Everest Base Camp trek day 4 - Frustrations & Recommendations

We drove to the airport this morning feeling positive - "THIS time! Yeah!"

Yalamber thought the signs were good as he surveyed the airport car park with a grin - "lots of mountain trips here today"

We rolled to the check-in counter full of confidence - no scrum, that means no delays, right?

Wrong.

"Sorry sir, all Lukla flights today cancelled, I am sorry,"

Bugger.

With a 14 day trek ahead and only 15 days before our flight back to London, it was time to think of plan B.

So after another come-get-us call to Yalamber, and a detailed plan-redrawing session in the Explore Himalaya office, we now have these options:

Plan A
- fly out to Lukla tomorrow (yes, we WILL!)
- trek as far as Gorak Shep, via Gokyo Ri as planned
- climb Kala Pattar as planned, but don't go on to Everest Base Camp & back the next day
- instead, save one day by heading back down that afternoon.

This allows us to keep one day contingency at the end in case we have troubles flying BACK from Lukla. It means we don't get to see base camp, but Kala Pattar is just as high and actually offers better views of the mountain.

Plan B
- if we can't get a flight tomorrow, we drive to Pokhara in the west, and trek to Annapurna Base Camp.

ABC is only 4100m, compared to EBC's 5600m, hence the trek is a few days shorter and less physically arduous, but it's just as popular. We also know we've been OK going to that altitude before (Toubkal) in just 4 days. So it's easier, but therefore less of an adventure.

Still, an ABC trek would still be pretty awesome, I'm sure...

I have to say that Explore Himalaya have been amazingly helpful, especially Yalamber who just radiates an easy-going calm practicality, and the same goes for all the Nepalis we've dealt with so far. Take the airport staff yesterday - could you imagine anyone at Heathrow taking you out to the runway and rummaging through bin bags for a list ticket with you? I'd have had to fill in forms, ring an 0870 number, spend hours on hold, navigate an automatic menu system, etc etc...

And the food - oh, the food! Some recommendations:

- the daal baat at New Orleans (so good Lise had it two nights running)

- Momo - essentially a Nepali version of dim sum dumplings. Delicious!

- the fajitas at the Northfield Cafe (better than any Mexican food I've had in England)

- the coffee at Mandaps

- "Trekking in the Everest region" by Jamie McGuinness / Trailblazers. Everything we've found ourselves asking about Kathmandu so far, is answered in this book.

I'm going to bed now, as we have to be up at 5am for our last chance of a flight to Lukla. With a bit of luck, this will be my last post for a few days...

Happy New Year!

Everest Base Camp trek day 3 - lucked out over Lukla

"This customer service is amazing," I remember thinking as I joined two cleaners, one bin man and one sharp-suited Tala Air check-in official in a frantic rummage through a small rubbish tip just off the runway, "there's no way you'd ever get this in England!"

Let's rewind a little.

Our 7am flight to Lukla was rescheduled to 9.15, but as Yalamber said, "it's not hard and fast 9.15...."

No kidding. Lukla is one of the most difficult and dangerous landings in the world, and what we didn't find in any guidebook was that flights frequently get delayed or cancelled as they close the airstrip whenever the wind or cloud picks up.

Apparently there had been unusually windy weather up there, and we met several people in the airport who had been trying to get there for days already.

A word here about the internal airport - it's chaos. None of the orderly queues that we Brits seem to default to whenever we see someone behind a counter, here it's good old fashioned Asian Crush. The staff, however, are helpful in a way that if seen at Heathrow would surely be grounds for an instant sacking (and no doubt followed by a strike vote from the union.) When our local helper left us saying "wait here, I'll tell you when to check in" yet an hour later had still not returned, an airline employee tapped me on the shoulder and said "to Lukla? Mr Davidson? We have been looking for you!" (More of him later)

It took until 11am to board the bus for our plane - a tiny twin-prop 20-seater, which we were just starting to board when the walkie-talkie squawked and the cry went up - "Lukla airport closed!"

Cue everybody off, and a further 20mins standing around the tarmac chatting to the others, one of which turned out be Lucie Dumont of Karavaniers, a Canadian guide who gave us some great tips about where to stay in Namche. Two Japanese lads said this was their second day of trying to get a flight, the third for a German group who now only had 6 days left.

Eventually the airport re-opened, we boarded the plane on tenterhooks, and to a palpable sense of nervous excitement we finally took off.

I'd studied the map beforehand, and figured that the best views would be on the left side of the plane - I wasn't disappointed. As our tiny plane rocked and swayed over the foothills, mammoth peaks aplenty came into view, including a spectacular sight of Everest over the monstrous Lhotse-Nuptse wall, tailing its signature plume of cloud in the jet stream. I got several good photos, but they're all on the decent camera so you'll have to wait until I get back and upload them.

The plane was being buffeted by the wind and banking heavily, and also didn't seem to be pressurised. I felt light-headed and got the hot flushes in waves that I've learned signal an imminent digestive revolt against too much altitude too quickly. A glance around the plane at the other faces in various shades of ashen green told me I was far from alone.

Then just as we flew over the airstrip, and we all looked down and thought "oh my God, it's TINY! You can't land on THAT.. and there's a sodding great mountain right at the start of the runway!", the announcement came back from the front - "sorry, too windy, we're heading back to Kathmandu."

The disappointment was only slightly tempered by relief that we wouldn't be going through the legendarily scary landing this time, together with surprise that they had managed to squeeze an air hostess into a plane this tiny.

On arrival back at Kathmandu - the captain signing off with "bad luck gentlemen - such is Lukla!" - at around 12:45, we were told that there might be one more flight today, and we should wait until 2pm, by which point they would either fly or cancel, and we could re-use our boarding passes.

At this point I checked my pocket for my boarding pass, and with a sinking feeling realised it wasn't there.... or in the top of my bag. Oh shit. Not in any of my other pockets either. Shitshitshit! ....and it was with our airport tax receipts and return tickets as well! Oh shit, shite and shinola...

I sheepishly explained the situation to Lise, feeling like a naughty schoolboy sent to the Headmaster and asked "so, why have you been sent to me?" She was remarkably calm and level-headed in contrast to my rising panic, and after a couple more exhaustive searches of my backpack, sent me to throw myself upon the mercy of the nearby gaggle of airport staff, clearly sharing a girly gossip session (although speaking Nepali, the body language of a group of young, same-sex employees on a break was unmistakable).

After just about managing to explain the situation - their English was limited, and my Nepali covers all of about 10 phrases - one of them ran off to speak to someone else, and returned saying "there is no problem, you can come speak to the ticket desk," then walked me back through security to the front.

As they explained in Nepali to the check-in person at Yeti Air, whose expressions of concern and occasional gasps were straight out of a silent movie and should have been accompanied by a tinkling piano, I was trying to explain that I couldn't prove I had been on the flight as I'd lost all of my stubs, when the guy who'd come to find us earlier walked past.

"This gentleman!" I cried, "he knows I was on that flight!"

Although already wearing the expression of someone just trying to get to the end of a long day, he listened intently to the two women, then turned decisively to me and said "come with me!"

He led me at pace back through security and out through a side door onto the tarmac, flagged down a passing bus and diverted it to our plane, and led me onto it where the captain and hostess were hanging out and chatting. "It's already been cleaned," said the captain, "but please, go ahead!"

I searched to no avail, and re-emerged onto the tarmac to see the check-in guy in conversation with two cleaners carrying full bin bags from other planes. He turned to me again, and said "the rubbish has already gone - this way!"

So we marched determinedly over to a small dump of bin bags just off the side of the main runway, and began tearing open the bags.

Which is where we came in.

I shall truncate the rest of the tale - the search was fruitless, and in the end we concluded that the tickets and stubs were irretrievably lost. The last Lukla flight was now cancelled, so the check-in guy took me back inside and up to the main back-office of the airline where some more explaining to the airline manager eventually resulted in an offer to provide replacement tickets for 500 rupees each (a bit less than a fiver) on the condition that our guides wrote a letter promising that they would be responsible if the original tickets were ever used by somebody.

I thanked him copiously, and set off to find Lise, who I now realised I hadnt spoken to in over an hour and must still be sitting by the departure gate wondering where I'd gone.

Practical as ever, she'd retrieved our baggage once the flight was cancelled and was waiting for me by the check-in desk.

"There you are!" she cried, "where did you go?"

"Well..."

We called Yalamber, who arrived half an hour later and, after some intense discussuions with the airline, eventually said that we could get new tickets for tomorrow for nothing. However, the conditions on the return ticket offer were too onerous, and we would have to pay the full cost of one new return ticket, and one nights accommodation for the sirdar still waiting for us in Lukla. He took us back to the Explore Himalaya office where we paid on card and adjusted paperwork, then back to the hotel, where we, frankly, zonked out and slept for three hours.

Fingers crossed for a flight tomorrow!

Everest Base Camp Trek day 2 - Thamel and Temples

"What are they burning over on that side of the river?" I asked our guide Niraj, as we entered the Pushipatinath Hindu temple complex and the clouds of sweet-smelling smoke drifted across to us.

"Dead bodies," he replied, matter-of-factly.

Niraj went on to explain in great detail all the rituals and complex caste hierarchies encapsulated in the scene before us. How the ten stone plinths were reserved in caste-order from highest-caste right in front of the temple to lowest way off to the left, and the obligations encumbent on the son of the family once his parent dies. As we watched, two funeral pyres finished and the ashes were pushed into the river, where women were washing their clothes and men were picking through discarded rags.

"It's a holy river to us," Niraj explained, "it flows down to the Ganges in India."

One pyre was just getting started on the second-highest-caste plinth, reserved for diplomats and senior public officials, with the highest-caste plinth reserved for royalty.

I in turn told Niraj how funerals in England tend to be very private affairs, with all the mechanics taking place behind closed doors and a family's grief locked down behind a stiff upper lip. Lise, by way of contrast, told of how the richer Chinese families will hire women to cry in public for them.

My lasting impression of that visit was a sense that, despite the rigid caste demarcations, there was something very egalitarian about the whole business being literally and metaphorically out in the open, with diplomats burning just a few metres up the river bank from the lower castes, following the same rituals and very visibly ending up in the same river. Death, of course, being the greatest leveller of all.

Our next stop was Boudnath, a Buddhist stupa dating back to the 7th century, festooned with prayer flags and containing hundreds of prayer wheels, from the small to the size of a room. Every wall was covered with stunningly detailed Buddhist art, ten foot tall wheels of life and mandalas of all descriptions. Upstairs we visited the school of Buddhist painting where the works are produced, and saw the master lama at work, filling in the tiniest of details with a single-cat-hair brush.

The guide explained the painstaking process of preparing the canvas, crushing the stone to make the paint, freehand sketching by the master and then up to 57 days of painting that goes into a mandala, and the richly-layered symbolism embodied in the design. He also talked us through a series of photos of the Dalai Lama spending nearly 2 months producing a mandala from sand, and then, once finished, tipping it into the river. There was something about that which definitely struck a chord with us - the end product being almost irrelevant compared with the process itself. Very reminiscent of our feelings on finally reaching the top of Jbel Toubkal - "right, quick photo then let's head straight down!"

We returned to our hotel in Thamel, the main tourist district in Kathmandu. It's a bustling district of endless small shops with street signs piled high, street salesmen offering you taxis, rickshaws and  trinkets while you dodge a miasma of cars and motorbikes and people offering you a "schmoke sir?" every few seconds.

However, unlike Marrakesh,  they all accepted a "no thankyou" with good grace (at least the second or third, if not always the first) and the atmosphere has yet to feel in any way threatening.

Tomorrow we fly early to Lukla, and trek on from there. My next post will probably be from Namche on New Years Eve.
Namaste!

Everest Base Camp Trek - day 1 - Kathmandu

"oh my GOD, Al..." exclaimed Lise as the plane banked south east and we got our first unambiguous view of the gargantuan wall of snow-capped mountains on the horizon to the north of Kathmandu, "I thought they were SKY!"

I am aware, of course, that as insights go, "gosh, those Himalayas - they're quite big, aren't they?" lacks a certain something, but as the unmistakable profile of Ama Dablam towered on the horizon, I was struck - and slightly perturbed - by the thought "that's only about 6850m, which means that somewhere out there is another one that's two whole kilometres higher than THAT..."

Emerging dazed and bleary-eyed from the tranquil bureaucracy of the airport immigration & customs, you are suddenly plunged into a kaleidoscopic chaos of smiling, nodding faces waving name cards at you, offering you taxis, hotels, treks, but even amongst all that I thought the guy wanting a tip for pushing our trolley 20m was a bit much - we thought he was a customs official.

Finding our contact - Yolamber - in a sea of faces and name cards, we forced our way across the road and into his car, and were driven through an onslaught of motorbikes, cycles and horn-tooting cars from all directions through the hectic dusty streets to Thamel.

Yolamber assured us that we would be safe from pickpockets and any other kind of violent crime, but did suggest that we should be back inside by ten, as "night is the time when evil wakes up". I listened intently for any sign of the almost obligatory thunderclaps, howling wolves or diminished organ chords that surely should have followed a sentence like that, but none were forthcoming.

Tomorrow is sightseeing around Kathmandu, I'll post more then.

Test post

Nothing to see here, move along now....

Oh alright, go on then, here's a pic of the view from halfway up Great Henry at Lawrencefield

Tricks of the Training

Lise has been training hard at The Third Space recently, and reaping the benefits in endurance. On Saturday - after two fruitless hours stuck in traffic on the M1, edging north towards the Peak until eventually admitting defeat - we went to The Castle where she showed me what she's been doing.

Endurance Training

1) Pick a short, easy route - like, a 4A - and whiz up it on a top rope. At the top, don't rest, but continue on and downclimb it. At the bottom, again no rest, just keep going up, and down, and up and down. Three times is probably about right.

2) Pick a longer, harder route. It should be a couple of grades below your limit, but reasonably long. For me, it was one of the long, vertical, UK 5A/French 6A top-rope routes upstairs by the cafe. Climb it quickly - don't think, just go go go - then lower back down. Rest only for 1 minute, then climb it again. Repeat (if you can!) until you literally peel off the wall and can't even make the first move.

You can gain many things from this. As well as the obvious physical benefit of pushing your endurance limits, I found I could actually continue to climb for longer than I thought I could - even when I couldn't grip anything at all, I could still use my hand as a kind of static hook on some holds. I also found it very liberating to be completely free of any fear of falling, and concentrating on climbing quickly. I tend to over-complicate things in my mind, and over-think the moves when I'm leading - probably fear of falling, even when not conscious - but forcing myself to not think, just go, I found myself making moves I probably wouldn't even have thought of with my usual slow, cautious approach.

Skills Training

3) Pick a really easy route, and climb it using only your left hand. (Tuck your right into your harness or chalkbag strap if it helps). This is not easy! I found that pretty much every move ended up as a deadpoint, but it really makes you think about where your body weight is moving, where the momentum is going to take you, and how you need to shift your feet to compensate. Repeat using only your right hand.

4) Tape your feet together (or clip them together with a carabiner) and climb the route again. It's a good ab workout, and again it makes you really focus on your bodyweight.

So what did we get from this (apart from a satisfying set of aches the next day) ?

Fun - trying something different made the session enjoyable, and a pleasing change.

Focus - it really felt like training, rather than the usual going through the motions, bouldering a bit, having a cup of tea, doing a couple more routes then going to the pub.

yyyyy-YESS!!!

Sloper dead-hang up to 10 seconds. Yeah!

Bouldering at Idwal Cottage and Caseg Fraith

On Monday, we set out with the intention of bouldering in the legendary Llanberis Pass, but as we drove up the A4086 in increasingly thick pea-souper fog, visibility was fast approaching zero. By the time we got to Pen-y-Pas, there was no denying it. A quick glance at the stern warning at the start of the Pyg track - AVALANCHE RISK CONSIDERABLE ON SNOWDON, all points - put paid to any residual hopes of ascending above it.

We're not going to be able to get anything done at all, are we? moped Lise, despondency creeping in - she'd hauled herself out of bed for THIS?

..we're going to have to go to a cheese museum or something!

Now I must confess, the idea of a cheese museum is not entirely without appeal - a vision conjured itself up in my head, of a huge prop-forward of a Welsh museum guide explaining -

now THIS close-combat Caerphilly was used as a bludgeoning weapon in the Battle of Bryn Glas, 600 year old, it is...look, it's still got the original hair on it!

- but it was definitely second best.

Well look, I said, while we're here, lets just try going back round to the Ogwen valley, it might not be so foggy round there. Admittedly it was more in hope than anything else, but I figured it had to be worth a try.

Luckily enough, as we passed Joe Brown's at Capel Curig, the fog became less dense, and as we rounded the long bend to get a clear view of Tryfan with its winter coat on, we perked up considerably.

Parking at Ogwen Cottage, we walked a hundred yards or so through the trees to find a beautifully picturesque little crag, with some stunning views of the surrounding peaks:

We had a lot of fun here. The rock was dry, with good friction, and the landings were all flat and level. The lower-grade problems were as good as any at Burbage South, and our particular favourite was "Problem 5", described in the guidebook as eminently pleasurable - and I'd have to agree. It feels a lot taller than it looks in the photos, believe me!

Problem 5 - the eminently pleasurable crack line

One thing to watch out for though, is the low-flying jet planes. The RAF use this valley as a low-flying training run, and on my third and final attempt at this problem, just a few seconds after I'd finally made the nervy committing move to gain the ledge in a numb-fingered, pumped-out whimpering panic, a jet came screaming overhead, a deafening crescendo that got louder and louder and louder as an involuntary convulsing scream escaped me and I felt I was going to have to either let go and fall to stick my fingers in my ears, or suffer burst eardrums and fall anyway. It passed after a couple of seconds, but by god it was loud. I dread to think what would have happened if it had flown over a few seconds earlier, while I was in the middle of tackling the crux.

As the sun began to dip below the peaks, we figured we had about an hour of daylight left, and headed back down the valley to Gwern Gof Isaf farm, to grab a quick look at the Caseg Fraith boulders behind the bunkhouse. The farm owner was very friendly, as was her Jack Russell, who followed us up to the boulders in a typical puppies' frenzy of excitement - Oh boy oh boy oh BOY, there's a ROCK!!! - and even proved a dab hand at scampering up the lower slabs itself, and licking Lise's nose as she was trying to top out.

Again, the rock here was perfect. Rounded yet juggy aretes and laybacks aplenty, but with plenty of friction to make even the tiniest of footholds viable. The best problem we found was straight up a slabby face (pictured) on tiny crimps and pebbles, before thankfully gaining a blocky flake near the top and launching a committing move over the top of it.

We could quite happily have spent several hours here, but our hands were tired and numb, and the light was fading. Definitely worth at least one repeat visit, both crags are highly recommended.

Fingerboard progress - week 3

I haven't been using the board as regularly this week, as we nipped up to Wales for some actual outdoor bouldering (there's no training like that, right?) but a quick post-run workout last night showed that I'm now up to:

• 3 x 30-second dead hangs on the jugs


• 3 x 5-second dead hangs on the slopers


• 3 x clean 5x5x5 pull-ups on the largest four-finger edges


• 3 x 3-second dead hangs on the large 2-finger pockets

Getting there, slowly, but steadily.

Bouldering on the beach in.... North Wales???

It's true - on Tuesday, with the snow still on the summits, and a mid-January Welsh pea-souper in the Llanberis Pass, we discovered the boulders on the beach at Cae Du.

The rock here - Greywacke - was very picturesque and kept making me think I was surrounded by IKEA prints. On the other hand, it was rather less amenable than at Llyn Ogwen, with a distinct lack of friction for our gritstone-accustomed taste. It's probably due to the beach location, more than anything else, but even on the few climbs we could find that were actually dry enough to tackle, I found it quite difficult to trust my feet. There were plenty of large shelvey edges for the hands, it's true, but unless they were actually 90 degrees or less, even they were slippery. Anything remotely sloper-ish, just forget it.

Still, there was some fun to be had. We stuck to areas 1 and 2, as areas 3 and 4 were full of what looked like (eep!) a school club, and managed to induce a minor hamstring pull on the overhung heel hook of Problem 1, Area 2 (V2**), and what might best be described as a brick on Problem 10, Area 2 (V1/V2 ***). The latter was an unnervingly high slab on teeny tiny holds, that felt to my scaredy-cat mind like I would need more than just our one mat to tackle the top half without bricking it. Definitely a good problem to try if you're in the area and comfortable on that kind of thing though.

On the plus side, the fingerboard training is definitely paying off, with my crimps feeling solid and reliable despite having trained exclusively open-handed.

First Weeks With a Fingerboard

After about two years of constant "canwecanwecanwe?" / "no, you'll only injure yourself" / "but pleeeeeeeeeeeeease", and one decisive bout of steep limestone sport climbing in Spain that made us both admit that we just had to get better finger strength, I finally relented and bought Lise (well, ok - us) a Metolius Simulator Fingerboard for Christmas.

A mere four hours of strenuous screwing later (stop sniggering at the back there) it was installed in pride-of-place above the living room door, and my wrist was ready to drop off (I said STOP it!):


I've been careful to start slowly, and not overstrain myself, but I have to admit that in just over a week, I'm already seeing a real improvement. Enough to make me think it's worth keeping some kind of record of it, and that I might as well post it here for future reference and probable hilarity for you rock gods reading this who probably do a hundred one finger pull-ups just to warm up:



So here goes. All the advice I've read from Dave McLeod and others led me to shy away from crimps and concentrate on open-handed strength, so that's what I did.

I started out doing:

• 3 10-second dead-hangs, open-handed on the two big jugs.


• Then I'd do slow open-handed pull-ups on those same big jugs (slow as in a slight enhancement of Tim Ferris' 5x5 method - 5 seconds going up, lock-off at 90 degree elbow position for 5 seconds, then take 5 seconds going back down). I could do two of these in perfect form, was really struggling by the down-stroke of the third, didn't even start the fourth.


• Finally I'd do open-handed dead-hangs on the biggest flat edges (four-fingers) for as long as I could. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that that was all of 3 seconds at first. Eep!

I've been doing this above routine maybe twice a day every other day, for about ten days, and already I've moved up to the following:

• 3 15-second dead hangs on the big jugs


• 3 clean 5x5x5 pull-ups on the big jugs, can do the up-stroke of the 4th but can't hold the 5s lock-off yet


• 3 10-second dead hangs on the largest flat edges


• 2 5x5x5 pull-ups on the largest flat edges - really struggling at the end of the 2nd, couldn't start the third


• 1 3-second dead hang on the top slopers

I've also noticed a definite improvement in my open-handed grip strength at the indoor wall, particularly on slopers.

So I'm going to keep up the progress reports in the hope that it makes me keep at it, and gives me a bit of inspiration next time I'm feeling weak.