I'm ba-ack
Just got back from Asia yesterday. It says something about the evolution of social media that I was addicted to WiFi so I could update Twitter, Fitocracy, and Facebook (ok, mostly Fitocracy), but I couldn't come up with sufficiently coherent observations for LJ while I was gone.
The trip was incredible, start to finish, even if it was nothing like what I expected. AISOT, Kathmandu was exactly like an Instagram: the whole city felt like a movie set of what exotic travel should look like, with a 70s sheen. The Himalayas are the most beautiful mountain range I've ever seen and I feel privileged to have seen them in person. After crossing multiple rivers on scary suspension bridges, I decided I had to go whitewater rafting, which took me to a different part of Nepal. That too was fascinating because it was more like India. It was just like the Jungle Cruise at Disney to paddle past temples and naked children swimming in the river. It's been a while since I've been in a major city other than NYC, but I think Hong Kong is an absolutely amazing place; I'm so glad my uncle moved there, bc otherwise I'd have missed it.
There were a lot of tough parts. I've been on climbing trips before and I've gone walkabout for 10weeks, but I never thought about what it would be like to start the climbing trip after 2 weeks in a third world country. Nepal is the poorest country I've ever been to. After a day of viewing temples in Kathmandu, all I wanted was a/c, a hamburger, and some extravagent retail experiences. (Fortunately for me, I was headed to HK that night.)
I blame myself for getting sick at the beginning of the trip. I didn't manage my initial jet lag well, sleeping about 2 hrs a night for a few nights, and ended up getting a runny nose and a cough on day 5 of the expedition. I'm still coughing. I got major props from my teammates for climbing fargin' mountains with that cough, but then my ribs started to hurt. The trauma surgeon said that people don't break ribs from coughing, they usually pull a muscle or get microfractures. I was taking Tylenol + Voltaren for it during the trip; now that I'm home, Advil keeps it under control. I also had 3 bouts of GI distress. After watching my teammates all come down with something so unpleasant, my guide stayed behind for a day, I took the z-pack as soon as I started coming down with the second one. I'm not sure if I'm over the third one yet: it's been a week of moderate, intermittent symptoms, so I'm keeping my second z-pack handy. I feel guilty about that too, since I assume I got it from eating at a roadside shack in a culture where they eat curried rice with their hands. (In my defense, there was a strike going on and I didn't know when I'd be able to get food again.)
It would be easy to spin this trip negatively. Of the three objectives of the trip (Everest Base Camp, Lobuche, Ama Dablam), I reached one. Going to EBC was going to be 3 hard days in a row and my guide and I hoped that resting at Lobuche would make my cold (if that's what it was) better. (It didn't.) Two different climbing friends who've been to Nepal told me Lobuche is fugly, but I totally disagreed, even before we climbed it. That was the best summit day I've ever had, probably bc I had a private sherpa who kept my pace exactly, told me exactly how to set up my gear at the fixed lines, and carried my crap down.
With my health so dodgy, I almost didn't go to Ama Dablam at all, but decided to try anyhow. I think the guiding company made some errors on that mountain that made it harder for our team to summit. I was slow but very steady getting up to Camp 1; one of the other women insisted on walking behind me the whole way bc she liked my steady pace (and she'd had altitude problems on Lobuche). Unfortunately, that night, I had trouble breathing, which scared me a lot. My guide fixed my immediate problems by re-tucking me into my sleeping bag. I later found out/realized it was probably bc I didn't leave the tent open while I slept :(:(:( In any event, I decided not to take my respiratory problems further up the mountain. The strongest member of my team made it 50m from the summit -- and everyone who went higher seemed a little jealous that I'd gone down earlier. Everyone who got to Camp 2 got grazed by lightning. The only people who seem to have summited Ama Dablam this spring were the guy who has the Eiger speed record (and his climbing buddy and 2 sherpas) and a 7-fingered fellow from Italy. The latter told us he had two different fixed lines pop out while he was hanging on them. I believe I would've handled these experiences with grace and calm, but now I'll never know.
I know I say I'm done with foo every time I come back, but I really am done with mountaineering for its own sake. I've been realizing over the past year or two that I like the technical parts best. Some of you have heard my comparison of my climbing club to TES, while expeditions are more like national scene events. It's true - the former have such a provincial outlook. It's kept me from feeling good about "cragging", even though cragging optimizes things I like (technical climbing) while minimizing things I don't like (lack of good food/showers, being cold, walking uphill both ways forever). Moreover, I've about accomplished every intermediate peak that is commonly climbed; I've tried every type of mountaineering of interest and every peak that sounded really interesting. Anyhow, this is why I'm not planning on climbing any more mountains, unless a partner/friend really really wants to. I have a list that I'm hoping someone will want to do at some point - the Matterhorn, the Caucasuses, maybe a Camp Muir-utilizing route on Rainier - but I could also happily climb hard shit in the Bugaboos, Squamish, New River Gorge, Cathedral Ledge, or day trips in Rocky Mountain National Park and sleep in a bed every night. Well, when I'm in the mood to climb again. But a lot of it is that I found my limit: I always knew I'd never climb Everest (and now I can articulate why), but I didn't know how close I'd come. Another way of looking at it is that I've homed in on the sweet spot of what I like in this hobby.
I'm also seriously thinking about doing more water sports. I loved rafting on the Trishuli. It was class 2-3 rapids, which was just the right speed for my sense of adventure after Ama Dablam. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready to take a boat through such rapids by myself, but I'd like to add whitewater rafting to my search criteria in future vacation planning. Next time I have a long vacation, I think I'd like to raft somewhere exotic. It's not a very practical local hobby though, so I think I'll have to take up kayaking. What I find interesting is the physics of water and boat. As a personal note, it's interesting that I'm becoming attracted to a sport with a dynamic element. Rocks don't move, usually, whereas I've always been terrified of paragliding and hang gliding, even though air is my element. If I hadn't just got back, I'd be considering Body Boat Blade's 5 day kayak camp, but it's time for me to find a job and all that.
The trip was incredible, start to finish, even if it was nothing like what I expected. AISOT, Kathmandu was exactly like an Instagram: the whole city felt like a movie set of what exotic travel should look like, with a 70s sheen. The Himalayas are the most beautiful mountain range I've ever seen and I feel privileged to have seen them in person. After crossing multiple rivers on scary suspension bridges, I decided I had to go whitewater rafting, which took me to a different part of Nepal. That too was fascinating because it was more like India. It was just like the Jungle Cruise at Disney to paddle past temples and naked children swimming in the river. It's been a while since I've been in a major city other than NYC, but I think Hong Kong is an absolutely amazing place; I'm so glad my uncle moved there, bc otherwise I'd have missed it.
There were a lot of tough parts. I've been on climbing trips before and I've gone walkabout for 10weeks, but I never thought about what it would be like to start the climbing trip after 2 weeks in a third world country. Nepal is the poorest country I've ever been to. After a day of viewing temples in Kathmandu, all I wanted was a/c, a hamburger, and some extravagent retail experiences. (Fortunately for me, I was headed to HK that night.)
I blame myself for getting sick at the beginning of the trip. I didn't manage my initial jet lag well, sleeping about 2 hrs a night for a few nights, and ended up getting a runny nose and a cough on day 5 of the expedition. I'm still coughing. I got major props from my teammates for climbing fargin' mountains with that cough, but then my ribs started to hurt. The trauma surgeon said that people don't break ribs from coughing, they usually pull a muscle or get microfractures. I was taking Tylenol + Voltaren for it during the trip; now that I'm home, Advil keeps it under control. I also had 3 bouts of GI distress. After watching my teammates all come down with something so unpleasant, my guide stayed behind for a day, I took the z-pack as soon as I started coming down with the second one. I'm not sure if I'm over the third one yet: it's been a week of moderate, intermittent symptoms, so I'm keeping my second z-pack handy. I feel guilty about that too, since I assume I got it from eating at a roadside shack in a culture where they eat curried rice with their hands. (In my defense, there was a strike going on and I didn't know when I'd be able to get food again.)
It would be easy to spin this trip negatively. Of the three objectives of the trip (Everest Base Camp, Lobuche, Ama Dablam), I reached one. Going to EBC was going to be 3 hard days in a row and my guide and I hoped that resting at Lobuche would make my cold (if that's what it was) better. (It didn't.) Two different climbing friends who've been to Nepal told me Lobuche is fugly, but I totally disagreed, even before we climbed it. That was the best summit day I've ever had, probably bc I had a private sherpa who kept my pace exactly, told me exactly how to set up my gear at the fixed lines, and carried my crap down.
With my health so dodgy, I almost didn't go to Ama Dablam at all, but decided to try anyhow. I think the guiding company made some errors on that mountain that made it harder for our team to summit. I was slow but very steady getting up to Camp 1; one of the other women insisted on walking behind me the whole way bc she liked my steady pace (and she'd had altitude problems on Lobuche). Unfortunately, that night, I had trouble breathing, which scared me a lot. My guide fixed my immediate problems by re-tucking me into my sleeping bag. I later found out/realized it was probably bc I didn't leave the tent open while I slept :(:(:( In any event, I decided not to take my respiratory problems further up the mountain. The strongest member of my team made it 50m from the summit -- and everyone who went higher seemed a little jealous that I'd gone down earlier. Everyone who got to Camp 2 got grazed by lightning. The only people who seem to have summited Ama Dablam this spring were the guy who has the Eiger speed record (and his climbing buddy and 2 sherpas) and a 7-fingered fellow from Italy. The latter told us he had two different fixed lines pop out while he was hanging on them. I believe I would've handled these experiences with grace and calm, but now I'll never know.
I know I say I'm done with foo every time I come back, but I really am done with mountaineering for its own sake. I've been realizing over the past year or two that I like the technical parts best. Some of you have heard my comparison of my climbing club to TES, while expeditions are more like national scene events. It's true - the former have such a provincial outlook. It's kept me from feeling good about "cragging", even though cragging optimizes things I like (technical climbing) while minimizing things I don't like (lack of good food/showers, being cold, walking uphill both ways forever). Moreover, I've about accomplished every intermediate peak that is commonly climbed; I've tried every type of mountaineering of interest and every peak that sounded really interesting. Anyhow, this is why I'm not planning on climbing any more mountains, unless a partner/friend really really wants to. I have a list that I'm hoping someone will want to do at some point - the Matterhorn, the Caucasuses, maybe a Camp Muir-utilizing route on Rainier - but I could also happily climb hard shit in the Bugaboos, Squamish, New River Gorge, Cathedral Ledge, or day trips in Rocky Mountain National Park and sleep in a bed every night. Well, when I'm in the mood to climb again. But a lot of it is that I found my limit: I always knew I'd never climb Everest (and now I can articulate why), but I didn't know how close I'd come. Another way of looking at it is that I've homed in on the sweet spot of what I like in this hobby.
I'm also seriously thinking about doing more water sports. I loved rafting on the Trishuli. It was class 2-3 rapids, which was just the right speed for my sense of adventure after Ama Dablam. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready to take a boat through such rapids by myself, but I'd like to add whitewater rafting to my search criteria in future vacation planning. Next time I have a long vacation, I think I'd like to raft somewhere exotic. It's not a very practical local hobby though, so I think I'll have to take up kayaking. What I find interesting is the physics of water and boat. As a personal note, it's interesting that I'm becoming attracted to a sport with a dynamic element. Rocks don't move, usually, whereas I've always been terrified of paragliding and hang gliding, even though air is my element. If I hadn't just got back, I'd be considering Body Boat Blade's 5 day kayak camp, but it's time for me to find a job and all that.