I have hiked and climbed in the mountains near my home in Washington State for 30 years. Many of my outdoor friends have traveled to other countries, visited the world’s tallest mountains, but my friends return home to report that it’s hard to beat the beauty of a small pond of snowmelt in the North Cascades--a place called Kool Aid Lake--or the dramatic, up-and-down verticality of our Picket Range.
Still, I got a dream in my head many years ago that--as my friends had done--I wanted to visit Nepal and the Himalaya, to see Mt. Everest, the top of the world. My home mountains are wilderness--no one lives there. Looking at a map of Nepal, I could see the names of the famous peaks (Everest, Nuptse, Ama Dablam) and also the interesting-sounding villages (Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Gorak Shep.) It seemed to me that in Nepal I could combine the physical experience of travel in high and wild places with the cultural experience of meeting people who call those mountains home.
For 30 years, I talked about "going to Nepal." I bought books and maps. I studied routes. The trip had a Wish List existence but nothing more. One day about six months ago Leah said: “We aren’t getting any younger, the mountains aren’t getting any easier to climb. If we’re going to go, we better go.”
And so we went.
It felt weird, getting on a plane, flying toward a dream. We spent a few days in Kathmandu (a crazy, frantic place that does nothing to bring normalcy into a visitor's life,) then we flew to Lukla (elevation 9350 feet.) We began walking. And we walked, and walked some more. We walked for 21 days, with an eventual high point of 18,200 feet. We returned home two days ago after being away for nearly a month. Above you see a photograph I shot of Mt. Everest, catching the last light of day in a manner befitting the highest point on our planet. Below are a few of the beautiful human faces we saw. These three pictures seem like a proper introduction to the trip we did--a trip that was a coming-together, as I’d hoped, of mountains and the people who live near them.
Over the next several weeks I plan to post a lot more pictures...& just enough words to add context.
Please stay tuned. I hope you enjoy sharing in an adventure that was 30 years in the making.
Namaste.
