With the superlative and singular terrain of Nepal it seems that casually trekking amid the jagged mountains is pretty pedestrian. There are certainly enough thrill seekers fueled on high horsepower trucks and death-defying adrenaline rushes that can make good use of Nepal’s extreme geography. Apart from the degree of personal risk involved in an expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest, there are countless combinations of normal recreational activities mutated into something insanely suicidal, but a good laugh if you survive. You could say that mountaineering to the top of Mt. Everest is the most extreme activity on the planet, but then consider that it takes months to get up there, and most of the action moves extremely slowly and you undergo prolonged trauma from the cold and shortage of oxygen. Let’s classify this less of an extreme sport and more like being a subject in a torturous medical experiment.

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.

When we last reminisced to our serial adventures on a trek in Nepal we were sipping lemon tea and gnawing on some nak cheese, storing up energy and oxygen for a hike up, up and away above Gorak Shep. This was far from the last day of our trip, but it was the end of driving upwards and discovering the awesome views from higher terrain. The view was already surreal, to the point that my mind couldn’t correlate the mixture of the setting and the inhabitants. It was almost something I’d expect to see coming from a digital camera on a Mars Rover. I could just ride with my imagination though, it wasn’t hard. I don’t remember seeing a single specimen of plant life anywhere, and the barren, sandy soil had a rusty tint to it, and the thinning air sure helped to believe it.

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.