As usual I found myself somewhat separated from the group as I was hiking onward to Gorak Shep. I set my pace ahead of the others, and I found myself in a bit of solitude in the grey, barren glacier valley. The trail was leading into frost and snow, and across the side streams from the river there were sheets of ice. This was clearly in an area that didn’t often thaw out and there seemed to be layers of snow and ice that had been building and slightly receding over the years. I could see a very thick buildup of icy snow wedged between some massive rocks and the hillside, and an odd little cave was left over by some process of years of melting and freezing. I wasn’t feeling such a chill anymore in my toes since I had a good hiking pace and the warm sun had tipped over the mountains and washed the grey snow in light. Since we had gotten such an early start to the day, buy mid-morning I already had the sack lunch on my mind. We had by then become familiar with the chapati bread with jam, the boiled egg, and the hearty wedge of nak cheese. After that back had been crammed and mangled inside of the pack is comes out pretty messy, but no less satisfying on the trail.

Although I’ve spent a number of years of my life in Utah I’ve never actually gone to any of the fine ski resorts to go skiing. That is until this past weekend, when our chief web designer invited me to go snowboarding at Snowbird. I remember in high school noticing that a lot of the other kids disappeared several days out of the week each winter to go skiing, and then some of them would turn up hobbling back to school in a cast. Not only was it an expensive sport to get into, it seemed to me like you’d probably break something along the way. I got enough encouragement to try it out this time, and I’m glad I did. The equipment rental turned out to be a lot more expensive than if I had just gone to a movie for the afternoon, or about five all day actually. I had a great time showing off my crashing skills, but after the first couple of runs I got the hang of it. I probably won’t get out of the Chikadee run for a while, but then I’m not in a hurry to leap off of any black diamond trails.

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.

I think we first noticed how short our breath was and how much effort each step was becoming as we pulled out of Thokla. We were on our way to our campsite at Lobuche, and this was to be our base camp for making an ascent on Kala Patthar within a few days. We could see that we were advancing upward to the snowline with every inch, and we could certainly feel the chill in the air. Foremost on our mind was that we continue to manage our body’s reaction to the high elevation, and we were watching each other for the first signs of altitude sickness. Most of us were on Diamox at this point, and we were drinking lots of water to keep ourselves hydrated. Remember that one side effect of Diamox is that the water flushes from your system, and whatever you take in is soon pressing you urgently to get out. If you get cynical or impatient you might go on strike, but nothing will stop you from having to heed the call. Richard and Gaye were becoming especially concerned, despite their own discomforts, for the well-being of the you teenagers in our group. They were doing just great, and being just as boisterous as ever.