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Boots
I bought a good pair of Vasquez boots, about 5 years ago. They were good and comfortable and waterproof, using Goretex. For a couple years, they were very water-proof. But not recently. I poured some water into the boots, and it ran out at the seams. I put some ShoeGoo II on those places. It stayed on OK for a few weeks, but then a week into the trip, it started coming off. Still, the boots were very comfortable, as they have always been. I could put them on cold in the morning and they would come up to warm comfort shortly.
But when we got into some snow, they got cold and damp. When it got really cold, they tended to freeze up. They were still comfortable, but not very warm. So if I were going on another trek, I would not take my old leaky boots, even if they were comfortable. Also they did not grip on rock and snow as well as they used to. The vibram edges were not sharp. I did not get into trouble. But wearing comfortable old boots is not always a good idea. Time to retire them.
Other people did not have much trouble; most of them wore newer boots without so many miles on them. So I will get smart, too. Still, my feet were generally comfortable, and I had no blisters in 180 miles. / rap
Hats
When I was packing up, I weighed everything I carry. I brought everything I weighed. Since I never CARRY my sun hat, but just wear it, I did not weigh it. I forgot to bring it, so I had to buy a sun-hat in Kathmandu. Otherwise, John C. and I would have had identical hats. So much for planning and checklists. I was too busy to use my checklist, at the last minute. I did bring 3 good wool hats, for cold weather. I never had to wear 2 at a time, as it never got cold enough. Fortunately.
Peter Owens wears a different hat every day. Most of them are glorious and amazing, wonderful. If you see an amazing hat, at a sale, preferably in a very large size (size 8), you might want to buy one and give it to Peter, to add to his amazing collection.
Altimeter Stuff....
When we were preparing for this trek, Nancy decided that she wanted to buy an altimeter. Not just a dumb altimeter, but a recording altimeter, built into a watch, that would tell you how much you had ascended today. I didn't think it was a big deal, but she thought it was a good idea. We checked out an Avocet ($120) and it seemed to do the right things. So I bought her an early birthday present.
There were 2 other people on the trek who had electronic altimeters (Casios). They all seemed to work well, and all had pretty good accuracy. They all seemed to agree pretty well with each other, and when we came to a town, they agreed pretty well with the elevations shown on the maps, or listed in books. Except at Tatopaani; the books said 3800', but we all agreed it was 4200'.
So, what's the big deal? Is an altimeter as foolish and useless as a GPS receiver? No, it is actually fairly useful. When we were approaching Thorong La, one of the Sherpas told me, "90 minutes to the pass". So most of us were prepared to slog on for 90 minutes. We knew we could gut it out, slog along for over an hour. But the guys with altimeters could say, "17,400 feet, not much further to go". They were right, and the Sherpa was wrong. We arrived at the pass soon, about 25 minutes. So the altimeter was useful for ball-park indications or estimates of our progress.
Some hikers told my wife, "just a few minutes to the pass". That when she was down at 16,000 feet, and she knew THAT was wrong.
Secondly, on our third day, I hiked good and hard, but I was getting really tired, coming into Dharapaani. When I got to camp, Nancy told me that we had only made a net gain of 2140 feet that day - but we had ascended 4300 feet and descended 2160 feet. NO WONDER I was tired!! So, the altimeter can be a good sanity check.
Overall, the minimum amount of ascent on this hike was from our starting point of 2700 ft. at BesiSahar up to 17,770 ft, and also from 4200 ft. at Tatopaani to 9200 ft. at Ghorepaani. A total of 20,070 ft. rise and about 20,000 ft. of fall, too. But Nancy's recording altimeter recorded that we went up 38,000 feet, total, and about 38,000 feet of descent. That sounds like a lot, and it was, but it was spread over 21 days. Thus, about 1800 feet of rise and fall, each day. I didn't expect that much. So, I will not again scoff at my wife when she thinks an altimeter is a handy gadget to bring on a picnic. As usual, she has good guesses. / rap
- The following list of elevations at each camp is not a big deal, as that could be gotten off any map or good guide-book. It is the Ascent of each day, with the Net Rise subtracted, that indicates how many EXTRA feet of Rise AND Fall you hiked on a given day.
START at BesiSahar - 2640 ft. to Ngadi (top end of blue bridge) - (3080 ft.) Ascent: 1290 ft.; Net Rise, 440 ft. Extra R&F, 850 feet.
- Ngadi up to Jagat (4300 ft) Ascent: 2400 ft., Net rise, 1220 ft. Extra R&F, 1180 ft.
- Jagat up to Dharapani, (6440 ft.) Ascent: 4300 ft., Net rise, 2140 ft. Extra R&F, 2160. ft.
- Dharapani up to No-Name Camp, (1 hour below Koto) 8240 ft. Ascent: 2740 ft., Net rise, 1800 ft. Extra R&F, 940 ft.
- (Below Koto) to Tukhure Pokhara, Lower Pisang: (10370 ft.) Ascent: 3230 ft., Net Rise, 2130 ft. Extra R&F, 1100. ft.
- Tukhure to Hongde (11070 ft.) Ascent = ? Net rise: 700 ft. Extra R&F = ?
- Hongde to Braga, (11300 ft). Ascent = ? Net Rise: 230 ft. Extra R&F = ?
- Braga to Yak Kharka, (13,350 ft.) Ascent = ? Net Rise: 2050 ft. Extra R&F =
- Total from BesiSahar to Yak Kharka: Ascent: 19,600 ft. Net rise: 10,710 ft. Extra R&F: 8,990 ft.
- Yak Kharka to Phedi, (15,100 ft.) Ascent = ? Net Rise: 1750 ft. Extra = ?
- Phedi to Thorong La (17,770 ft.) Ascent = ? Net rise: 2670 ft. Extra = ?
- Thorong La to Muktinath (12,600 ft.) Descent = Net fall: 5170 ft. Extra = ?
- Note, below Muktinath, we did not keep good records, but there definitely was a little of UP and DOWN while travelling along a nominally flat area. Due to recent trail construction, we did not have to climb so much as in previous years, just to get down the valley.... / rap
Video in Nepal
As I mentioned, I really wanted to get some good video in Nepal, because last year, an audio connector fell off inside my Sony TR-51, and I got no audio at all, just 7 hours of silent movies. This year, I sure wanted to avoid that problem. So I brought along a little speaker, so I could hear that the audio connector had not fallen off. It did NOT fall off. No problems with that. I wanted to have more battery power, so I brought 3 batteries and a better charger. But the season was winter, and we had rather few hours of sunshine, and I STILL got more recording in than last year. So I can't gripe a lot.
Some people like to take pictures very slowly. Carefully posed, everything carefully composed. Sometimes I do that. But I have a monkey mind, and I like to be able to GRAB snippets of action, as they pop up. As you can see from my editted film, I often do that.
When TV advertisements are shown these days, they like to run a lot of segments, each about 3/4 seconds of splashy eye-ball-wrenching video, and then go to the next BITE. I really don't like that. I am cheerful to set up my video at 5 to 10 or 15 second snips. But some things last longer than that, and other things last shorter than that, and I'll throw in some of each. As you can see.
I like to tape random chunks of conversations, of people interacting, of places and things. I sure have a lot of fun, and it seems to work. Of course, I have to do a lot of editting. Not a big deal. - I think I lost too much good video because the camera went out of focus. On future treks, I may decide to leave the viewing in FIXED focus, and put my finger on AUTO focus in case that is needed.
Weather and Viewing
Even when a day starts out clear you tend to get increasing clouds over the peaks as the day goes on. Also, it tends to get cloudier, day after day, until you get a storm. We saw that. We got NO RAIN until well over the pass. We had just 5 inches of snow before we went over the pass. We had a lot of days when the clouds did not get heavy, and we had GLORIOUS views all day long. One day, when we were down in Tatopaani, we had blue skies and no clouds ALL DAY! If we had been in sight of Dhaulagiri that day, we would have seen it in the clear. But on this trip I never did see its summit in the clear, as it was always shrouded in a small veil of clouds. Otherwise, we had many hours of good viewing of the great peaks.
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Annapurna III and Manang
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We had many great views of all the Annapurna peaks - Annapurna I, II, III, IV, and Gangapurna. The panorama also included, at various times, Tilichot Peak, Nilgiri, Hiunchuli, and the spectacular Machhapuchhare (often called Fishtail Peak). Also good views of Manaslu and Peak 29, off to the Northeast of the Annapurnas, early in the trip. Also, the huge walls of Dhaulagiri, just west of Annapurna, and Tukuche Peaks (a handsome triple pyramid just north of Dhaulagiri). And many other great mountains that would be famous if they were not overshadowed by the Annapurnas. By the way, I just found out that Annapurna is the name of a harvest goddess in Nepal.
So we had no rain, and very little snow, north of the Annapurnas. Yes, when they call that a "rain-shadow", they are not kidding! Now, what is the OPPOSITE of "rainshadow"? When we descended from Ghorepaani, we found out: Rainforest. That's what it was, and we got a lot of rain that morning.
That Calendar Picture?
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Thorong La Scene
Click on Image to enlarge |
I decided to look for those mountains that were in that inspiring picture of Thorong La, when I got up to the pass. But when I got up there, nothing looked like that. John said, "Oh, yes, back in the first hour, there were views that looked like that". I found some photos and some video that did get that general view, but nothing exactly like the view on the calendar. Next time I'll be more observant, and take some pictures down there.
Batteries and Charging
I had a few new ideas on how to improve my battery charging, for the nicads of my camcorder. I used good old connectors, and my solar arrray rated at 22 volts and 280 mA. I got 2 new nicad batteries, so I would have 3.
Even though I did have some suspicions that my 2nd battery was not holding a lot of charge, I brought it along.
Mistake! I put it on charge the first day on the trail, when it got low. It did not show any charge after 2 hours. I put it on John C.'s little charger. After a couple more hours, it STILL did not show any charge.
I put it on my Turbo circuit, (which doubles the current and halves the voltage, using a switched-capacitor circuit) and this did seem to show that it put more current into it. More than direct current from the solar array. It was DEFINITELY connected. After 2 hours of good sunlight, that lousy battery showed, still no charge. So I had to carry that battery 150 miles so I could get it replaced on warrantee. Quite annoying! Musta had a bad cell.
Then I put both my other batteries onto the Turbocharger circuit. One of them charged up just fine. But the larger one (Ambico) did not seem to want to accept any charge from the Turbo circuit. So I set that aside, and just ran the dc current directly into the battery.
One of my battery connectors croaked. Fortunately I had a couple spares. One of John's connectors croaked. It sure is good to have lots of spares, especially if they weigh only 1/2 ounce. Next year, I will have better connectors, and better batteries. I may even have a set of D-cells, to use on rainy days.
I had read that some of the villages on this trek had 220-volt power, but I forgot to bring my charger. Yes, a lot of them had wires, but about 1/2 of the power systems were not working. STILL, I should have brought my line-powered charger. If I split the 1.5 lb of weight between 2 people, it would have been very minor, and we could probably have gotten a lot of good charge on grey days when we could not get much charge from our solar arrays. Next time I'll be smarter.
Editting my Video
When I got home, I took each of my 5 video tapes, and, starting at 0:00:00, I noted the exact second when I wanted to transfer a section into the Master tape. When I was all done, I went out and rented a good VCR, to help the transfer. I went to the first snip. The wrong material was in place. When I found the right material, it was offset by 27 minutes. I corrected the 27 minutes; then the next snip was off by 6 MORE minutes, and the next one by 6:13. I could not put in any fixed correction. The TR-51 had blown its little digital mind. So all the dozen hours of preparation were lost. How annoying! I eventually got around to doing this ~right, with my TR-75 recorder.
When your (digital) camcorder is not able to keep its place, it is very annoying. No, the real time-base is accurate within much better than 0.1%. When I record, the time base is not grossly wrong. Each tape is still about 2:02:20, which is about right. It's just when I do a fast-forward (or fast rewind) (which you have to be able to do while editting) that it seems to be badly goofed up. When you look for a GOOD 10-second segment in the middle of a blurry, boring minute of stuff, you need a marker to tell you when to transfer it. When the markers or timers or counters are in error, you are OUT of business. But I finished the editting OK, if lumpy.
Note, I had about 68 minutes of good stuff (Part A); 90 minutes of stuff that was of interest primarily to trek Members (Part B); and few more minutes of STUFF, such as shopping and sight-seeing in Kathmandu, that might be fun to watch. Grade C, but fun. / More later. / rap
35mm Photography
We took a couple dozen rolls of 35 mm film, and got lots of good pictures, and lots of mediocre ones, too. I like to figure, if 1/2 of my photos are duds, I am doing something right. (If all of my pictures were perfect, then I am not being bold enough.)
One thing for sure, a zoom lens is a big advantage, as it lets you frame things well. When I first came to Nepal in 1989, I had a zoom lens, and it worked pretty well. However, my old Nikomat FTN had manual focus and exposure, and I botched some shots by not thinking. I am sure the good photographers in our group will show us how it was done right. AND, the Nikomat was much heavier and bulkier than my camcorder! So I did not bring that.
The camera I used was just a small Olympus that I kept in my pants pocket. By being able to rip out the camera at any time, and fire off a shot, sometimes you can get amazing things, on the spur of the moment. Of course, when you are doing things like that, in a hurry, you make mistakes and blur things. Tough. My primary objective was to get good video. Refer to Video. Still, I got a few good shots that other people did not. / rap
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