Annapurna Range
April 22 It is a snowing blizzard at Brighton. A few weeks ago, well, 10 days ago I was
sleeping on a rock in a snowfield
after hiking, getting lost, snowshoeing, up to the 2nd scout lake in
the Eastern Sierra Mountains, below Mt. Whitney, cooking snow to make water, I
had been hiking for 12 hours, thinking about sitting by myself in Ama Dablam
base camp for how many days would I have to be there? Two weeks? I was thinking that soloing that
mountain was a pretty dangerous thing to do, soloing up to camp 3, until a
Himalayan snow and lightning storm chased me down the mountain in an
interminable series of rappels. I
tried to find someone to climb with this year, but, although many were
interested, no one could make that leap of faith to head to the Himalaya. And the long walk to Namche, to
Tengbouche, to base camp, without Tom or Meryl or Cam or Chris to talk to, it
seemed like a little much.
The next day, after summiting Whitney, and reaching the
trailhead at 9:30 PM, with 3 miles left to walk to the car, it was going to be
18 hours of hiking, I thought, I want to see Annapurna and scout out some other
Himalayan mountains.
Then there was the huge avalanche in the Khumbu, on
Everest killing 16 Sherpa guides, which just made me feel bad. I will return to Ama Dablam with a few
climbers next year. So Nima and
decided to go exploring into Annapurna Sanctuary, scout out some high altitude rock climbs,
go up a mountain or two. Maybe climb Singu Chuli and Tharpu Chuli.
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