Either because Lobuche is situated in the shadows of so many great mountain peaks or because of the vaulted elevation reaching up into thick, roiling clouds, the sunlight fades out and the chill sets in very early in the evening. As a camper, foraging along with the yaks for something to snack on, you notice that just when you’re getting a handle on the day it seems that it’s coming to an end. Perhaps by 4 pm the glare of the sunlight from the grazed grasslands dims out and the sapping cold quickly demands your attention. This experience was in October, even before the adjustment from Daylight Savings. Of course I don’t even recall whether Nepal adjusts their clocks between the seasons. Considering that their time zone and calendar are entirely independent from the rest of the world, it is unlikely that Nepal follows the conventions of daylight savings time. So even in early autumn the the golden glint of the fading summer washes out to a frigid and alien purgatory.

Looking back now on Lobuche we were thrilled and relieved to finally arrive, but once we saw it we were ready to quickly move on. It was a destination that we envisioned as an amazing goal, and it’s the sort of challenge you place before yourself that you don’t know how you’ll ever reach it. There were so many thousands of feet of elevation and miles of winding trails to traverse before we could get up there. As with many monumental tasks you can’t wrap your brain around all the details and all the hard work that it will take to reach it, so you just let it go and you throw yourself forward. We also had built up a lot of anticipation by hearing of the experiences of other hikers who were returning and euphoric from the joys of the relatively lower elevation. With all of this in mind we really were thrilled to realize we had passed through all the anxious anticipation, like kids making a trip to a great amusement park.

Here’s great news from Pema. He’s planning to make another visit to the United States this summer, and a part of his tour will include a stop here in the west. Calling it a tour is not really exaggerating since he has so many friends and contacts across the United States, so I will feel honored if he can find time to stop in Utah. For now he’s spending the winter in his rooftop apartment in Kathmandu. He tells me the weather is warm every day, and he had a good laugh when I told him it’s cold here like Kala Patthar. In the spring he’ll be back in the Khumbu, minding his lodge in Phortse, and he even offered me a job to be a cook boy to learn how to cook Sherpa meals. I think it would be easy to learn since they only eat one or two things anyway, just daal baht and potato pancakes. It sounds like a good job, except for the part where my daily pay would be about enough to buy a candy bar and some noodles.