Himalayan Travelogue – Part 3, Welcome to Utah

Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man.  ~George Wherry, Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot, 1896

I was fortunate enough during my time off to have access to my aunt’s cabin in Utah.  The beauty of that place is almost impossible to put into words, the sage brush, the clear air and the amazing sunsets with a flock of turkeys as my constant company.  There is a peace that pervades you out there that is hard to find anywhere else, I was blessed to have that for three months.  My schedule for the time there was perfect, get up, eat breakfast and drive over to Bryce Canyon National Park, spend four or five hours hiking and come home.  Eat, take a nice little nap, do some reading or work around the cabin, shoot the sunset, eat and the do some writing before bed.  Life the way it should be moving exactly at the correct pace.  I could spend time in this space today writing about all of the magnificent hiking trails and experiences I had there, but that isn’t the point of this piece, we’re on our way to the Himalayas and it’s time to get there.  So instead, from my three months in Utah, today I’ll give you nothing but images to tell the tale, enjoy.

My Aunt's Cabin

 

Navajo Queen Trail

 

My companions, "the girls"

 

 

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/

The Loneliest Highway in America and update on the ‘shoe tree’

I am fortunate to have a relative who has a cabin in Southern Utah near Bryce Canyon National Park.  If you have never been to this part of America you are missing something special.  They call that area color country and it is quite possibly the most beautiful part of America and given that it’s a bit off the beaten path happily not so crowded.  However this post is not about Southern Utah, it’s about the trip out there.  Leaving where I do from Northern California to the cabin I roll across Highway 80 through Reno and then take a turn through Fernley and head over to Nevada Highway 50, The Loneliest Highway in America.  Now I’ll add a bit to that piece and include Utah Highway 21 as part of that moniker. 

This is the type of highway where you can drive for an hour or more and never see another vehicle and given that the other vehicle is typically moving well above the 70 mile an hour speed limit, you pass each other in a brief second and once again find yourself all alone.  The only people on this road who may feel, and actually are, even more alone than you, are the occasionally touring bicyclist that you pass, truly brave and hardy individuals to be pedaling, 70 – 100 miles between towns in a place with no shelter, no water, and lots of wind.

There are breaks in the monotony of this high desert area as you cross the plateau and bounce up and over 6000 foot peaks.  Towns spring up out of nowhere, towns like Ely with its hotels and casinos and on this trip it’s town park filled with 50′s hot rods on a cool summer morning.  The metropolis of Austin, airport and all, tucked into the corner of a mountain with a sign as you enter from the west proclaiming, “speed trap ahead” in hand painted letters.  This is the type of country where you stop, gas up, and eat whenever you have the opportunity.  But along this trip there are two spots I always look forward to, the first is a ranch with a very interesting gate.

The skeleton gate of highway 50

I’ve often wondered how the people here came to this gate, did they plan it in advance and go out and purchase the horns or is this something that developed organically over time.  Personally I’m happy to have the mystery.

The next attraction on The Loneliest Highway in America is even more bizarre.

The Highway 50 Tree of Shoes

 

Highway 50 Tree of shoes

At some point in time someone must have pulled off here, enjoyed the shade of this tree, looked at the cows lazily laying in the dry stream bed and decided, “hey, I’d like to throw my shoes in this tree.”  Then someone else noticing those shoes thought, “they look lonely, let me give them some company,” and threw their shoes up, and on and on.  I know a young lady that has a farm near here and she’s even admitted that her and her sister have shoes in the tree, their names neatly written on the soles.  There is nothing quite like driving down this lonely road and suddenly coming down a hill to find this tree, filled with shoes standing guard on the side of the road.  As you pass it the very first time, driving yourself well above the 70 mile per hour speed limit you wonder, did I see what I thought I saw? Maybe the loneliness of the road makes these things stand out even more, but with its small towns, open landscape, naval bombing range and strange icons Highway’s 50 and 21 may also be some of the strangest road in America.

**** An update to this story, unfortunately someone has cut down the the shoe tree, very sad  http://www.ktvn.com/story/13774854/highway-50-shoe-tree-cut-down?redirected=true