A day of rest and Diamox did me very well, apart from the experience of extreme fluids management. Once my headache had cleared I started taking a smaller dose of the medication and I felt I was back on a good rate of acclimatization. We packed up and moved out for our next camping spot, this time in Thokla. As far as hiking goes things are getting a lot easier on our legs. We’ve conditioned up pretty well and seeing a little incline is not really a bother. However, that all may be canceled out by the fact that the thinner air is getting to each and every one of us, and we’re all starting to make a degree of extra effort to keep moving our hiking boots forward on the trail. On these dry days the dust kicks up a bit, so it gets a little unpleasant to be shuffling through in a herd, kicking up all the dust, imagining what all kinds of biological additives we’re sucking in. Still the magnificent landscape is all in clear view. The terrain is no mystery since there is not much in the way of vegetation to obscure the contours.

We spent an extra “rest” day in Pheriche for acclimatization. Everyone else was doing pretty well with the elevation, but I got bad headache and started taking Diamox. I stayed behind at the lodge while everyone else shot straight up the hills to the east for a day hike, sort of in the spirit of scouting out and discovering the new countryside. They had a fair impression of just how high the “hills” reached, but as they reached a new ridge they felt the next ledges up drew them on. They were gone quite a long time, all morning and into the afternoon. Their curiosity and adventure took them over 3,000 feet above Pheriche (though they claim it was more like 4,000 feet up), so they aggressively challenged their physiological dependence on oxygen. I, on the other hand, was starting to feel a little bored and lonely, with only the sound of the breeze brushing the tightly trimmed grass. It was a cloudy day, oh, and I was on some mysterious pharmaceuticals, so the whole world felt kind of sterile and subdued. I know I was wrong about anything within a few hundred miles being sterile.

Pheriche is where we started to get serious about dealing with the effects of the altitude. At 14,000 feet and above the effects were no longer a myth for us. I, for one, had a terrible night with a splitting headache, and after an unbearable wait until morning I raided Gaye’s stash of ibuprofin and diamox pills. There is, of course, the a clinic in Pheriche devoted to treating and educating hikers regarding headaches and acclimatization. I got some very informative background information on high altitude headaches from Dr. Lipmen, who was leading a pharmaceutical trial up there. We also met Christina, who was actually on her way down from Lobuche and Kala Patar, but actually, even further “up the trail.” She’s from Georgia, but she had spent the summer in sourthern China at the Utahloy International School, which is in Zengcheng, near Hong Kong.

First of all let me update you on my overnight stay at 10,000 feet this weekend. Yes, I did get a headache during the day and I took some Advil. I spent a few hours down low (at 6,000 feet) then drove back up. Yes, that goes contrary to the principle of hiking high and sleeping low. At night I was having trouble with breathing and I couldn’t sleep. I guess I’ll have to re-evaluate my advice on front-loading your acclimatization, but then it could be that I had watched a Harry Potter video.