We had a four day holiday at Easter and decided that we would go trekking. A new route has opened up thanks to the initiative of a local family (www.mardihimaltrek.com) who thought that a simple, short trek that is less touristy and hasn't had roads built on it was needed.
We started the trek at Kande which is 1770m and spent the first day walking up to forest camp (2460m) through rhododendron forests. The flowers have mostly finished now but a few trees still looked beautiful. The climb was hot but we enjoyed it. Compared to the more village trekking we had done this felt much more like NZ tramping through bush.
This is forest camp, where we spent the first night (2450m). The rooms had a bed (if you look carefully you can see a dog inspecting our room) but there was no lounge area. It was cold here so we spent the evening next to the cooking fire in the kitchen.
As we were walking up to the camp we wondered why we saw so many areas where bamboo had been cut down. We then discovered that they were building more rooms at forest camp and need the bamboo for the baskets to carry the building product, the mats to make the shelter that they were working under.....
The next day we climbed to High camp. The maps available here aren't always accurate - the map says the camp is at 3900 but the GPS with 10 satelites says 3500 and in the Everest region we had two maps with different altitudes and a guide book with the same altitudes as our GPS so we trust the GPS. To the maps credit - the map is 1:55,000 and goes from 800m above sea level to 8000m so accuracy must be hard over such a short area!
To reach high camp we walked through low camp. We had a few navigational issues but we found the camp - and it was worth it!
Just after low camp (3000m - height of Ruapehu) we left the snow line and got into alpine scrub! We were very happy! However, the rhododendrons were still very present, at times even growing in snow!
We reached high camp about 1pm so spent the afternoon lazying around in the sun and watching the yaks that lived there. This one was one day old, another was only 15 days old.
The next morning - Easter Sunday, dawned clear and Mark and I set of early (but not to early as the path was icy) up to the base camp. Again, the map says 4500m, GPS said 4100m!
Machhapuchhure...
Annapurna South and Him Chuli
We saw an avalanche on the other side of the valley - it was a long way away as the valley was 1500m below us! That is the valley that people walk up to Annapurna base camp but it was never going to fall that far.
Annapurna South (left) and Him Chuli. This is the first time in Nepal that Mark and I have been walking on snow and we were so excited - forgotten how much we missed it.
Behind Mark is Gungapurna and Annapurna 3.
Looking 1500m into the valley - falling was not an option and we actually stopped about 100m from the base camp as the conditions were a little icy.
I was breath taken by the small glaciers going down the side of the hill and finishing as steep waterfalls into the base camp trek valley
This is a picture of the knife edge ridge I was talking about!
We then started to head down the ridge again, through high camp and down. We had to navigate around yaks in order to leave the camp - while they appear friendly apparently they can get nasty really quickly and we weren't all that keen to find out - not on this terrain!
On Sunday, after going to the top and coming back to high camp for an early lunch we dropped 2000m net (gross was more as we were on a ridge) in five hours. On Monday we then dropped another 1100m to the finish at Phedi, Mondays trip being down one long flight of stone steps!!! We are both very very sore today!
It was a great trek and doesn't have to be done as fast as we did it - we just like to push ourselves sometimes!
