Richard is glad he brought his boys along on his trek in the Himalayas. You could say it was all for the benefit of his two oldest teenage sons to see some of the outside world and to gain a little character through adverse conditions. He’s also proud that stuck through the cold in Lobuche and his son John made it with us to Kala Patthar (still scanning the record books to see if John can claim any renown for his age). However, Richard didn’t push them to do anything daring, and he became downright concerned and conservative when the conditions got a little bit rougher. Remember, one of the boys in the group, 12 year old Tashi, started to develop some serious altitude symptoms and he needed to back down to Pheriche quickly. Matthew, also 12, had some trouble, but who could blame him since the camp at Lobuche was the pinnacle of our discomfort. So we’ve wondered if it is even sensible to schlep youngsters along like that at all. Sure, it is good to pull the kids away from their Xbox and “Full House” to present them with some real challenges, but is it a bad idea to expose them to the risks of high elevations at all?

One of the joys for our trekking group was meeting all of the children along the trails. In each village there would be a small group of them together watching the hikers pass by. Sometimes they would give us a “namaste”, but usually they were very shy and would just keep to themselves. Seeing children sitting outside in the sunlight is actually a rare sight for us because kids here are either at school, in the living room watching television, or at the computer. An American youngster couldn’t stand to loiter outside for no purpose over an extended period of time. The younger members of our group (well, not to be a hypocrite, I include myself in this) went out of their minds with all of the long stretches without diversions. It’s not that the Sherpa children had made a lifestyle choice, there probably just wasn’t anything useful for them to do. They were enjoying their temporary relief from the kind of hard work their parents were doing. On occasion we saw children who were not much older (starting about 10 years old) who were hauling loads and starting their lifetime of hard work.