THE BEST OF BOB PEASE
What's All this Trekking Stuff, Anyhow? - Maxi-Report
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Who, US? US trekkers?
Who were we? On this trek, we filled it up to the limit of 15 trekkers. We had a few people aged 22, 33, 39, but most of us were in our 50's and 60's. But the best thing was, we were all pretty compatible, agreeable. We all were good hikers, and we were all in pretty good shape. (Well, some of us were in VERY good shape.) We all got along pretty well on the trail, and got along well when shopping or lunching or taking photos of the views - and of each other.

There were about 6 people who signed up because RAP decided to promote this trek, and the other 9 had never heard of me nor my stories in Electronic Design. There were 8 women and 7 men, plus Peter, so we had a pretty good gender balance.

We had some people who had been on 3 or 5 or 7 treks, but about 5 were first-timers. So that's a good mix, too.

I expected a broad assortment of interesting people - and we sure got that. We had hikers from Massachusetts, NY, New Jersey, Florida, New Mexico, Minnesota, and 6 from California. We soon learned to recognize the voices that rattled across camp. And the hats and the britches and the parkas. To this day, I can look at some ankles going up the trail, and say, "Oh, that's Carol with her boots", or, "That's Debbie in that skirt...." We got to know each other. If you go on a trek, I wish YOU to have such a very nice interesting assortment of interesting people. We could walk along the trail by pairs, or by threes, or any number. Often a good little discussion would start up. And then taper off, and stop, and later start again. "Look at that great waterfall over there" "...yeah, but I already took too many pictures of waterfalls...." "Hey, that is a nice bird up there..." "Peter, what kind of tree is THAT?" - Never a dull moment.

Scope of Trek
Several people said, "Tell me about your trek. Because most reports from Nepal are about 'How we survived the Death Zone'". This trek was definitely NOT about the Death Zone (above 25,000 ft.), though we did get high enough to scratch at a zone of concern. Any time you start going above 14,000 feet, there is always the chance of altitude sickness. But Peter got us acclimatized slowly, and none of us had any serious problems pushing up to 15,000 ft and then to 17,771 ft.

Peter's trip description was quite accurate: this was a moderate trek for 20 days, going up as high as 15,000 ft - and just one long hard, high day. Many days were quite easy. We had several short days, and a couple half days when the weather was wet and we stayed in camp until lunch. If we had had to wait a day or two for good weather, at Phedi, then that cushion would have left us walking a little faster. But most days were just right. Our long day was from Jharkot down to Marpha, a full 10.5 miles as the crow flies, per GPS. That must have been a full 12 or 13 miles of trail, but most of it was nice, easy downgrade. Even on that day, we had plenty of time to goof off, and take lots of pictures, and have a leisurely lunch, and we still got to camp early. Other days had fewer miles, but there was rough trail or slow descents, and they still came out right. We almost never got to camp later than 4 PM.

There are many other treks in Nepal that are no harder than this (if the one hard day over Thorong La were left out). Our treks to Dhorpatan and Langtang were just about as hard: not extremely. They had a comparable mix of a few long days, lots of medium days, and lots of short days, too. So if you want a good trek and are not confident about hiking above 14,000 feet, there are many good choices.

Conditioning
A couple readers wrote to me, "We could never do a trek like that, 165 miles". I told them they were probably wrong about that. Most people can walk 5 miles. If they hike every day, they can easily get in shape to do 8 or 10 miles, even with some hills added. If you are able to hike 6 or 8 or 10 miles, day after day, you could pretty easily do a hike like this. One of our trekkers had been a couch potato for years. He decided he wanted to go on this trek, and he started hiking 4, then 6, then 8 and more miles, with some good hills thrown in. He had no trouble hiking this trek, and he got a big kick out of this trek, because he had no trouble hiking - and because the trek was fun.

I took a couple "calibration hikes" with this guy, and we convinced ourselves that we had done enough hiking and enough conditioning that we were SURE we could do all the hiking and have enough reserve energy to make most days really easy. We wanted to have enough strength that we would not get very tired out, and the hiking would be FUN. And that's what we did.

On the other hand, one of the trekkers was a marathon runner, with a time of about 3:30. My wife said she had heard that sometimes marathon runners do not do well on treks - perhaps because they think it should be easy, or because they do so much running, they are not good at hiking. This guy got along fine, had no troubles with the hiking and the altitude. So you can't always believe rumors.

Trails on the Annapurna Circuit
There sure were a lot of different kinds of trails on the Annapurna circuit. Most were quite good. Some were excellent, some were glorious. A few were tough, steep, rough, bitchy. I included some views of trail in my video, to show how trail conditions were. Mostly, hey, very nice. Some of the walking on the Kali Gandaki River bed was a bit rough and slow because of all the loose rocks. But, that was not really bad. The rough parts only went on for perhaps a half hour at a time. In some towns, the trail was paved with rough rocks pointing up at sharp angles. I am not sure why they did that. Maybe for better traction for pack animals. In many towns, the trail was nicely paved with smooth stones. In many places, you could tell the steeper sections had been paved with rocks, but the relentless abuse by pack trains had worn the trail down, and the rocks were falling away. I guess that can't be helped when there is heavy use. It was not usually a big deal. Most of the walking was on good dirt or good gravel. There were a few places where there had been slides, and the new trail was cut into the dirt. Most of these were not any problem or worry, even if the trail was a bit narrow or a bit rough. Hey, the trail has to be wide enough for horses and pack trains.

High-Altitude Hiking Stuff??
When I was hiking in Nepal in 1989, we hiked up to 14,600 feet at Gosainkund Lakes. It was 3 PM. I wanted to go up to Laurabina Pass. None of the other hikers was interested, but Salaam Sing, one of the sherpas, was agreeable to take a hike before supper. Up we went, and I was hiking at a rate of about 1 full breath per step. It took a full 2 hours to get up to 15,100 feet at the pass. After taking some photos, we hurried back down to supper. But I knew I was in pretty good shape to get up to 15,000 feet. Would I have any trouble getting higher?? Maybe - maybe not.

As we started ascending seriously past 10,000 feet on this trek, I began to do serious breathing through my nose. REAL hard breathing, to storm up any steep upgrade. I was going at about the rate of 2 steps per one full breath. My wife said I was making too much noise. But, what's new? (Note, to keep your nose clear at these altitudes takes a lot of handkerchief work. Some people would say it's nasal mucus, but I say it' snot.)

As we kept on ascending to 14,000 and 15,000 feet, I kept on breathing hard through my nose.

When we actually set up our high camp at Thorong Phedi (15,100 feet), I went for a half-hour hike up the hill, to check out the next day's climb. As we had not had much trouble getting up TO 15,000 feet, I did not expect much trouble ABOVE that, and I was right. When the trail was shallow, I could continue on - NOT at 1 full in/out breath per step, but almost at 2 steps per full breath. If I just took shorter steps when the grade was steeper, I could keep going at about that pace, but every few minutes, a 10-second break did feel good.

As we started out from Phedi the next morning, the grade of the trail was fairly moderate, but as we went higher, the grade got shallower, so all the way up to 17,700 feet, it did not feel much different. I was NOT gasping for breath. Listening to my videotapes, I can hear that my voice was not very different. I did not seem very much out of breath. It didn't feel weird. I did not feel terrible or light-headed; I did NOT feel like I was gonna die. It was just good hard work, good exercise, like a lot of other good hard hills (which were a lot steeper, but at lower altitudes).

Of course, a lot of this was related to how we got acclimatized. We took 4 days to travel about 16 miles, from 11,000 feet up to 15,100 feet. Could we have done those miles in 2 days? Of course - but that would have been WRONG. It's wise to put on no more than 1000 feet of elevation per day, for best acclimatization. Peter Owens herded us up the hill, nice and SLOW, so we would have our best conditioning for the pass. And it worked, because all 15 of us made it over the hill. So, "slow and easy wins the day".

Why did we camp at 15,100 feet? Because the camping down at 14,600 feet was all full up. Thorong Phedi is listed at the elevation of 14,600 feet, but there are 3 levels, and we camped at the higher level, and it was fine. And it saved us about 20 minutes of climbing, when we had to start up. None of us had any complaint about that. When we got up to about 16,000 feet, Nancy was feeling crummy, because she could not breathe hard enough to get in enough oxygen. She was getting a cold, and her nose was clogging up. When she tried breathing hard through her mouth, her lungs felt bad, as if "frosted". So at 16,500 feet, I took her pack away, and put it on my front. My pack was about 15 lb., including my solar panel, and hers was about 10, as we had put on most of the clothes in our packs.

This barely slowed me down. I just walked on up the hill. It's true, when I took off the packs, it did feel a little lighter. No trouble on the easy grades up to the pass.

After a few minutes of rest, we started down, and all the effects of altitude just went away. Descending the shallow (and also the steep) grades to the west felt no different than any other descent at low altitude. We were slow in places, because the trail was steep and slippery, but that had nothing to do with altitude.

After I had been down in Kathmandu at 4000 feet for a week, I took a motor vehicle to the top of Pulchowki, a hill at 9000 feet. I started up a few little trails. My feet felt very heavy, and my legs soon got tired, and my lungs ran out of breath quickly. So acclimatization can disappear surprisingly fast, when you go down to low altitudes! / rap

P.S. I found an old memo I got by Internet, back in August. One correspondent claimed that "you have every reason in the world to be excited about going to Annapurna. It's an experience like no other. At the top of Thorung La, your head will be pounding, your stomach will be in knots, you will be dizzy, thirsty, aching, and nauseous."

ACTUALLY I felt none of the above. My head and belly and lungs and legs all felt fine. I didn't even feel tired. Of course, I did take a few sips of water on the way up. If you didn't do THAT, you might feel lousy. And as I said, when I hiked briskly up the hill to a little knoll 100 yards south, I was STILL not out of breath.

If I had kept on ascending above 18,000 feet that day, I do not know where I would have run out of steam. But I'd have to guess I would be able to get to 20k. Maybe some day I'll find out. Of course, you need GOOD slow acclimatization. / rap

P.S. I did take the recommended Diamox pills, to minimize the effects of high altitude. They seemed to do no harm, maybe some good....

Stone Steps
When we started up from Tatopaani to ascend to Ghorepaani, about 4 days from the end of our trek, I decided to count the stone steps. That was because there was an alleged number of 3319 steps from Ulleri down to the next bridge at Tirkedhunga, over the Bhurungdi Khola, descending east toward Birethanti. I suspected that there were a lot of stone steps ascending up TO Ghorepaani. That's a big hill, too! At least 5500 feet of rise.

I counted 1850 stone steps up to the first Deorali at Santosh Hill, and 1752 more up to lunch at Sikha, and 1902 more up to our camp at Chitre. Total of 5504 for that day. (Additionally, there were 219 DESCENDING steps.)

Then I counted about 1520 more, the next day, up to the pass at 9700 feet at Ghorepaani. So that was about 7024 stone steps. NOT just 7000 stone steps that you COULD walk on, but 7000 stone steps in sequences or rows. Not just baby steps, or flat steps, or steps ramping up, but real steps, 4 inches or more. Most were 6 or 7 inches; some were more. That was my standard for, "what makes a step?" I just counted the real steps. Sometimes when there were lots of 3-inch steps, I would count each as "half". Jerry didn't believe I was really counting the steps. But I sure was counting them.

Then when we went up to the top of Poon hill, that was another 1280 steps. Descending from the pass at Ghorepaani to Ulleri took 2636 descending steps, (plus 409 steps UP).

The next day, from the middle of Ulleri down to the first bridge at Tirkhedhunga was alleged to be 3319 stone steps, according to Carol's book. I was suspicious that maybe they were counting baby steps, or flat steps. So I counted, and I got 3267, which is barely one percent different from their count. So 3300 or 3319 is a pretty good estimate. The total number of stone steps of descent at that point was about 5903. Below that bridge, I counted about 500 steps up, and 500 down, and then the steps petered out. I gave up counting them. Still, while the books say there are many thousands of stone steps on the east side of Ghorepani, it is also correct to say that there are many thousands of steps on the WEST side of Ghorepani, coming up from Tatopaani. On each side of the hill, it is fair to say there are at least 7000 steps. That's a lot of stone steps to hike over in a few days. Mostly, that makes very nice hiking. / rap

Steep, rough, bitchy trails
Most of the trails on the Annapurna Circuit were really quite OK. I'll mention the few that weren't.

The trail that descended by switchbacks to the last bridge below Thorong Phedi was tough, as a little stream had flowed over the trail and frozen overnight. Fortunately, the sherpas took an ice axe and gouged steps into it, and it was not bad. But this was only 50 yards of trail. Not a bad deal.

When we started to descend from Thorong La, the first couple miles of trail were really quite good. Mostly a lot of gravel, some snow. Not steep. Good hiking, and we made pretty good time.

But the next couple miles were really quite steep, and covered with hard-packed snow. 180 people had been over the trail in the last 2 days, and it showed. It was really tough to get any traction, and in our group, Peter and Nancy and I had to walk off the side of the trail, to get decent traction. Sometimes we had to go on goat- trails 10 or 20 feet below the real trail, and dig in our heels hard. This was slow and bitchy, but after the waste of a couple hours, we got down to Thorong Phedi (west) and then we made good time. It took us from about noon to about 4:45 to get from the pass down to Phedi. Slow progress. It took barely an hour to cover the next couple miles to Muktinath, no problem. The steep stretches would have been OK if it were not for the hard-packed snow. Some people said that even if they were not snowy, the trail there is steep and slippery, but I think it would have been a lot less bad.

Cold-Weather Camping
When we started at BesiSahar, the temperature was pretty warm. Perhaps 50 degrees with clear skies, the next morning. The first 3 nights were not very cool; we barely had to put our sleeping bags over us. Then it started cooling off. At Koto, Peter told us that the temperature had hit 23 degrees F, just 10 miles up. Sure enough, from there on in, the temperature in the morning kept dropping from 35 degrees F to 25 and later to 15. If the air was clear, we would get a lot of radiational cooling and the air would get down to 15 degrees F. Fortunately, the air in our tent was about 15 degrees warmer than outside, but we still had to start zipping up our sleeping bags. Some of us had flannel liners or sheet-sacks to go inside our sleeping bags, to help keep us warm. (They also helped keep the sleeping bag a little cleaner.) When we got up to Yak Kharka and Thorong Phedi, it got down to about 8 degrees F. We had our pajamas, and long-johns to keep us warm. I had one hat to wear in the day, and a softer one to wear at night. When it got cold, I just kept on whatever hat I had on.

If it had ever gotten REALLY cold, I had extra pants and foul- weather pants; extra jackets and shirts; and extra hats and mitts. I could have bundled up out in the snow, and almost as much, if needed, to get warm in the tent. I sure was glad it did not get down below zero, as most other people - porters and trekkers, too - were not prepared for that. Fortunately, when it DID get cold, it did NOT get very windy, but rather calm. Still, camping at 10 degrees F above 14,000 feet is just like REAL cold-weather camping, because your body cannot run its metabolism very hot, with so little oxygen. Two nights of that were PLENTY. (I've done a little camping at 20 and 30 degrees below zero, and it's not much different.)

We normally had 40 minutes to drink our morning tea and cookies, and stow our sleeping bags, and get everything we needed for the day. We soon learned to get everything we needed for the morning, ready at night, because there were often good scenes to photograph at daybreak. So I would get the new roll of film, and the next shirt and socks, and stuff them into my day pack, so I could easily grab them in the morning. Much better than fishing around in the dark.

Note: some people said - why bother with a watch on a trek? You don't need a watch - or an alarm... WRONG! I kept my alarm set for 5:40 AM. Then I could get up and pull on my clothes, and go to the john before 5:55, and avoid the 6:02 rush to the toilet tent. I thought an alarm watch was VERY useful.

Other than that, our camping was not that much different when it got cold. We just simplified our routines.

One detail was that Nancy and I decided to wash some clothes after about 5 days on the trail, as we had enough dirty socks, shirts, and underwear to make it worth the effort. Unfortunately, the next 3 days were cool and damp and not sunny, and we had a heck of a time getting the shirts dry. Finally we just tied them on our packs. After a couple more days, they were dry enough to wear. But it was a big pain in the neck.

So we easily re-learned the routines of camping in cold weather. But it sure is really nice, when somebody else puts up the tent, and takes down the tent, and somebody else CARRIES the tent. Much nicer than when you do it yourself, especially when the tent and poles are cold. / rap

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