Category: alpine

by site editor Rick McCharles

Above 3000m guides are constantly monitoring your health. Head ache? Stomach? Fatigue?

Mike and I felt fine at Sama 3530m, our rest day, so our typically over-cautious guide let us go without him on an acclimatization hike up on to the Manaslu Base Camp trail.

Before departing, we had some excitement in town. A chopper landed to pick up 4 hikers. They all looked healthy to me. Perhaps they’d run out of time waiting for the Pass to open.

Cost for a helicopter evacuation is between $4,000 – $8,000.

Yes. It’s a good idea to have insurance.

The weather was gorgeous for November. Very little wind.

En route to the Base Camp trail we came upon this memorial.

Avalanche at Camp 3 at 4:45am, 7000m 😦

There were 231 climbers and support team on the mountain at the time.

One reason to trek rather than climb the Himalayas.

We saw ladies from Samo collecting dried Yak dung as fuel, the only time I saw them collecting anything but dead fall wood.

The mountain is awesome.

Mike’s a photographer. And got some great light this day.

Manaslu Base Camp is at about 4400m. We climbed most of the way, picking out a nice spot for lunch.

The view down on to the glacial lake. That’s Sama in the distance.

Descending we opted to bushwhack down to the water.

Yaks were relaxing on the shore.

Later we learned that Tasha had swum the icy waters. … She is from Alaska. 🙂

It seemed — from here — logical to bushwhack up the ridge to the monastery.

That didn’t work out so well. We ended up stranded on a knife edge moraine ridge.

It was back to town to recharge our batteries. Literally. And figuratively. We wanted to be sure our cameras were working when we got to the highpoint of the trek.

Many seemed to be having trouble with their solar recharging. I’m not sure that technology is worth the trouble, as yet.

Good night.

The crux of the adventure would roll out over the next 36hrs. One way or the other.

The good news … We heard the Pass had reopened.

see high resolution photos from this day on flickr

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by site editor Rick McCharles

On the Manaslu Circuit a tiny room costs about $1.50 / night. Two single beds about $3.

But there’s a shortage of rooms during high season. I had to argue at many guest houses to get my own room, even at double the price.

The previous night I’d not slept well. Coughing. Nose running. I did have my own room — the owners had given me one of theirs.

In my opinion, it would be better to sleep in a tent on this Circuit.

On the other hand, where else are you going to have a view from a $3 room like this?

We were in the high Himalaya. The highest mountains in the world.

We saw helicopters rushing up valley. Word was that the Pass had been closed due to a freak early winter snowstorm. That one porter had been caught out overnight high. And had suffered severe frostbite. He was evacuated by helicopters. All guides and porters should be insured by their trekking agency.

Late in the day we met (unhappy) hikers backtracking from Dharmsala. It was cold, windy and crowded up there. They decided to retreat rather than wait for the Pass to open.

For us it was a lovely sunny day. At higher altitudes we saw more signs of Tibetan Buddhism.

This is no Buddhist relic. It’s a hand-made, water-driven grinding stone.

This was the worst sign of deforestation I saw on the Circuit.

Live trees hacked down. Unnecessarily, I thought.

There are plenty of trees. And buildings are constructed mainly of stone.

We didn’t see much wildlife on the Circuit. These chubby lizards were a highlight.

I was surprised to see Nepali scarecrows.

There are crows everywhere in the Himalaya. And they are not all that easy to scare.

I was disappointed to see only two giant Himalayan vultures over my entire trip. I’d seen many in the past.

Here we go. Langur monkeys were raiding one farm, taunting the guard dogs. One poor dog fell hard in his excitement to chase monkey.

Ladies in the fields paid no attention.

The sun dropped early. The moon rose early.

We slept in Namrung 1660m. From here on and higher we spent most of our evening time keeping warm in multiple layers. 🙂

see high resolution photos from this day on flickr

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by site editor Rick McCharles

Early morning in Arkhet, Nepal I awoke to see buses loading to head both downhill & uphill.

Perhaps Manaslu would turn out to be “ruined” by road building, the knock against nearby Annapurna Circuit.

We walked.

I took perverse pleasure in seeing both buses above Arkhet broken down.

My guess is that there will NEVER be a road up the Budhi Gandaki river. The gorges are too steep.

This is a land of suspension bridges.

Those bridges are superb. They should last 100 years.

The cultural highlight of the Manaslu Circuit for me was not the charming Buddhist mountain culture, but rather the astonishing home made swings and Ferris wheels we came across.

No doubt these fall apart dangerously all the time. That didn’t stop us from giving it a go. 🙂

The trails became cliffside canyon walks.

It’s going to be some time before anyone blasts a road in here.

The culture and economy has not yet been much disrupted by trekking tourism. If hikers stopped coming, not much would change.

Work is done by man, not machine.

There are no baby strollers.

Children seem to be largely unsupervised, except for older siblings.

We took lunch at Lapubesi 884m. The guesthouse owner said he had 20 children, 10 boys, 10 girls.

Betsy carried an audio recorder, collecting soundscapes for a friend back home.

En route we stopped in to watch a woman cooking up Raksi … “a traditional distilled alcoholic beverage in Nepal and Tibet”.

I refused to try it having been poisoned in the past by homemade Sri Lankan Arrack.

I made note of the cooking technology. This was pretty standard. Wood was used as fuel in almost every circumstance, even in those kitchens that had a fuel stove.

I was worried about deforestation, but — so far — there seems to be enough dead-fall to support the number of locals and hikers.

Nepal has a wealth of clean, flowing water. Yet a nurse told us that Nepal leads the world in diarrhea, much of it caused by tainted water. On Manaslu, happily, there seemed to be no shortage of standing water pipes.

Tired by the end of the day, I delayed our group by running into a farm to get photos of beautiful flowers. And terrifying huge web spiders.

We slept in Maccha Khola 930m.

see high resolution photos from this day on flickr

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by site editor Rick McCharles

I returned to Nepal — my 4th visit — to trek the relatively NEW Manaslu Circuit.

That map is linked from Andy Bryant’s excellent 2011 trip report.

Manaslu is the hottest hike in Nepal right now. Check the rapidly increasing number of permits granted as infrastructure has improved over the past few years. For at least 3 seasons it’s been possible to “tea house trek”,  sleeping under a roof every night rather than in a tent. The restaurants are now almost as good as Annapurna and Everest.

My main source of information was the Manaslu Circuit Trek independent website.

I’d hoped to hike Manaslu independently as I’d done Everest and Annapurna in the past. Unfortunately — as of 2013 — Manaslu still requires at minimum one certified Guide and a group of 2 hikers.

Permits can only be purchased by a licensed trekking agency.

Through TrekkingPartners.com I met Mike Howarth from the U.K. who was on a year long cycling trip. He wanted to take a break from the bike and hike Manaslu independently . We both wanted to find a way to hike it independently.

A visit to the Tourism Board office in Kathmandu convinced us that was not going to happen. 😦 We’d need to sign on with a trekking agency.

We first checked two top end agencies, one at the Kathmandu Guest House. Both were fairly expensive.

On a whim I thought to ask the owner of a North Farce garment factory in Thamel where I had purchased a Down jacket and Gortex shell for a reference. He called Bharat Prasad Dhakal at a small outfit called Touch Paradise.

To his credit, Bharat understood immediately that we wanted the minimum possible support. He gave us a good price. Called a young guide. We would carry out own packs. No porters. No pack animals.

Mike and I decided to pay for our own food day-to-day. (We could have opted for an all inclusive price, our guide paying for everything.)

In the end, the 11 days (including tips) cost me about $500 total. The highest price we were quoted was about $1000.

We don’t recommend signing on with some guy you’ve not researched in advance. But in this case, it worked.

A straight talker, Bharat explained in no uncertain terms that we could not start for 3 days due to the National holiday called Tihar or Deepawali in Nepal. The government permit offices would be closed.

During the 3 day delay we did some shopping and enjoyed Tihar in wonderful Bhaktapur.

Frustrated at the time, that delay turned out to be a blessing. If we had departed immediately, we might have been stopped by a freak snow storm at 5106m (16,751ft) Larkya Pass, the crux of the Circuit.

We had plenty of time for last minute research.

I visited (KEEP) Kathmandu Environmental Education Project  (and Porters’ Clothing Bank) to check past trip reports.

The day before departure we met back at Touch Paradise to pay the second half of our trip cost. And collect our permits.

For Manaslu we needed 3 permits:

• 2013 $20 / person Manaslu Conservation Area Park (MCAP) permit
• 2013 $20 / person Annapurna Conservation Area Park (ACAP) permit
• 2013 $70 / group Manaslu Restricted Area permit
• 2013 … no TIMS (Trekkers Information Management System) card was required

We were good to go!

The delay allowed time for me to celebrate my 57th birthday at Kilroy’s. Mike insisted we splurge on a bottle of Shiraz.

see high resolution photos from this day on flickr

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