Month: October 2023



I am now on Day 3 of my extended solo trek to Cholatse base camp.

My couple of days in Kathmandu passed quickly. Holly arrived by bus from the Annapurna region and we had some fun meals together. I got all my gear sorted out. The second afternoon, I took a taxi to Boudhanath Temple, an epicenter of Tibetan Buddhism in Kathmandu, and walked around soaking it in.

Throughout my time in Kathmandu, I was happily surprised by the sunlight. It was the clear, mountain-like light that I recall from my first visit in 1982. On recent visits, the city has been choked by air pollution. I assumed that the striking sunlight which had made an impression on me was a thing of the past. But now it was back. Part of this was the season: Kathmandu in autumn has clearer weather than in the more humid pre-monsoon springs when I have visited recently. And part of it was due to a major holiday, which suppressed traffic and kept the streets relatively empty. Whatever the cause, it was comforting. Here is a photo of the afternoon light at Boudhanath.

The following morning, October 25, I flew to Lukla to begin my trek. I will meet Holly and the rest of the climbing team at Cholatse base camp on November 3. Given the unpredictable nature of commercial flights to Lukla, I traveled in style, sharing a helicopter with a climbing guide for another expedition and a cargo of their supplies. The chopper was continuing up to the village of Namche, which it would take me two days to walk to. I declined their offer of a ride, as I was looking forward to covering the terrain on foot.

Lukla is where the vast majority of Everest region trekkers and climbers begin their journey. I know a number of you have been there. I passed through it with Jill in 1990, and again in 2021 with my Everest team. In 2021, after being dismayed by how much Kathmandu had changed in the thirty years since I had last been there, I wondered what the Khumbu region would look like. I ended up rejoicing in how much of the magic remained. But I also noted that the Khumbu in 2021 was void of virtually all tourism, as Covid was still casting its long shadow. I wondered then how it would feel in a normal tourism year.

Well, this is a normal tourism year, and October is peak trekking season. Moreover, the first two days of my trek, up to Namche, would take me on the most trafficked two days of the most popular trek in Nepal. My expectations were muted. Worst case, it would only be a few days before I left the crowds behind and headed into less traveled valleys. I climbed out of the chopper, shouldered my pack, and hit the trail.

Writing this from Namche, I can happily report that the magic of the Khumbu endures, even on the most frequented trails in peak trekking season. While there are indeed far more groups, and more trailside lodges catering to them, the core essence of what I loved about Nepal forty years ago remains. The same beautiful countryside, the same simplicity of mountain villages reached only by trails, the same politeness and dignity of the local people, the same vibrancy of culture. It is remarkable to me that this had held up as streams of tourists pass through, but it has.

The first two days up to Namche were on many dimensions more satisfying than expected. The long lines of trekkers I kept having to pass were a minor annoyance, but no more than that. I decided to get an early start the second day to get out ahead of them, which worked great. Here is a photo of the view out my lodge window as I got ready to leave.

Ahead of the trekking groups, I delighted in sharing the trail with local porters, and in exchanging greetings with villagers working in their fields or sweeping their shop fronts. I thought about how wonderful the Nepali greeting “Namaste ” is: “I salute your divine qualities “; offered to strangers of all types, and unfailingly returned.

I also delighted in having to pull aside to let the yak trains pass; their drivers uttering the familiar guttural grunts to direct their charges. Equally, I delighted in hearing the bells of oncoming mule caravans, looking the way they did centuries ago carrying goods over the passes from Tibet, on these very trails. Only they now carry propane tanks and goods associated with the trekking trade to villages and climbing camps.

And then there is the mountain light. As with the light in Kathmandu, it is present with an intensity that I haven’t experienced in recent visits. This may be in part because I am in the middle of a stretch of great weather, but it also has much to do with the season. My Everest climbs were of necessity in the spring, but October and November are renowned for their clear weather, especially in the mornings. In ways I can’t adequately put into words, walking through crisp mountain air as the sun warms your body and hits the surrounding peaks is transporting.

I pulled into Namche yesterday afternoon and checked into the same lodge I stayed at in 2021 with my Everest team. The mother and son who run the place welcomed me back warmly. This morning, I was greeted with this view over Namche from my room.

I am staying two days here to help with acclimatization. After an early breakfast this morning, I hiked up the ridge above town to a popular spot from where you can see Everest. Here is the view. You will need to zoom in to see Everest itself, which is the small pyramid in the distant middle, rising above the mountain wall connecting Lhotse and Nuptse. It all looks much closer in real life.

When I stood at this exact spot in 2021, I remember looking up at Everest’s summit, as if I were looking at the moon, and saying to myself in awe: “I am going there”. It didn’t quite happen in 2021, but it did a year later. This morning, I stood at that same spot for a long time, looking up, saying to myself with deep satisfaction: “I have been there”. It was a feeling for a lifetime.

But here is something else. This morning, I looked up at the peak on the far left in the photo and realized it was Cholatse. I could see the exact ridge we will be climbing. I said to myself: ” Holly and I are going there”. Another feeling for a lifetime.

Tomorrow, I will leave the main trekking route and head into more remote valleys. My first stop will be the village of Thame, where Lakpa Rita Sherpa – our Sirdar on Everest in 2021- grew up. Every day, Lakpa walked the distance I will trek tomorrow round trip, to attend school in Namche. (But he wasn’t carrying a 35 lb pack!)

If all goes according to plan, I will cross the 17,500 foot Renjo La pass on October 31 and descend to the village of Gokyo. My guess is that Gokyo will be the next place that has internet, so I will likely post again from there.

All good so far. I am loving the mountain light.

When I returned from Everest in May of 2022, I pronounced my “gap two and a half years” officially over. Then I turned to figuring out how I wanted to spend my time going forward. I knew I wanted to re-engage with some nonprofit boards, and to serve on a corporate board I was in discussions with, but the rest was up for grabs.

In the months that followed, one thing came into focus. While I liked everything I was getting re-involved with, I didn’t want to fully lose the spirit of my gap year. The two and a half years I had spent climbing mountains, cross country ski racing, and doing daily workouts had been rich with purpose, satisfaction, and joy. Why walk away from that? As I ramped up my mainstream commitments, I resolved to keep some “gap” in the mix.

Calendars have a way of filling up. I knew I would need to be purposeful in creating and protecting gaps. Jill and I spent another winter in Vermont, where we cross country skied pretty much every day, and in May we spent a really fun month in the British countryside. I also got in some great backcountry skiing in British Columbia. While I didn’t feel a need to return to the world’s absolute highest mountains, mountains in general still exerted a powerful pull, and I was mindful that I wouldn’t be physically able to climb them forever. Several options for expeditions presented themselves, and I identified a four week block of time that, with calendar surgery, could be fit into a busy fall.

And so it is that I arrived this morning in Nepal to climb a jagged, 21,000 foot peak named Cholatse overlooking the Khumbu Valley. Here is a photo pulled from the web which shows it in relation to Everest and other neighbors.

And here is a close up taken by a climbing guide named Guy Cotter. I will be climbing the ridge on the right.

There are a lot of wonderful things about how this climb came together. I will be climbing with Phil Crampton, the Expedition Leader I was on Everest with in 2022. Supporting us will be the same Sherpas I climbed to the summit with. Other team members include two Aussies and an American, all experienced climbers. But most wonderful is that our 29 year old daughter Holly will be joining as well.

Holly took the past year off from her job as an investment banker to travel alone around the world. Among her many adventures have been climbs of big mountains in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Pakistan. When I committed to Cholatse last spring, I had no idea where Holly would be in the fall and I didn’t expect her to be a part of it. Then she ended up spending the months of September and October in Nepal, and decided that joining the Cholatse climb was a great thing to do before completing her year off and heading back to the U.S. Suddenly, a climb I was already excited about took on a whole new layer of meaning.

Mountaineering rituals start well in advance of setting foot on the mountain. I have been training hard for this all year, following pattens similar to those I used in preparation for Everest. As the departure date approached, I methodically assembled gear and created detailed checklists. This led, as usual, to a living room full of carefully arranged piles. In this case, a few of the piles were for Holly.

Happily, all of it made it into two duffles. Jill braved rain and traffic to drop me at Logan Airport.

The trip to Kathmandu, via Doha, also had the feeling of ritual. It was the same airline and flights I took to Everest in 2021 and 2022. During the same six hour layover in the same airport lounge, I had the same romantic feeling of time traveling between worlds, and the same feeling of contentment and anticipation. Per custom, I sat on the left side of the plane so I could watch the early morning sun illuminate Dhaulagiri and the Annapurna range as we approached Kathmandu.

The ride this morning from the airport to the hotel was through familiar streets, blessedly free of traffic and air pollution thanks to a major holiday keeping people outside the city. The October air and bright sun was reminiscent of forty years ago, when I spent a fall in what was then an exotic, charming, mountain valley town. Passing through the gates of the Yak and Yeti hotel, where I holed up before and after both of my Everest climbs, felt like a homecoming. Jill and I also stayed at the Y and Y briefly in 1990 during our first year of marriage.

I spent this afternoon changing dollars into stacks of rupees, picking up last minute items in local shops, and dividing gear between my backpack and a duffle full of climbing stuff that will be transported to base camp by a combination of porters and yaks. Holly is spending the day riding back to Kathmandu on a bus, having just finished a month of trekking in the Annapurna region. It will be beyond wonderful to see her this evening.

After spending one more day in Kathmandu, I will head into the mountains and start an extended, solo trek to base camp. Holly will spend a few days resting up after her Annapurna trek, then meet up with the rest of our climbing team in Kathmandu. They will then fly to the Khumbu and spend five days trekking together to base camp, where I will meet them on November 3. My trek, which will take ten days, is going to make a long arc through a valley west of the Everest region, then climb over a high pass and down through another valley to Cholatse. The attached screenshot from Google Maps shows my intended route, bending clockwise in blue. Cholatse is circled in red. If you zoom in, you can find Everest base camp in the upper right. If I have time, I may trek up a relatively unvisited glacier system to the base of Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth highest mountain, (as depicted by the up and back blue line at the top of the arc.)

Forty-eight hours from now, I will be on the trail, heading up to high mountain valleys and passes that make my heart sing. While I enjoy trekking in company, I also enjoy it solo. Reflection flows easily, and there is a oneness with my surroundings that is meditative and spiritual. Then I will join a like-minded team and climb a beautiful, challenging mountain. Not only that, but I will climb it with my daughter! I am blessed. Unlike Everest, which typically takes 4-7 weeks to climb after reaching base camp, Cholatse should only take a couple of weeks. I will be home before Thanksgiving.

In 2019, I climbed the highest peak in Antarctica, Vinson Massif, with son Will; a shared experience I will cherish forever. While I am not a strong enough biker to keep up with son John on his long rides, I hope someday to pull off at least one with him. These kinds of things are at the core of what I treasure. That is what makes Holly coming on Cholatse so special.

My last blog post was 15 months ago. I thought I was done, but a number of you encouraged me to give it another go for Cholatse. So I think I will. The next post will be from somewhere on my approach trek. Please follow along if you are so inclined, and feel free to tune me out if you aren’t. I will more than understand.

Namaste!