There I was, flapping in the frigid wind and clutching to a chunky boulder, my jaw gaping in amazement at my personal view of Mt. Everest. That’s one (melodramatic) way to describe the pinnacle of our journey trekking through the Himalayas last fall. To be honest, I didn’t get a very clear view of anything because my legs were locking up from the chill in the gusting wind and the steep drop seemingly on all sides. I was so cold and worn from climbing the last hundred meters or so that I only sought out shelter between the rocks for relief from the elements. I had my video camera with me, and I did my best to reach up out of the rocky crevasse to record a panoramic view or the mountains and to assess just how steep the drop was just down-wind from me. Watching the footage now it’s a bewildering sweep across indistinguishable rocky terrain and a crackling audio track of the wind and the violently snapping prayer flags overloading the tiny microphone.

Isn’t it about time to start up hiking again? Well, we all have taken an atrophy break for a few months, but with the warmer weather (above freezing, woohoo) I’m getting the earliest signs of spring fever. When I wake up in the morning I don’t have to break through the ice on my blankets, and my shampoo isn’t frozen any more. I feel a light buzz of adrenaline now that the sun sets later and my legs are anxious to go run around the block. I’m in a wide valley surrounded by mountains, and I always look up and imagine hiking to each of the many peaks. However, the snow is still pretty thick and the temperatures still must be as cold as my apartment, so I don’t plan on any hikes up there just yet.

If we’re out camping in the wilderness and going without washing for weeks at a time then we’re rugged enough to wake up and get started a little bit early for our hike to the top of Kala Patthar. Our guide Pema knows well enough that a whole trek could be ruined by delaying the start just a few hours on the day of the final ascent. Although you could say that the journey is the destination, most of Pema’s clients hired him to actually get to the top of a mountain and get pictures of themselves as proof of the efforts. Add to that the costs of travel and taking time off from their jobs, and the price puts pressure on reaching the objective. The M.O. of the weather patterns up in the Himalayas is to offer clear skies in the early morning through noon, then in the after noon the tufts of condensed water vapor begin to rise up out of the valleys and they bunch up against the slopes.

Looking out the window today I see the powder white snow glistening in the fiery orange hues of an inter-mountain sunset. What I’m really thinking is that I’m so glad I’m inside where it’s warm, because it has been awfully cold here among the baby mountains of northern Utah. We’ve gotten intermittent flurries of snow, just enough to let me know for sure in the mornings that it is cold and I’m freezing! The elevation here is only around 5,000 feet, which is remarkably close to that of Kathmandu, but you’d better believe they have a much different outlook on the winter than do we. As I may have mentioned before, Nepal sits at a northern latitude similar to that of the state of Florida, America’s swampy, humid home to crocodiles and college kids gone crazy. That state is primarily a flat land mass at low elevation, which serves as a welcoming mat for ferocious tropical storms. Kathmandu, land-locked and wedged up against the world’s highest mountain ranges, is at a similar latitude to Florida but a similar elevation to Utah. So just imagine if we followed the Jimi Hendrix principle where a six was a nine and Utah switched positions with Florida.