My buddy Grant Assenheimer just emailed:
Leaving tomorrow for the Annapurna Base Camp. Have to get my permits today, pick up a sleeping roll and sleeping bag and some chocolate and I’m good to go. Haven’t managed to find anyone to go with me yet but I’m not going to let that slow me down. Should be able to find someone in Pokara and, if not, surely on the trail! No guide or porter…I agree with you and don’t think it is needed at all!!
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I’ll send you a pic!
larger version – flickr – mikemellinger
more interesting photos of Annapurna Base Camp
My own solo trek to ABC in Nepal was one of my personal best hikes.
Here’s an excerpt from my 1998 trip report:
… Access to the Sanctuary is via an intensely scenic gorge; a narrow, winding trail through dense bamboo and huge trees. You scramble over river boulders; gnarled, polished hardwood roots; traverse the most recent avalanche tracks; climb bamboo ladders.
There are no permanent settlements here. This is the only major trekking route in Nepal subject to serious avalanche risk. Occasionally backpackers are trapped at basecamp when tons of snow collapse into the gorge from the unseen. On November 11, 1995 a freak early winter storm resulted in the death of 63 people in Nepal. This caused a bit of unease when it started raining, hailing, and snowing while I ascended to the notch of the Sanctuary gate.
The basecamp itself is bleak. An eerie calm. No wind, though clouds swirl in every direction up on the mountain tops. The scene is dominated by huge, white, vertical Annapurna — one of the most difficult faces ever climbed. On Christmas day 1997 an avalanche here killed Anatoli Boukreev, the Tiger Woods of high altitude, and subject of the best seller, The Climb. …
Annapurna Sanctuary – trip report
original – flickr – Gianni Scopinaro
related: besthike Annapurna Circuit information page
besthike.com 