Rough, rough night. The altitude headache came on hard while trying to sleep and despite taking Diamox, I only got about three fifteen-minute naps the whole night. Becky slept much better though and was doing great in the morning. I also came down with a stomach bug and my appetite was shot. I only managed to eat one piece of toast and some coffee for breakfast. Fortunately I didn’t have to return a full plate of food to Nima because Becky’s appetite is making up for lost time and she ate nearly all of my breakfast in addition to her own.
Had to swallow my pride on the last bit of elevation gain up to our next high point, Dhampus Pass, and hand off my pack to Ongchhu and my camera to Becky till we reached the pass and the climbing was done. The view from the pass was amazing though - made up for the fact that I felt like garbage. We could finally see across to the next massif which contained Annapurna. We could even see Manaslu way off in the distance, and supposedly the barren land we could see far to the north was actually Tibet. Pretty incredible view.
The rest of the day was spent on a three hour snowy traverse following a ridgeline towards the end of our trek. Best skiable slopes we’ve seen all trip. It was kind of painful to be walking by them with no skis around. As we neared the end of the ridge the wind in the Kali Gandaki valley really picked up. Supposedly it’s the deepest gorge in the world and when a valley is hemmed in by two 8,000m peaks it’s easy to see why that claim may be true.
We dropped nearly 4,000ft straight down towards the Yak grazing terrain of Yak Karkha and then on to Alubari for our final tent camp. I was glad to be at a lower altitude, but my stomach bug had sapped my energy. All I’d eaten that day was a piece of toast, a Kit-Kat, and three energy gels. I finally started a round of Zythromax and went to bed for the night before dinner was served.
...the next day
link to all the photos
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