Behind the Camera : Bitterly cold and tingling all over
Previous post in this series here.
The evenings were the hardest for me I think. I knew there’d be a lot of downtime before I came but it’s not really something you can prepare yourself too much for beyond bringing a pack of cards. And my goodness, if you’re reading this and considering doing this trek, do bring a pack of cards at minimum. Most days we’d be wrapped up hiking by about 3pm leaving a good 5 or maybe six hours to kill, mind, most of that for me was spent contemplating my very existence and the decisions that had led me to be so high up a mountain freezing the extremities of my body off whilst trying to warm myself by the yak-shit fuelled fire a circumstance I had grown far too accustomed to already. If you’re lucky like me and Steve were though, you’ll have a great guide who’ll be more than willing to play a game (or 20) with you until you decide it’s a reasonable enough time to put yourself to bed knowing all too well you won’t sleep properly from the altitude and cold.
Even the mornings are bitterly cold now at this point. That morning in Tengboche I was still wrapped in thermals and ski-jacket when I shuffled myself in to the dining room for the now standard breakfast of pancakes and “mixed-fruit” jam that all the tea-houses seemed to stock. I’d also awoken with my first headache, which I attributed to the fact I was just constantly breathing in such cold air and tried to play off the thoughts of it being AMS which would mean me heading back down.
A common sight on the trail and also the source of fuel for our evening fires
The goal that day was the settlement of Dengboche, almost 600m above the starting point and a daunting prospect with my constantly altitude focused and paranoid mind. The walk itself was not too hard in comparison to previous days but finding the correct combination of layers did prove challenging. Throughout the day it’s a constant battle to balance your body temperature with the surroundings, a task made more difficult by our passing through “the windy valley”; whether that’s an actual name or just our guide’s I’m not too sure but I was very careful to always have my hat on and always be breathing through my buff as it’s very easy to realise only too late, just how cold you are. The zolamide medication I had started taking to aid in acclimatisation was very much kicking in and I had this tingling sensation in my fingers and toes, similar to pins and needles, that would spread throughout the day, elsewhere over my body like my knees and nose which is an extremely odd sensation. It was also at this point the diuretic effect started kicking in, particularly challenging to manage in the “window valley” with not much cover resulting in a fairly chaotic “tactical break” as our guide put it.
Dengboche at 4410m
The trail at this point really reaches above the alpine line and the trek was much more barren and dusty but we did get to see some mountain goats. A fatal error was also made on the trek this day when me and Steve both made the mistake of slightly too much Dal Baht at lunch. Now if you don’t know what Dal Baht is, it’s really good; it’s a lentil soup type dish they serve with vegetables and potatoes and is incredibly filling and a local dish that they all eat themselves, which is why it’s also the only dish on the menu that they’ll keep offering you more of, which we gratefully accepted and greatly regretted that night as I wrote my journal entry in my room in Dengboche with Steve on the other side suffering a similar fate as me as we lay there with bloated stomachs, letting gas escape from whatever orifice it preferred at the time debating whether a tactical chunder may relieve us of our situation.
We had however made it to Dengboche and my mind games continued, trying to convince myself that this was it, I was capable of doing it and it was really starting to feel like maybe I was hitting that home stretch with the altitude. Our additional acclimatisation walk that day had taken us to 4550m, I’d be sleeping for two nights in Dengboche at 4410m, have an acclimatisation walk to 5000m the next day, then just need to acclimatise one more night in Lobouche before the final days push to Gorak Shep and Base Camp (slightly ignoring the fact I’d need to spend a night in Gorak Shep too, but hey, I’d have made it I guess?). Writing back about what I was thinking at the time, I seem nuts, but like I wrote in the opening of this post, you have a lot of time to contemplate things in the evenings and for me, these convinced me that I was going to be alright and I was going to make it because after Gorak Shep, I wouldn’t have to acclimatise again.
That first night in Dengboche was actually quite eventful though, certainly eventful for a remote settlement at over 4400m with only a few guests. I’d taken another trip outside at night to do some astro-photography, which I greatly enjoy but unfortunately the clouds had rolled in and squandered my opportunity and my slightly ageing wired remote for my camera bit the dust and stopped working. In true field repair fashion though, and with the help of far too many Nepalese guides and teahouse staff who I think enjoyed the distraction, our team of 6 repairman huddled around the table and brought that remote back to life with the help of the few tools they had available. I question whether so many people attempting to help was detrimental to the repair process, but I certainly wouldn’t couldn’t pass them up when they were so excited to help. So this photo below, taken with a working remote in Dengboche, is dedicated to those incredible people of the Peaceful Lodge Teahouse that helped me that night.
