Bit from the letters ~
“Remember that the “summit” is merely the halfway point and that there is plenty more adventure to be had on the “return” portion of the trip.”
~
Before this trek, if you had asked me for a definition of a crampon, I would have guessed it had something to do with a menstrual cycle, and self-arrest may have been a citizen’s arrest you perform on yourself.
[Maybe there should be a mountaineering version of Balderdash for those of us not in the know.]
This, among many other reasons, pretty much disqualifies me from making the summit climb, as I would be roped to other climbers who would need me to respond like a functionally trained climber while crossing glaciers, avoiding crevasses, and repelling down mountain faces. (I think all of that is lingo-ly correct?)
As the rest of our team attempted the summit on Mera Peak, Luke and I descended roughly 5,000 feet to counter Luke’s altitude sickness, which meant I got to take my first hot shower in about ten days.
[By ‘hot shower’, I mean standing in a shed with an old, large, plastic paint bucket affixed with a plastic spigot and filled with boiling water sitting on a shelf above my head, with another paint bucket on the floor, filled with ice cold glacier creek water and a small pitcher, to temper the boiling water.]
Then, on to having some clean clothes, because we got to do our laundry.
[By ‘do our laundry’, I mean taking a large basin, filling it with cold creek water, scrubbing down our clothes with bar soap, and then hanging them out to dry.]
With the waterfalls in the background and the playlist Ange made me for this trip playing on Luke’s phone while we scrub, it is not a bad way to pass a relaxing, sunny afternoon in Khote, a mountain village at roughly 12,000 feet.
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