Since Cheryl got back from Nepal in June we’ve had a couple chances to get together for yacking and planning. She told me what I might encounter with respect to food, lodging, sanitation, culture, religion, topography, climate. She looked over my heap of camping and river rafting supplies and made the welcome pronouncement that I’ve got what I need, except for my Holy Grail: painless boots.
We made preliminary plans for a route through the Khumbu region, the most strenuous of the three popular trekking areas. I always knew that trekking would be a stretch; now I know that it’s a stretch past the point of snapping: by far the biggest physical challenge I’ve ever faced. Okay, so that’s not saying much. But there was that whitewater expedition in eastern Canada, and the ill-fated backcountry ski-camping trip, and a lot of Irish leaping. Beyond those, a walk around the block is at the limit of what I do without griping.
Our thought is to fly into the Lukla airport (such as it is; see above) from Kathmandu and head toward Gokyo (el. 4750 m.) by way of Phakding > Namche Bazaar > Phortse Thanga > Dole > Machhermo. Once there, Cheryl suggested, we may want to … oh … pop over to the Everest Base Camp (5545 m.) only a ridge away. Did you know that 5545 m = 18,192 feet? The whole trip should take 2.5 to 3 weeks.
Two weeks ago Cheryl and I took a little hike up Marin Avenue which climbs 800 feet in less than a mile. Cheryl hinted that she might surreptitiously evaluate my performance. As we started up the hill I took heart in her assurance that she is a very slow hiker. Slow, my butt. She left me in the dust half a block later as I gasped like a large-mouth bass. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and less pretty a feeling, but I finally dragged my carcass up to where a perky Cheryl stood absorbing the panorama of the SF Bay. “If you can get so you can make it up this hill without any effort,” she encouraged, “you’ll have no trouble in Nepal.”
To my amazement, the poor performance of my teeny lungs and wobbly muscles didn’t provoke her to rescind her invitation to Nepal. “Why not?” I asked. “Because you didn’t whine.”
I’ve tried that same hike twice since then: two near-death experiences that made me decide I had to bite the bullet and … argh … join a gym. Today I did my first workout. The iPod Nano I won two years ago has finally come into its own. I get to listen to my old hippie stoner music as large machines fling my unwilling limbs in all directions.