Thither & Yon

“This is going to be a difficult hike for you,” our orientation guide said, looking at Dustin. “And it’s going to be an extremely difficult hike for you,” he said, turning his attention to me.

I wanted to be offended, but he was obviously not wrong.

The hike in question is called Three High Passes Trek. It is the trek we selected after doing a whole lot of research into ways to see Everest Base Camp (EBC), which is the primary goal of this excursion. In addition to EBC, we’ll get to experience the Himalayas from dozens of other view points (many of which will hopefully include Everest) and which, incidentally, happens to cross three passes over 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) high.

“We’ll have to make such a big effort to get to Nepal, and we’ll have acclimatized after the first few days anyway,” Dustin said as we considered our options. “Might as well go for the longer hike and get as much as we can out of it.”

Or did I say those things?

In any case, the idea of an 18-day trek covering elevations ranging from 1,400-5,555 meters (8,500-18,000 feet) and spanning more than 100 miles seemed like a good idea on paper, but the closer we have gotten, the more flawed this logic has sounded.

Can I remind you how I looked the first time I hiked to 11,700 feet?

Of course, this photo was taken after we booked the trip to Nepal. So.

When we walked into the Ace the Himalayas office for our orientation, my first source of alarm was not the orientation itself, but our fellow hikers. Two men of god-like athleticism joined us at the table. These were the kinds of horrible people who pass you at a fast jog while you struggle slowly up a steep slope. They claimed, when asked, to already have hiking experience above 6,000 meters (20,000 feet), putting my previously prized claim of 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) to shame. If we turned out to be in the same hiking group, I knew their entire trip would be ruined by my slow pace and I’d spend the whole trip feeling guilty about it.

To my great relief (and theirs, if only they knew), we were booked for two different treks. Theirs will be much shorter and less overall-high than ours.

These two Adonises weren’t feeling up to a trek as hard as ours??

(“Or maybe they don’t have as much vacation time?” Dustin suggested.)

Over the next hour, our orientation guide went through a checklist of things we had to know, including all the ways high altitude can make you sick or kill you, how having bad gear can maim or kill you, how not paying attention can kill you, how the food can make you sick or kill you.

(Dustin says he was actually telling us about all the ways our trekking guide is heavily trained and prepared help us avoid sickness, maiming, and death. I kind of remember that too.)

Here are some highlights:

1. Altitude sickness is a series of potential maladies ranging from mild to deadly, and there is zero way to predict who will be affected. Even athletic godlings can succumb. The only real treatment is to decrease elevation as quickly as possible. Do NOT hide symptoms from your guide. That’s how you wind up dead. All forms of altitude sickness are treatable as long as you start dealing with them quickly enough.

Prevention tip: 3 liters of water per day.

Speaking of which…

2. Don’t drink the water. It probably has yak poop in it. Your guide will filter water for you at meal stops, but make sure you can filter or purify your own water too.

Also, don’t eat the meat. You’re much better off being vegetarians for the length of your trek. People don’t raise animals for food at high elevations, which means the meat you see on the menus has been packed in on a mule train. Guess how much refrigeration those guys offer? Right. Stick to veggies unless you want to battle diarrhea in a land of squatty-potties*.

Also, probably don’t eat the pizzas. That’s not what the tea-house cooks are good at. Order the food they are good at. Yes, that probably means you’ll eat a lot of dal and rice. Your gut will thank you.

Also, you’ll probably lose your appetite above 5,000 meters (16,400 feet). Eat anyway, or your guide will make you come down early.

* Squatty-potty:

3. The weather is unpredictable. Be prepared for all of it and don’t blame your guide when it causes flight delays or hides your mountain views. If you don’t have appropriate gear, you can rent it from us now or decide not to go. No one unprepared for rain, snow, or icy terrain gets to go up.

“Are the passes still icy?” someone asked. Maybe me. The passes are not supposed to still be icy.

“Cho La pass has been very bad this year,” the guide said. “Snow, ice, wind. Technical climbing along some areas is almost guaranteed.”

Maybe he saw me gulp. “They installed a fixed line through there last year,” he added, as if to reassure.

Here’s the thing: I don’t do technical climbing. “Technical climbing” is what they call it when you have to use climbing ropes and ice axes. There was not supposed to be any technical climbing on this trek.

Here’s the bigger thing: I forgot my hiking boots. My beautiful, carefully selected, even-more-carefully broken-in boots are sitting at home in a completely different hemisphere, gathering dust.

So. Instead of kick-ass, leather, water-proof boots with soles made from the tires of monster trucks and NASA-engineered gripping technology, I have a well-loved pair of Vivo Barefoot Trail Shoes and a pair of Xero camp sandals.

Until this point in our Lecture-of-Doom, I had resolved to just wear my trail shoes (which I am very comfortable hiking in) with a set of cushy insoles to minimize impact on rocky parts of the trail, rather than risk the health of my feet in a brand new pair of unbroken-in boots. I didn’t know where I would find said insoles yet, but Kathmandu is a place of many resources. I was sure I could work it out.

Now? Now I was imagining my floppy little mesh-topped shoes strapped into ice cleats (sure, I remembered those but not the @&$#% boots?!?), slogging across slippery rocks in the middle of a blizzard at 18,000 feet, and I was remembering how the guide said the hike would be “extremely difficult” for me back when he thought I had boots, and I realized the possibility of getting blisters from unbroken boots was not actually all that concerning.

Ugh. Fine. I’ll buy another pair of boots. Don’t hide symptoms of illness from your guide, and don’t let $150 and blisters be the thing that gets you killed. These are two extremely stupid ways to go.

After the lecture concluded with an exhaustive review of our flight information, the godlings went to discuss their five-star hotel and helicopter reservations with the guide, and I went sheepishly up to his assistant to confess my forgotten-boot shame.

Within ten minutes, our assigned trekking guide, Surya – now forever responsible for our health and safety – was leading us toward a row of gear shops not far from their offices. Three stops and one fitting later, I was the owner of a brand new pair of waterproof Columbia hiking boots. My barefoot-accustomed feet are usually impossible to fit, but these are wide enough and had nearly no arch support, making them ideal in every way except for the unavoidable fact of their newness.

I promptly took them back to the hotel and put them on to start breaking them in.

“We’re going to be fine,” Dustin said, surveying my gloomy expression.

“I know,” I said. And I do know, despite the orientation guide’s success at rattling me.

The thing is: we are not going to die of yak-poisoned water. We are not going to die of overexertion (I am constitutionally incapable). We are not going to fall off of anything. We do have the right gear (finally). This is not our first hiking rodeo. We’re as well-prepared as anyone with a serious aversion to cardio can be (speaking for myself, not Dustin).

Altitude sickness is out of our hands. If it gets us, it gets us, and we deal with it. In the meanwhile, we chug water and cram carbs and keep careful tabs on how we feel.

When we come out the other side, exhausted and successful, I shall try very hard not to be surprised.

Additional post-script for the Moms: I’m writing this post after being on the trail for three days. I am happy to confirm that while nothing we were told in orientation was untrue, the orientation was definitely thick on scare tactics meant to inspire good behavior in people who are otherwise inclined to do things like run from one rim of the Grand Canyon to the other and back all in one day. We already know better than that. We’re doing really well, feeling good, feeling safe, and well-taken-care-of.

Everest-ho!

[Header image: detail from a wheel of time mandala painting we saw at the Boudda Stupa in Kathmandu. Even the art interpreters in the shop couldn’t tell me what the master artist was thinking when he added these gambling skeletons. Seems appropriate to this post.]