakfast in the yak herders’ ruins, we set off on a modest uphill trek to the five sacred lakes — Panch Pokhari. These lakes were frozen sheets of white surrounded by great snow-covered boulder fields with unnamed peaks and spires towering over it, them and us.
Porters and others take blessings from the frozen lake.
Three of the lakes held water, although it was concealed beneath sheets of ice riven with black fissures where the ice had split. These three were known as Father, Mother and Son and were of great importance to the largely Buddhist Sherpas and porters who took blessings from the lakes, as did the couple with the baby. Despite the several people it was an amazing place — a wilderness unlike anything I have ever been through before or since.
Father and Mother lakes have great spiritual importance despite their remoteness.
Seriously cold, all over white, draped over predominantly vertical rock eminences enclosing mystical lakes completely frozen over, backed with a view off to the east of nameless jagged spires and mountains; an environment that was way beyond description. It was a place that was alluring while being rather threatening — not really a place to tarry in.
From the lakes there was another minor ascent to a high level contour to the last seriously high point of the trek at 4451m (14,600 ft), from where a great sweep of the Himalayas could be seen right around to Kanchenjunga (yet another of the 8000 metre giants) some 100 km off to the east — a breathtaking view that would be hard to equal. The scale was almost beyond comprehension — a reminder of how insignificant we individuals are in the scheme of things.
The snowbound track took to a descent via the chute to right of this view.
Despite the all-embracing snow cover, somehow the track remained known to our Sherpas even though there had been minimal waymarks to guide us. We trekked some way across a plateau of sorts before taking to a descent that started down a bit of a chute before following a somewhat zig zag route downwards …and downwards, endlessly.
For some hours, we descended sharply through around 30 cm of snow cover which didn’t cause much in the way of navigational difficulties but did cause me quite a bit of grief several times when I fell — my boots and the snow had some sort of unhappy relationship. The Sherpas did their usual thing, without any words being spoken, and took my day pack and more or less escorted me down to a much lower level where the softening snow was more reliable. Even after that one of them was always nearby until we had pretty much walked out of the snow altogether.
Lunch was taken part way down the everlasting descent at a small level section, still completely snow encased and inside the middle of cloud, where the only concession to comfort was the remnant walls of a stone hut largely buried in the snow.
Not long after lunch trees and shrubs started to reappear and the snow slowly faded away, so that sometime late in the day we were free of the conditions that we had endured, but enjoyed, for the last three days.
Our original target of Boksum Gompa was by now looking to be beyond our reach so we stopped at Chaara Karka — a goat farm with space for our needs. By now were well below the 3000m (9842 ft) level and would never again exceed that elevation with the exception of one final gap to get into the Arun Valley complex.
We had dinner in the goat farm kitchen and then used the open fire to dry boots and socks, which eventually morphed into a rather riotous Nepalese night out, complete with multi-cultural singing and dancing in the goat pen. There could have been a bit of local fermented liquid involved in there somewhere!! Considering that we had descended a massive 1950 metres during the day it was no mean feat to have been part of a jolly evening romp.
From Goats to Gompa
Another clear night led to another frosty morning, although at this much lower altitude it did not seem all that cold. Our camp site faced east so for the first time we had sun on us almost at sunup, which no doubt contributed to our feel good. Today’s walk looked to be fairly easy, which in the end was possibly an understatement.
Not what we have been used to — pleasant forest walking.
The track was lightly graded, wandering through forests, bamboo groves, meadows and contouring around hillsides while slowly descending to the lowest elevation so far on the whole trek, although still somewhat above the elevation of Mt Kosciuszko. In places, years of use has resulted in the track worn into a trench of sorts, two or more metres deep — a sort of hobbits trail. The groves of structural bamboo in the area may have helped in this regard, since harvested bamboo in long bundles was transported by being dragged along the ground.
We were up beyond there and now we are down here.
We arrived at Boksum Gompa in less than an hour which effectively meant we had a free day there. All sorts of domestic matters were attended to, notably clothes washing and boot cleaning. Glenda somehow homed in on a dozen long neck beers at a nearby shop, which livened matters up for the afternoon. Our evening supplies of whisky and Baileys ran out at this point so the evening ‘happy hour’ was only too pleased to have beer supplies instead. The depredations of the previous four days were reflected in my knees which felt somewhat fragile today.
Boksum Gompa, in its little tree encirclement, sits to one side of a vast hillside that drops around 800 metres to Bung.
Embraced by Maoists and Rais
It was a pleasant mild morning which made the whole getting up process so much more comfortable. After breakfast we set off descending to the village of Bung (“boong”), the first real settlement since we left Lukla almost a week ago. We entered the village from above and soon became a bit lost in the maze of narrow terraces until we arrived at a Maoist (insurgents) check point — something we had rather anticipated.
Their ‘commander’ was a teenager with an ancient revolver (we assume it was real) and a bandolier with around five rounds in it. Not quite the terrifying force we had been led to believe. We parleyed with the ‘commander’ for individual written receipts for our ‘donations’, during which time they served tea. It appears that insurgents, at least in this case, were little more than a minor pecuniary diversion from the happy routine of walking though Nepal. We even got a chummy group photo with the insurgents, although this possibly shouldn’t be mentioned in the hearing of the Security Mafia.
Getting all chummy with the Maoists — them to the left, us to the right and the man in middle is neither (a translator?).
It all took some time, but once we had finished, we bade them farewell and continued downhill only to find lunch set out on a terrace barely ten minutes further on. At lunch we had an audience of a herd of children who watched from the sidelines. We were probably the equivalent of the circus come to town, especially given the infrequency of Europeans on this route (we had met none since Lukla).
The low point between Bung and Guidel is at the Hunku Khola. It is up in every direction from there. How very Nepalese.
After lunch we continued on down to the river, a descent of 1300 metres from our camp and well into elevations that were familiar to us at home (we were now below Kosciusko for the first time in the whole trek), after which we had around 400 metres of ascending back up to the village of Guidel. Initially the ascent was up quite steep stone steps but it slowly eased to a comfortable grade until we came abreast of Tserings’ family farm, Tsering being one of our Sherpas, although he was actually a Rai.
This was to be our home for the night, camped on millet stubble, but unexpectedly invited to a family affair in the Tsering family home that made use of the cropped and fermented millet. We were shown into the main room in the house, maybe 4 metres by 4 metres, with a central fire pit and something like 25 to 30 multi-generational relatives — grandfathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, any number of immediate family right down to suckling babies. The stand out character, maybe for the wrong reasons, was old Uncle Pisspot.
To start with we had two rounds of Raksi served in brass bowls, followed by bamboo ‘urns’ filled with Tomba which were refilled twice more. By the time we left to have our own dinner, an hour later than we had become accustomed to, we were decidedly the worse for wear.
However, it has to be noted that the family had no hesitation in inviting us in and sharing their supplies with us even though by our standards they live a largely subsistence life style. Generosity and kindness seem to drive the local culture. During dinner the porters ad hoc choral group was putting on a performance out in the millet field, something that has become a nightly event since the goat farm evening.
