This past summer I had a bit of a brush with ‘celebrity’ when Pema introduced me to his good friend Dale Covington. When I first heard that name I dreaded for a moment that I was going get stuck in a conversation about some form of Seven Habits, but I was far off the mark. Stephen COVEY is another inspiring local luminary, but Mr. Covington is more famous for excelling at jumping off of perfectly good cliffs or Himalayan mountains and paragliding for a graceful and thrilling ride down to safety. The day I met Dale he was taking Pema out for a few free rides under his veteran guidance from the location of his paragliding school at the edge of a mountain slope south of Salt Lake City. My fear of heights prevails over my sense of adventure, so I passed up an offer to join them. I admit I really enjoyed watching the Over Khumbu video of Dale’s expedition to Nepal for high elevation paragliding, but that clearly exceeds my personal limit of about six feet that I can comfortably fall to the ground.

Back in the early days of this blog I mentioned how important it was to break in and test your boots before setting out on an extended hike. Rich Christiansen, our CEO (Chief Enthusiast of the Outdoors) passed on an old pair of boots to me that carried me through the whole of our trek in Nepal last fall. They were very comfortable, durable and lightweight, but over the course of unknown hundreds of miles of rugged mountain terrain the stitching on the uppers was coming undone and the traction on the soles was worn away. For the majority of miles on our hike over the uneven flagstones of the Khumbu that condition actually seemed to be an asset. The worn soles had more the effect of being like specialized rock climbing footwear that could get good traction on the varied surfaces.

Let’s say the symptoms of spring fever suddenly flare up on you when you’ve got a free day. You dig into the back corner of your closet where you last remember seeing your boots and hiking gear, and lace up and cram in a few things into your daypack. At least here the snow has just cleared and the air and soil share a similar soggy quality. It’s not a terrible idea to get an early start conditioning to up for hiking, but then the weather conditions are still going to take some serious consideration for safety. The thing about those of us living inland and up in the mountains is that we base clothing levels on a skewed relative perspective on the outside temperature. I was reminded this winter that it get’s really cold here with a relentless chill to the point that it eventually seems normal.

We were so amazed and thrilled with the sights and unexpected experiences every day along our trek, and we wanted to be ready with our cameras and laptops to record all the details. Rich and Cody slung out their digital cameras with every adorable Sherpa child and lumbering yak we passed, and I filmed every colorful wildflower fluttering in the breeze. Of course at the end of the day I just had to deploy the notebook computer out of my day pack and type up blog entries about adorable yaks and lumbering children. Of course if I let it go more than a day at a time I might mix up the details. It didn’t take long on our hike for us to become very mindful of the power meters on our electronic devices. We had to carefully monitor our usage and to try to power off as quickly as possible after all interesting sights and experiences had moved along. I brought a huge pack of AA sized batteries with me to make sure I had a guaranteed power source for my operation critical electronics (the GameBoy). However, keeping the computer and the video camera charged up was a technical challenge.