July Poetry, Day 12 – Dante Ocariz

Tonight we take a little walk on the wildside and get into to the outlaw poetry world with a piece that’s right in your face by Dante Ocariz and a photo by and of yours truly ZD Blue from the Khumbu Valley of the Himalayas, enjoy! ~ ZD Blue

Photo by Z Deacon Blue

I hate to tell you but…

Dante Ocariz

Help is not coming.
You were sold a great line of soap.
And you still can’t afford the water or the gas.

You’re now sharing the front page
with a flu pandemic
and the face masks have made the general population
easier on the eyes.

the groceries have gone bad

the bullet
was really meant for you.

And if you survive this next round of lay-offs
the pay cut will be such
that the only sushi you can afford will be canned tuna
served over a soiled maxi pad.

One thing I learned from all those wasted days in porno arcades:
There are really only
two types of people in the world.
Those who take it in the ass
and those who take it on the face.
But in the end
they all must finish
with a smile.

Himalayan Travelogue Part 9 – Lobuche, David Breashears and a Surprise

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. ~John Muir

I was feeling better this day as evidenced by my appetite returning with a vengeance, I ate a big breakfast, a big lunch and snacked constantly all day until dinner where I ate well.  The walk was long and beautiful, down through Dingboche again lunch at Thugla and then up a really tremendously large hill behind the lodge.  At the top we were in a field full of markers that commemorate lost climbers, it was a truly somber and beautiful place.  We stopped there and took some time to recover from the hill and take in the monuments.

We proceeded up the valley to Lobuche(16,190 ft) and got settled in for the night.  We had noticed that David Breashears was also staying at the lodge and it created quite a little buzz in our group.  If you don’t know who he is you can check him out at the link below:

http://davidbreashears.com/

The group got even more excited when Breashears came to join our group, turns out he had previously met with one of the people in our group.  David was kind enough to sit and talk with us for quite a while and tell us about his glacier project.  David is taking comparative photographs of glaciers, essentially taking the same picture that was taken decades before and comparing them to determine how much the glaciers have retreated.  It is an interesting project and I was fortunate enough to meet with David again this fall and they are really making a lot of progress with the photography and the development of the website should be pretty amazing.  You can get a little more information at the following link:

http://planetsave.com/2010/07/18/then-now-photos-show-melting-of-himalayan-glaciers/

The next day was a hard walk, it was windy and cold and we moved slowly up the mountain along the valley containing the Khumbu Icefall.

Khumbu Ice Fall

These were my exact thoughts when I hit Gorak Shep (16,975):

“This place (Gorak Shep) is stark.  It’s a climber’s place lots of reminders of past expeditions and treks.  Seeing some familiar faces from the trail, met a beautiful Spanish girl who is heading for base camp at Island Peak.  It’s cold here, and going to be a cold night’s sleep.”

The day was also my friend Mark’s birthday, Mark is an incredible hiker and even with a pretty severe chest infection led our group most days.  He’s pictured here below:

We had put together a little bit of a celebration for Mark scrounging together some candy, chocolates, cheeses etc… and a couple of us who knew in advance were carrying small presents for him.  The manager of the lodge even put together a little present for him.  Unfortunately as I went back to my room I got the sudden urge to go to the bathroom, I say unfortunately because the urge trailed the action.  I moved as quickly as I could under the circumstances and spent the next couple of hours squatting in the lodge’s bathroom.  My lack of energy two days previous now made sense, it was when the intestinal infection I had picked up took hold and zapped my energy.  That I had picked up the infection was not a shock, it’s common in fact and I came prepared with ciprofloxacin and that little miracle antibiotic would cure me in less than 24 hours.  The real issue was my soiled long-johns, it was cold and base-camp was up next and there wasn’t a lot of heat in the lodge.  The solution was to do some impromptu tailoring by cutting the soiled portion of my long-johns away with a knife.  It wasn’t pretty and surely not to become a fashion (sorry I called you Shirley), but it was necessary to stay warm in the mountains.  Sometimes adventure isn’t pretty.

The second surprise of the evening was that the snow that had started as we reached Gorak Shep was picking up.  The reason this is surprising is that November is typically a pretty dry time in the Himalayas and one of the reasons the treks run at that time of year.  I slept hard that night and let the medication work its magic.  The one thing I really liked about Gorak Shep was the view at sunset:

Sunset at Gorak Shep

Himalayan Travelogue Part 8 – the Everest Marathon, skirts and up and down days

Nature teaches more than she preaches.  There are no sermons in stones.  It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.  ~John Burroughs

We had a couple of people in the group who haven’t been feeling well, a number of people in the group had a chest infection.  We hiked up to the Periche Aid station today to get people checked out, happily everyone turned out to be ok.  In Periche I saw my favorite sign in the Himalayas, here it is:

I love this sign

In all fairness English is a tough language and you see a lot of funny signs overseas when people translate, I was just happy to be someplace where they try.  After leaving the clinic we popped over a little 600 foot hill and dropped down into Dingboche(14,105 ft) for the night.  Before going over the hill, we were getting our gear together and we hear a bell ringing and we look up to see someone actually running down the hill we are about to climb, and then another, and another.  We were actually witnessing part of the Everest Marathon, yes folks for some runners a marathon at sea level isn’t enough they have to go run one in the Himalayas, you can read more about it at the following link:

http://www.everestmarathon.org.uk/

We started out the next morning walking up the Chhukhung Valley heading to Chhukhung at 15,580 ft.  The valley is a wide gently sloping valley with a small river running through it with amazing peaks rising up on either side of the valley, truly spectacular and even the skies that day were amazing.

Rainbows in the Clouds

At one point on the way up the valley I saw a woman hiking in a skirt, I really thought I was mistaken until we met again later that day at our lodge and I confirmed she was hiking in a skirt.  She also turned out to be an amazingly beautiful and cool woman and we would run into her and her boyfriend a number of times on the trail, this is them below:

It also turned out to be by far my worst day on the trail, I had no energy, absolutely none and I was walking like an 80 year old man.  It was amazing, no matter how hard I tried I could not force my feet to move any faster.  It was a day to learn how great my hiking companions and my guides were, people took turns hiking back with me and Lhakpa and Kim were absolutely amazing, here’s a picture of those two below.

Our Guides, Lhakpa and Kim

That day as the sun set we were treated to one of the most amazing sunsets I’d ever seen.

Himalayan Travelogue Part 1 – A beginning

If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.
Maurice Chevalier

In 1924 George Leigh Mallory, a British climber, was asked why climb Mount Everest, he famously quipped, “because it’s there.”  So is Mallory, he never returned from that climb and it is believed that his body was found in 1999.  Mount Everest is the biggest mountain on earth, at least above the ocean, and also the most coveted to climb.  It isn’t however the most difficult to climb, at least not from a technical climbing perspective, but Sagarmatha as the Nepalese call her is the biggest hill on earth.  Something about that fact has always drawn people, me included, to her slopes.  Now, I’m not a climber, I didn’t go to the Himalayas to climb Everest, only to step on the base of her slopes at a little over 17,700 feet, and even more exciting to me, the idea of walking on the Khumbu Ice Fall.

The idea had always been in the back of my mind but it wasn’t until I stumbled onto a website for a trekking company that I truly thought about actually doing it.  Of course, like most of these things, when would I ever have the time and the money to take that trip?  Well that time came last year, after over a year and a half of planning I finally was in a position to take 8 months off of work.  I had put away the money to cover my expenses for that time and come up with a plan.  That plan including a trek to the base camp of Mount Everest.  Now the really nutty thing about this plan was not only am I not a climber, I also had never done a multi-day hike and I’d only been over 12,000 feet once outside of Lhasa, Tibet.  Now here I was planning 22 days in the Himalayas with a goal of over 17,000 feet.  Oh and just to make it exciting, I can’t take the medicine (Diamox) that most people take to help prevent them from getting altitude sickness.  Needless to say the mention of the plan either frightened or was totally blown off by the people close to me, truly, I couldn’t be stupid enough to actually be doing this.

Those same thoughts had crossed my mind as well, but I was taking 8 months off and the best time to trek in the Himalayas is November, so it would be near the end of my time off.  So being the logical creature that I am, I decided I’d use the first part of my time off to get fit and ready for Everest.  My plan was simple, start hiking a lot before May when my time off would begin.  Then start to progressively get ready for the big hills so of course I would start in Scotland, with no mountain over 4,000 feet.  There was some logic to this trip, I planned to hike the Great Glenn Way over a 6 day period, my first multi-day hike, 73 miles.  Next I would spend time in Utah and really start to stretch myself out and get ready.   I am fortunate enough to have an aunt who has a house near Bryce Canyon National Park and that would be my home base.  For three months I would hike in the park, live at 6600 feet and spend as much time as possible above 8000 feet and some time above 10,000 feet on Bryan Head.

Piece of cake right, first of course I’d drive across country, visit my brother and friends in Texas, dig for diamonds in Arkansas (didn’t find any), visit family and friends in the East and head for Ireland and Scotland for the month of June.  Ride a bike around Ireland, hike the Great Glenn Way and then land back in Utah by July.  Over the next few weeks I will take you across Scotland, up into Bryce Canyon and then into Nepal and up the big hills of the Himalayas, I hope you enjoy the trip.

Directional Sign to the Great Glenn Way

You can find out more about the Great Glenn Way at the link below:

http://www.greatglenway.com/