Team & Approach
Nepali girl in the Hinku Valley
The team arrived in Katmandu, then Lukla fairly tired after a long flight and an even longer ‘transit’ through the building site that is Delhi airport. So it is appreciated that the first few days are both fairly easy and stay low. We ignore the quick dash over the ‘too high too soon’ Zatrwa La and instead head off South and downhill out of Lukla. Although we are heading in the opposite direction to the mountain we are getting into our stride, meeting the locals and sampling the thinner Himalayan air.
Brendan has brought a stash of balloons which never fail to place a huge toothless grin on the face of the local Sherpa youth. Other members enjoy snapping the highly photogenic tough but warm hearted Sherpa people and the digital revolution means the results can be immediately enjoyed by both subject and photographer alike.
We are a large team of 13 with a wide variety of age, background and mountaineering experience. Conversation flows freely in the mess tent although on one cool, starry night in Pangkongma it is, briefly, so quiet you could hear a leach drop…quite literally!
The first phase of our route steadily gains height to culminate in a rest day and two nights above 4000m at the fine natural high mountain campsite of Panch Pokhari (5 Lakes in Sherpa).
