Thurs. Oct 11th, The trek starts! Babichaur to Phedi.

 Another rough night of sleep with us wide awake by 2am.  We all piled back into the jeep for the last few miles. The road beyond Beni was unknown territory, but we were all game for driving as far as we could.  After another hour or so of dusty, pot-holed, single-lane road we reached a massive landslide in the village of Babichaur that was the end of the line for the Land Cruiser.  None of us had eaten breakfast yet, but the team was so busy sorting gear we certainly weren’t going to gripe about getting fed. The amount of gear these guys were about to carry was staggering. Wicker baskets with the traditional head-strap carrying system, with each basket holding what looked like at least 80lbs, maybe 100+lbs.  Becky’s and my contribution to the pile of gear were two half-filled duffles containing our sleeping bags, pads, crampons, and ice axe - a drop in the bucket compared to all the rest of the gear.

Ongchhu decided that four porters wasn’t going to cut it so he started asking any locals if they wanted to work for a few days as our fifth porter. The biggest holiday of the year in Nepal (Dashain) was about to begin so many people were already busy and he wasn’t having much luck. We tried not to be too worried about how the heck this pack train was going to start moving. They eventually found a kid, maybe 11 years old, to carry our 55-liter jug of kerosene as far as the next village Darbang, where we might have better luck finding a porter.

There was now a narrow trail with a couple ‘no-fall’ zones where the road had disappeared in the landslide, but everyone got through it just fine.  Unfortunately, shortly after that section when we were just walking along the road, the kid with the fuel dropped his load. We weren’t sure how, maybe his head strap slipped or something, but the end result was that our huge jug of fuel fell to the ground, right on a sharp rock and cracked across the middle of the jug spilling our fuel everywhere. They righted the jug, and limited the loss to maybe ¼ of our total fuel. The porters headed to the nearest shop and returned with another fuel jug and after rinsing out the spider webs and dirt, transferred the fuel and away we went again.

By lunchtime we were in the town of Darbang. Nima arranged with a local woman to use her kitchen (this would become fairly common!) and Becky and I took a seat on the covered porch to get out of the sun.  While Ongchhu found us a fifth porter to help for a handful of days, the porters tracked down the one shop in town that sold kerosene and were able to top off our reduced fuel supply. Furwa thought they’d be able to resupply fuel all along the way, but that was not the case. Whatever fuel we took out of Darbang would be all we’d have for the trip.

After a long break for lunch we didn’t go much further, maybe 40 minutes of hiking to the tiny village of Phedi. The late start and heavy loads meant we weren’t going to get to the next town, Dharapani, but since we’d been able to drive well past Beni we’d still covered more distance than we were supposed to today. We set up camp in a small clearing next to a couple houses. Becky entertained the local kids with her slinky and yo-yo toys that she’d brought.

Dinner was great, but as we sat in the cook tent, the father of the kids came by and started begging. He didn’t speak English, so we just said ‘no’ and tried not to engage him. This was the first of several situations where we said to one another ‘we gotta find a good Nepali kids charity and make a donation when we get home’. Ongchhu closed up the cook tent and asked the fellow to not disturb us. This was the only night that he told us as we headed back to our tent to put our valuables in the bottom of our sleeping bags. It’s a rare occurrence, but trekkers do sometimes have their tents cut into at night and people will run off with whatever they can get their hands on.

...the next day

link to all the photos

landslide that marks the end of the road for us...time to start walking.



the cute kids in Phedi

Wed Oct 10th, Driving to Beni and the start of our trek

Another bad night of sleep, but we were up early to meet the team and get driving.  At 7:30 we headed out to the street to find everyone around a Toyota Land Cruiser, the old bulletproof jeep-looking kind, not the soccer mom kind.  And amazingly, with the roof rack nearly overflowing with gear, Becky, me, Ongchhu, Nima, our four porters, and our driver all squeezed inside and we were off to the small town of Beni where we’d start our trek.

The ride could best be described as nine hours of the motorsport 'Gymkhana', except put nine people in the car, and replace the traffic cones of the course with broken-down buses, pedestrians, cabs, motorcycles with four people on them, and livestock, and you have a pretty good idea of what it’s like to take a jeep from Kathmandu to Beni.

We arrived in Beni at dusk. The plan had been to camp, but it was late and Ongchhu found a motel for us all. We were happy to opt for one more night sleeping in a bed before we started tenting it for the next two weeks.

...the next day

link to all the photos

Hard to believe we fit nine people and two weeks worth of gear in here...

Yum.... dried fishies on a stick

interesting traffic....

Tues. Oct 9th , A tourist for a day in Kathmandu

                                                                                                                                 
Breakfast at the hotel that morning was good. It was the start of our usual eggs, potatoes, and toast breakfast that we’d have pretty much every day while in Nepal.  We learned a valuable lesson though - when eating at a somewhat dodgy establishment, order black coffee. We asked for coffee with milk and our coffee had lumps. After breakfast we found a nearby ATM, and a decent Americano at a bakery a couple blocks away.
Furwa came back by to drop off the trekking duffle bags to put our overnight gear into and to take care of a mildly annoying chore. He had told us that a credit card payment would be fine, but he changed his mind upon our arrival and told us he needed cash instead to take care of some immediate expenses. We weren’t exactly happy to be spending our limited time in Kathmandu visiting banks, but we needed to get it done. In the end Furwa had to settle for half the payment in cash, the other by credit card. Nepali banks have some pretty decent safeguards to prevent thieves from draining westerners bank accounts, so trying to get more than a few hundred bucks out each day was basically impossible.

That afternoon we grabbed a taxi and headed across town to Swayambunath Temple which was well worth the trip - tons of monkeys, a cool old Buddhist Temple, thousands of prayer flags in the trees, and a nice view of the whole city.

That night we met the whole gang, our cook, Nima,  and our porters Dawa, Chheten, Kanchha, and Sonam.  Furwa talked a lot about the weather and cold temps. I knew that Becky and I had gear that would be fine for what we’d encounter, and our guide has spent quite a bit of time on Everest, so we were sure he’d be comfy, and our cook had done this trek before so he knew what to expect, but we were concerned that the porters might not quite know this trek is supposedly a little rougher than a lot of others they may have done before. We gave the porters gifts of new wool socks and a few random fleece jackets and polypro shirts that we didn’t use anymore.
Dinner that night was at a nearby Italian restaurant in Thamel. It was pretty decent grub and I think this was our first night of drinking Tuborg, a Dutch lager with a brewery in Kathmandu which became our preferred option amongst the rather flavorless beers (Gorkha, Everest Ice, San Miguel, etc) that are available.

...the next day

link to all the photos.

Mon. Oct 8th, Our first day in Kathmandu

Our flight to Kathmandu had an overnight stop in Seoul (here’s a tip…it’s not well known, but if you fly with Korean Air, and you’ve got an extended layover at Incheon Airport, they’ll put you up in a hotel for free if you arrange it with them in advance).  We slept poorly in Korea, both waking up at 2am - our brains thinking it was around 8am - but we got enough rest on the final 7-hour leg into Kathmandu that we were pretty functional when we landed Monday afternoon.

The trek organizer, Furwa, met us at the airport, which was certainly welcome as the crush of humanity orbiting the airport exit was rather overwhelming and we weren't quite ready to dive into the world of Kathmandu taxi fare negotiations just yet. I’d always heard that its best to get out of Kathmandu as quickly as possible because the air quality isn’t particularly good, but I still wasn’t prepared for what we saw. Somehow I expected an ancient city filled with climbers and Buddhist monks, or something way overly romanticized like that. What we got instead was an ancient city that was a loud, chaotic, dusty beehive of activity.  It seemed like only the main roads are paved, everything else is cobbles and/or dirt.  There are no traffic lights. Some of the biggest intersections do have cops directing traffic during the busiest times of the day, but many intersections will have six lanes crossing four lanes with the intersection being a complete free-for-all.

Our hotel, the Hotel Nepalaya, was a simple old building with zero views and was down a narrow alley off an already small street in the middle of the Thamel tourist district of Kathmandu (imagine Times Square, Nepal style). I don’t think we realized that staying in the middle of Thamel would be as loud and busy as it was.
After a couple hours, Furwa came back with Ongchhu, our guide for the trek, and the four of us headed off to the nearby supermarket and picked up a few final odds and ends. Most of the food had been purchased already, they just wanted our opinions on which candy bars, cookies, and canned meat we wanted to have along. I think Becky and I might’ve tossed a few more items than necessary in the grocery cart as when we go climbing/hiking we eat of lot of packaged food, and it hadn’t really been explained to us that our cook would be stuffing us with three large meals a day and we’d have little room for our usual 2-3 daily candy/energy bars.

Dinner was with Furwa and Ongchhu at a Nepali restaurant that had a little cultural dance program before dinner that Becky got to participate in. We also had our first introduction to dal bhat, the rice and lentil dish that the Sherpa on our trip would eat for lunch and dinner every day. While that might sound monotonous, it seemed like every time we had dal bhat, there were slight variations depending on the cook. Sometimes the curry side dishes were meat, sometimes veggie, and the green vegetables were usually different as well. Becky and I could see how one could eat this all the time and never get sick of it.

Jet-lag reared its ugly head and we were both wide awake at 2am.  And if the time change wasn’t bad enough, Thamel was just one loud noise after another. Cars honking into the evening hours, with dogs barking through the night, and roosters crowing just as the dogs finally went to sleep.

...the next day

link to all the photos

    Thamel tourist district

    Pete and Ongchhu at a traditional Newari restaurant

    Our first (of many) dal bhat

Nepal 2012 - pre-trip planning & logistics

Becky and I mulled over many destinations for our first trip to Nepal….the Annapurna circuit (loop) or a trek to the Everest region are options that lots of people go for, but we were looking for something a little less popular (i.e. less crowded).  I was interested in a trekking peak, like Mera Peak or Island Peak, but those are usually trips that go out and back the same way, and Becky and I are big fans of one-way trips where every day offers new scenery. Additionally, Becky was interested in seeing a bit more culture than just a crowded alpine camp filled with westerners sitting in tents.

The Dhaulagiri area is a massif to the west of the Annapurna area and the Dhaulagiri circuit is a 12-15 day hike starting near the town of Beni, following the Myagdi River up to its origin at the Chhonbarden glacier, then up and over a couple high passes north of Dhaulagiri (the worlds 7th tallest mountain), and then down to the Gandaki River and the towns of Marpha and Jomson.  It seemed like a good balance between visiting villages, seeing some wilderness, getting way up above treeline, and new scenery every day.

We read a ton of reports from other Dhaulagiri trekkers…some folks had pulled it off going unsupported, and many more had opted for joining a large guided party of 10 or so clients with around 30+ support staff.  As usual, we don’t quite fit with either category. Going unsupported meant huge backpacks, and language barrier challenges attempting to do any food resupplying at remote villages along the way. Going with a large guided group meant that we’d be sharing our vacation with a bunch of random strangers. Our friends Pat & Nadia had used a Kathmandu based guiding company before and had good results, so we decided to organize a trip with them. Becky and I would be the only clients and we would have a guide, a cook, and porters. It was a somewhat strange concept to get our heads around. We’d never been guided on any kind of trip before, but having a team handle all the complicated logistics, and carrying the lion’s share of the gear, would let us focus on enjoying the scenery and culture.

The first day of our trip....

link to all the photos

Mt.Pugh hike

 Link to photo album

Really fun hike off of the Mountain Loop Highway...Becky and I loaded up our packs with extra water and some rocks for another training hike.  The start of the hike is endless switchbacks through dense forest for about 3000vf...but the views eventually open up and the top of Pugh is visible.  Up through some scenic meadows still sporting lots of wildflowers and then the trail turns into a bit of a scramble as we passed by the Straight Glacier and on up to the top.

Chiwawa Mountain, Lyman glacier

Link to photo album 

 

Usually Becky and I would never consider staying in Seattle for part of a three day weekend, but my favorite band was playing at Bumbershoot on Saturday, so Becky was a good sport and rather than a three day mountain trip, we opted for a Jane's Addiction concert and a two day mountain trip.
We'd hiked in to Chiwawa basin last September, just a few days before our wedding....we thought the scramble route up that side of Chiwawa would be an easy scramble with some nice views.   Some bad bushwacking at treeline (and Becky slipping off a log and slicing her shin open) put an end to that trip.  Fast forward to this year, we thought we'd give Chiwawa a go via the Spider Gap/Lyman glacier route.   A pleasant hike up to Spider Meadows and then a short, steep grind to treeline and over Spider Gap got us to camp by mid-afternoon.
The Lyman glacier looked steep...but it had been skied the week before and we knew that staring straight on at it was making it look steeper than it really was (at least thats what we hoped).
Up early Monday morning we cramponed up the moderately steep slopes, and got to the final slope to the summit ridge.  The last bit of snow was still rock solid, perched above a large crevasse, and our meager crevasse rescue supplies weren't nearly enough gear to start pounding pickets and screws to protect the last bit.
The slope wouldn't be softening for at least a couple hours, so rather than wait around till afternoon and easy conditions, we had a nice break, took in the views, and headed down....skunked again on Chiwawa, but happy we got to check out a really pretty part of the Cascades we hadn't been to yet.