one night in a yak pasture . . .

Between March and the middle of May, I completed all the interviews I had planned to do in Khumbu. I hoped to get a Kathmandu friend or two to meet me in Khumbu to explore the Bhote Valley, a little trekked river valley through which an ancient Tibetan trading route leads over the Nangpa La (pass) into Tibet. Until a few years ago, foreigners were not allowed to venture very far up the Bhote Valley because of the sensitivity of the border. These days, trekkers are permitted but there's no tourist infrastructure - no lodges or tea shops, very few permanent houses because most of the route is above 4000 meters. The ancient, yet undeveloped, character of the area piqued my curiosity, and I hoped to venture up toward Nangpa La with a friend, a tent, and a backpack full of instant noodles.

All the Kathmandu friends were busy with their real jobs. However, a friend-of-a-friend had recently arrived in Kathmandu and was headed up to Namche, the largest town and jumping off point for all treks in Khumbu. Maybe we could trek together, my friend suggested. The new friend (Marjorie), on a four-month vacation before starting grad school, was understandably keen to trek up the Everest Base Camp trail. Nangpa La held less appeal for her. I'd already been up the Everest Base Camp trail to Kala Pattar, a 5545meter minor peak that provides outstanding views of Everest. I wasn't interested in crowding into the lodges again with the type of trekkers I'd met on that route, those who generally seemed hellbound for glory. Eventually, Marjorie and I settled on a route that would take us part way up the Bhote Valley, across a high pass, Renjo La, to the Gokyo Valley - a stunning blue and green valley of five lakes that I had visited in the fall - and across another high pass, Cho La, to the Everest river valley, where she could walk upward toward Base Camp, and I could head down to the airport. The route was ambitious, but after a day's warm-up hike to the next village up, we found that we hiked well and fast together and felt confident about tackling the challenge. Our plan met my goal of seeing new territory, especially in the Bhote Valley, and her goal of getting to Everest Base Camp.

Our short jaunt of two half-days up the Bhote Valley to Lungde only whetted my appetite for further exploration of the valley. Steep black rock faces line one side of the deep U-shaped valley. Dun-colored hills, punctuated by rock walls delineating summer herding settlements, roll toward Tibet on the other side. The scale of the landscape dwarfs the few stone houses that provide refuge to yak herders; yaks appear only as black specks in the tan above the pewter river. Half a day above Lungde, the valley opens even wider to admit a glacier flowing in from the left. Tiny braided streams weave out of the glacier on their way to becoming the rollicking river down below.

From Lungde, the site of the last lodge in this valley, we climbed through the dun-colored hills to a lake in a green hanging valley with a tiny herding shelter. We followed a yak herder and his flock around the lake toward a higher valley, this one devoid of vegetation. Steep, loose, broken rock filled the valley, and as we stood looking around the bowl, more rock thundered down. The jagged ramparts made escape appear impossible, yet somewhere above us in this drainage was our pass to Gokyo.

Slowly, through a series of cairns and worn spots on the rock, the trail unfolded in front of us, and we found a way up the less steep parts of the rock walls on narrow paths. The lodge owner had reminded us that yaks go over this pass. When the going go tough, yak droppings helped verify the way. Above and ahead were prayer flags, tiny at first and growing bigger with every step, pulling us toward the top. Finally, there was no higher to go. After the requisite top-of-the-world photo, we began the long scramble down toward Gokyo.

Reaching Gokyo in the late afternoon, after nearly eight hours of steep, tenuous hiking, we collapsed gratefully beside the lake. The guide and porter of friends we had met previously came down to meet us and carried our bags to the lodge while we followed wearily. Gokyo boasts spectacular views of the entire high Himal as well as the turquoise lakes. However the afternoon fog had rolled in, obscuring everything but the nearest lodge. The clouds were even thicker the following day, erasing the lake that was only a few hundred meters below the lodge. The clouds also erased any desire to venture beyond the wood-stove heated dining room of the lodge, enforcing a rest day and allowing us to recover our energy.

Buoyed by our success on what everyone described as a challenging pass, we agreed to continue as planned, crossing Cho La the following day. We were told that it was much easier and that after Renjo La, we would “love” it. The fact that everyone else crossed Cho La with guides didn't faze us - if we had self-guided over Renjo La, surely we would have no problems on Cho La. Somehow, in all the discussions with other trekkers, however, we neglected to get a precise description of the route.

To reach the village at the trail leading up to Cho La, we first had to cross a large (the largest in Nepal) rubble-strewn glacier. In that grey-white landscape of boulders, ice and sand, every way looked like a trail, every pile of rocks like a cairn. Every route seemed to be a dead end, leading into a melt pool where chunks of ice fell with alarming splashes while the uneven ground groaned beneath our feet. Backtracking seemed to take centuries as we wound our way up and down through boulders and hillocks. The hour crossing grew to three, and our patience wore thin.

By the time we reached Dragnak, the village below the pass, we had burned a precious amount of both daylight and energy. It was already 10:30 am when we sat down to eat lunch and reconsider our plan. It was a beautiful clear day, and after seeing the depths to which the weather sank on the previous day, we didn't want to waste sunshine. I was also feeling some urgency to get back to Kathmandu, and didn't want to sit around waiting for the weather to clear if it got cloudy again. We had planned to leave Dragnak at 9:00, or 10:00 at the very latest. By the time we finished our egg and cheese sandwiches, it was 11:00. We set a turn-around time of 2:30, or no later than 3:00. If we weren't already going down the other side of the pass at that point, we would return to Dragnak.

The way above Dragnak was well-worn, following a burbling stream. After gaining some altitude, our trail branched off, cutting across faded hills as the fog rolled in. We reached the crest of a hill just in time to see the clouds part to reveal a perfect U-shaped notch directly across from us on the opposite side of the valley. That was clearly our pass, all we had to do was walk straight toward it.

We walked and climbed, following a fairly straight-forward route, and reached the top of the pass at 3:30 as clouds gathered and cleared again, revealing impossibly blue sky. Marjorie reached the top first and shouted 'Hooray!' Coming up behind her, I looked over the top and had a completely different response: 'Oh, shit!' There in front of us was a huge ice glacier, tilted at perhaps 10 degrees and shiny with moisture in the afternoon sun, which we were not prepared to cross. Unlike the flat, rubble-strewn glacier we'd crossed in the morning, this glacier offered no way to gain purchase on its slippery surface and we lacked crampons. Somehow, no one we'd talked to had mentioned the glacier crossing!

We searched - in vain, it turned out - for a way around the glacier. It was set snugly in a deep bowl, and the rocks around it rose too steeply to allow passage. Knowing that the next village was only a couple hours down hill, we were eager to find a way around the glacier. By 5:00 pm, we had to admit that there was none, and retraced our steps down the rocky part of the pass, back in the direction we'd come.

On the valley floor, we began crossing the black talus of dry drainages, hopping from one rock to the next in the half-light of sunset. The path, which was just the lack of lichen on certain rocks was hard to discern, becoming nearly impossible as the sun set and the new moon didn't rise.

As I picked my way across the rocks, I suddenly found myself being spun along the uneven ground, the heft of my backpack rolling me over and over. And then - BAM - face-planted into a rock on the bridge of my nose, which immediately began draining my entire volume of blood onto the rocks. Dazed, I asked Marjorie 'what happened?' while she stuffed toilet paper under my nose and wrapped me in jackets. Exhaustion, a misstep, darkness and black rock, and then on the ground trying to figure out what to do next.

Once the bleeding was under control and everything else seemed to be working fine, we soldiered on, trying to find the way out. It soon became clear that trying to walk over talus with our puny headlamps and slow pace, we weren't going to reach Dragnak in the dark.

Though there were plenty of yak around, we couldn't find the herder's hut. Instead, we found a nice canoe-shaped space between two large boulders in a yak pasture. We spread out our sleeping bags, ate the boiled potatoes left over from our lunch ten hours before, cleaned up my face and settled down, knowing that everything would be ok as long as it didn't rain on our down sleeping bagsÉ

The clouds proceed to drop a light mist, growing into a steady rain. Goretex jackets, a plastic garbage bag and hiking poles created a makeshift tent between the boulders. With all our clothes, plus our sleeping bags and body heat, we were warm enough, if not especially comfortable. Marjorie set her watch alarm to wake me up every two hours and verify that my bump on the head hadn't developed into anything worse. This little game helped the night go by more quickly.

The sky gets brighter at 4:00, but it wasn't until 5:00 am that the light was strong enough to ascertain where we were and where we needed to go. We packed up and slowly made our way back to the village, encountering a trekker on his way up in the early morning light. After we shared our story, he said, 'Well, are you going to try again?' Feeling exhausted and beat-up, we both laughed at the hubris of that question. Reaching the village and lodge, I ate breakfast and promptly fell asleep for the entire day, only to wake for dinner and find our friend from the trail slouched in a corner, looking beat-up and planning to go down to Namche. He had been stymied by the pass also.

The nose knows. It was time for me to go down.

[It is, in all likelihood, broken.]

Pictures.