Nepal 2013 ~ Annapurna Circuit : Over the pass!

Sleeping at 15k feet is not the easiest to say the least. You are cocooned in your sleeping bag, full clothes sans boots and ready to go for the early morning wake up and it's hovering around zero.

I called it a night at around 7. I fell asleep watching a Breaking Bad episode and woke up to what I thought would be something close to the 4:30am alarm, only to look at my watch and find out it was 10:15pm...a long night just got longer.

So a 4:30 wake up followed by a 4:45 breakfast of porridge and bread with a side of cliff bar (chocolate chip for those keeping score) and we were on the trail by 5:00.

The moon was just past full so the amount of ambient light was nice but headlamps and full out down gear to stay warm was needed. About an hour in there is a little hut that we stopped at for tea just as the sun was starting to rise behind the mountains.

View of sunrise from the tea hut.

The trail was straight forward but also straight up. Once the sun finally cast it's warm rays around 7:30 and we reached the top of the pass at around 9:15.

My guide and friend Kewal

Flat Mr Roberts and travel monkey make it to the top of the pass at 17,800 feet.

Much fanfare, high fives and struggles for a deep breath and photos and after about 25 minutes at 25 degrees we were ready to hit the trail down.

One typically forgets about the trip down when being focused on staying healthy and getting to the top. This was a big mistake as the distance on the down was pretty big.

Going up the pass was a gain of about 900 meters and 3.5 hours. Going down was 5 hours and a drop of almost 1,700 meters and it hurt. A massive quad killer. Still walking a little gingerly from it.