Mountain Appreciation

It is hard to believe it has now been a month since I left home. While chatting over dinner a few nights ago, someone commented that it seems like we've done so much in four weeks here and yet it also seems like the time has gone so fast. It's been a little over a week since I last posted and a few of the lab team are shipping out tomorrow for 3 days trekking so here is a quick update:

After a good long run

 The Sherpa treks and the first Western trek finished up quite nicely. It was a whole lot of work but we became more streamlined as we went. Perhaps the most difficult part of the 8-day testing run, from an endurance perspective, was Club Namche. I don't have any pictures yet, though I'm sure they will surface in the coming months. Club Namche, the Height of Entertainment, is home of quite possibly the highest (and almost definitely the hopping-est) dance party on the eve of every trek's departure. That means dancing your socks off with a disco ball, laser lights, Sherpas, and a wood-and-yak-chip-burning stove every other night. And while it is wildly fatiguing, you all know I love a good dance party.

But when the dust settles, it is nice to get out and stretch the old legs - the shot above is after 10 miles and 4 hours up to the incredible monastery at Tengboche with views of Ama Dablam and back via the Everest View Hotel above Khumjung.

Above Namche to boulder in Zarok

...and then there was climbing. We've been quite busy with data collection, lab setup, learning as many experiments as possible in order to cross-cover if needed. Still, there comes a time in a young man's life when he just really needs to pull on some rocks. On the opposite side of town from where we stay, there is a trail leading steeply up to the airstrip which is traveled mostly by yaks but occasionally tourists headed up to Syangboche airstrip from Phurte or Thame. It winds through a nice little boulder-field which, I must confess, I have traveled through several times in the name of reconnaissance. It goes without saying that you should not come to the Khumbu primarily for the technical rock climbing, but it also goes without saying that if you are going to live somewhere with decent rock for three months and you can find instructions on the internet to take your crash pad apart and stuff it in your luggage - then you most definitely should.

Leading near Khunde with Nyima Tsering Sherpa on belay

Our first outing bypassed most of the boulders as we hiked over 400 meters up to just above the city of Khunde (about 12,500 feet). We were accompanied by Nyima who runs the Cafe 8848 in town. He works with the Khumbu Climbing Center in Phortse which was established to teach Sherpa guides modern rock, ice, and mountaineering technique. He gets to climb with the likes of Conrad Anker and Cedar Wright, who come up and support the KCC in a big way - raising funds and setting new routes. Nyima was also responsible for bolting a couple of the routes we climbed. Though a lot of the rock here is either dirty, rotten, or mossy - you can find the occasional face with good consistent climbing and beautiful water streaks like the one above. Nyima tells me they've had a problem with hardware theft but there were enough hangers at the top to lower off and take a couple laps.

This seems like it's getting to be a pretty stale punchline but here it is:
"And this is the view" - from the top of the climb Everest (left) and Lhotse (right) can be seen in the distance both with snow clouds blowing off the summits

 We got back to the lab right away for the arrival of the next two Western treks - trek E and trek F. After four days of testing them (and hitting Club Namche hard in the evening) the last of them left this morning and it was back to the boulders.

Arete problem above Namche with Thamserku in the background

Some people get a very tangible urge when they see a cute little puppy or a furry bunny rabbit and they just want to squeeze 'em! That happens with me and mountains. It's actually a thought that occurred to me as we breached the haze on the plane flight from Kathmandu to Lukla and I got my first live view of the Himalayan range. Just the sight of mountains gives me an appetite to kick a step in the ice or snow, weight a good climbing hold, float a ski turn into newly fallen snow. The mountain air carries something spiritual and sublime, as evidenced by the fascinating culture and religion of the Sherpa people, but also something visceral and basic - the best word is hunger. And hmmmm, don't it taste so good!

Working out the moves on a steep boulder above Namche - it's a good thing I'll be here for a couple months!

 In addition to the spiritual and the visceral, mountains bring something social with them as well, as evidenced by our eager onlooker above. I have been blessed to be raised in a family and surrounded by close friends who I could bond with up high where things get just a little clearer - a little simpler. I think it's the combination of all the qualities that abide in the vastness of mountaineering and climbing that make an instant community. Yesterday, one of my colleagues and I walked down into town and met Suzie, a doctor from Scotland staffing at Everest Base Camp with the Himalayan Rescue Association this year. She didn't think twice about chatting for over an hour with us about mountain medicine, climbing, suggested trekking routes all over some hot lemon tea. After climbing a few days ago, we had lunch a young female Sherpa who summitted Everest and Ama Dablam last year and worked in Utah and on Rainier as a sponsored athlete for Sherpa Adventure Gear. Mountains bring people together to share stories and connect in a wonderful way and the whole thing just leaves me with a smile on my face.

So that's it, find your nearest mountain or even your nearest rock, if that's all you've got, and give it a big squeeze!

Namaste and Happy Easter!

Happy Sherp-day!

First off, my apologies - this is a long post and there won't be many fantastic mountain views (although I guess it's all relative)

For the past week I've been intending to do a post about Sherpas. Just yesterday was our 6th straight day of testing our Sherpa-only treks (we will test more but they will be interspersed among Westerners) and it seemed apt. Then my birthday came and took me by surprise and I thought that perhaps it would be a more suitable post. However, by the end of the day I realized quite instantly how it was only fitting to do both and I'll tell you why:

Sherpa trek C just bound for Everest Base Camp

First off, to clear a common misconception: not all Sherpas climb mountains. The word "Sherpa" does not refer to an occupation but rather a people, originally of Chinese/Tibetan origin who crossed over the mountain passes into the Solukhumbu region many hundreds of years ago and have certainly inhabited high altitude areas for much longer than that. They are incredibly interesting from a scientific perspective because although many people live at altitude in places like South America or Ethiopia, no population has been so high for so long. As we study them here it is fascinating to notice the physiological differences, some of which are quite intuitive and some are surprising. We are gathering a great amount of data and it may be many years before the entire picture can be put together!

Chongba Sherpa on the exercise bike

And so, when I awoke on my 27th birthday at 6:00 am to test a trekking group of 14 Sherpas you would imagine that I must have been giddy with excitement! Putting sarcasm aside, testing has been difficult - fraught with language barriers, unfamiliarity with testing equipment, and it was quite difficult to test men and women who never learned to ride a bicycle. While the science is exciting I think that we are all looking forward to this weekend when we won't be running the lab from 6:00 in the morning to sometimes well after dinner. It did help, however, that some of the lab team decided to start the day off extra classy.

Namche lab puttin' on the Ritz

We were instructed to bring shirts and bow-ties for weekly classy dinners. As we haven't had much time to plan such a dinner, this was our first occasion to don them. The Sherpa in the middle is Nyima Tsering Sherpa. He is about the 10th Nima Sherpa I've met in the last three weeks; Nima means Sunday and many Sherpas are named after the day of the week they were born - Sherpa is the common surname that all of these people share. His grandfather was a sheep herder in the Khumbu until the 50s when we began work as a mail-runner for mountaineering expeditions. His father worked his way from expedition cook to porter to mountain guide and eventually worked as a Sirdar (expedition leader). Nyima now runs a cafe in Namche - the 8848 Cafe which sells fantastic chocolate cake. He says that there is a lot of resistance in his generation, especially from the women, towards mountaineering because of the countless Sherpas who have lost their lives there.

Nyima Tsering Sherpa

Nyima came up to lab as a translator for the 6 days while we were testing Sherpas. I knew him for less than a week and he brought me a present - a DVD called Sherpas: The True Heroes of Mount Everest. Nyima has also been feeding me information about the climbing in the area and is my daily tutor in Nepalese and Sherpa language. He isn't my only new friend up here who has been more than generous:

A plate of 27 Momos - steamed dumplings similar to dim sum - that the kitchen made  for me

Lhakpa Sonam Sherpa and my birthday scarf

Lhakpa Sonam Sherpa runs the Hotel Sherwi Khangba, my home for 2 months. He is profoundly deaf, having suffered meningitis many years ago. The walls of almost every room in his lodge and restaurant are adorned with incredible postcards and postcards that he took himself. Not only is the photography stunning but the locations from which he has taken them are remote. He is also a very generous host. No one told him when I received the plate of momos for lunch and he came to me just before dinner quite distressed that he hadn't been around. He then gave me a linen scarf and a carved wooden necklace from town. 

The lab team has been great as well. Aside from having a large room of people sing me Happy Birthday at least three or four separate times, my wonderful lab manager Kay Mitchell gave me about 2 hours off in the afternoon to do as I pleased. I went running. I traced the same route that we hiked about two weeks ago up towards Everest and left towards Khumjung and Kunde. It was so fun and refreshing to run through those small villages off the main Everest trekking route as small children spouted short English phrases or greeted me with "Namaste" or "Tashi Dele" (Sherpa for "Namaste"). After Khunde I got often into a series of small yak trails and grazing areas that took me back into Namche proper. 

Foggy afternoon trail-run, Khunde can be seen faintly in the background at right

The beautiful thing about getting lost in the fog around these parts (not that I got lost at all, I knew where I was the whole time) is that all you really have to do is stop and listen for the sound of the bells that the yaks always wear. They know exactly where the trails are.

To sum up, those who know me know that I usually downplay my birthday but it was hard not to enjoy the celebration with new friends here in Namche. I'm incredibly blessed to be here and I send my love to all the friends and family I couldn't be with!

Tashi dele

You say Thame-to, I say Thamo-to

As you might imagine, the flights in and out of Lukla are, to a certain degree, subject to the whims of Mother Nature. Trying to land a plane on a short uphill runway in snow and fog is less than ideal so when the aforementioned storm rolled in last Sunday, the flights in and out did not go as planned which meant our Sherpa subjects who were meant to fly on Monday were backed up and didn't fly. The good news: we got a surprise day off. The bad news: their trek got shifted back which leaves us with eight straight days of testing (more on this later, let's focus on the good).

We used our day off to trek up towards sunny Thame (roughly pronounced Ta-May, thus the clever title of this post). Namche, where our lab is based, sits at the confluence of two river valleys. One of the valley heads up to Everest Base Camp and gets plenty of traffic, the other continues up and ultimately terminates at a pass that leads into Tibet. This canyone gets much less traffic. About 2.5 hours up this valley, the trail leaves out of the west end of Namche and travels high above the valley floor through a few small villages: Phurte, Thamo, and finally arriving at Thame.

 This is a helipad just above Namche. I've never landed a helicopter before, but I feel like this might qualify as a compact parking spot

You'd think it might be hard to motivate yourself to go for a day hike in a place where you have views like the one above just outside your front door. You'd be wrong though. Here is a picture of the river that wriggles down the river valley back towards Namche.

Word has it that in a couple weeks this whole area will start to green up. Then it will actually be a nice view.

As we pushed on towards Thame and the trail goes in and out of small villages, it can often be difficult to decide which trail will emerge on the other side. The matter is complicated by the unending number of yak trails that run in and out of the mountain side. I am no biologist but I think that yaks must be some sort of hybrid between a cow and a mountain goat, boldly going where no bovine has gone before. We found ourselves trying to traverse the increasingly steep slope on a series of such trails until we realized we were far below the trail. When we finally gained the main trail, there was some discussion as to whether we should return to Namche for our already-paid-for lunch or press on to Thame even though we had lost some time. We pressed on, and what a shame it would have been otherwise:

Warm welcome - here is the Thame gatekeeper mid-cud-chew. I'm pretty sure I could have punched him in the nose and he wouldn't have blinked.

Buddhist paintings on the rock wall that abuts the trail and bridge that crosses into Thame.

A trailside juniperus recurva on the way into Thame with Andy and Jildou on the trail.

Those who have been to Nepal may recognize the staple dal baat (dal = lentil soup, baat = rice). There wasn't a lot of traffic so ordering there was sort of like asking a woman on the side of the road to cook you a meal - the food took over an hour - but the stop was well worth the wait. The dal tasted of the open fire it was most likely cooked on and it was served to us by a large woman who brought us seconds and wore traditional Nepalese garb plus purple and pink sneakers (can't believe I didn't take a picture). Her husband was a short wiry guy with an infectious giggle. They had us write our order down.

I know this might offend some of my cousins, but this was even better than eating on the deck at Alf's.

The return trip was fast. We marched home in time to greet the belated arrival of our first Sherpa trek and it was back to hard work in the lab. We've been having a great time with this group and when my head stops spinning in a few days, I'll write it all down. Quick hillclimb record update: 10 min 50 s

Namaste

Everybody's working for the weekend

For those who follow Xtreme Everest here: www.xtreme-everest.co.uk or on facebook and/or Twitter (pick your poison) you should know that the Base Camp research team is now on their way up the mountain to set up the lab there. Their departure marks the next phase of this immense project. For the Namche lab, it meant a few days of testing and tidying and some much needed days off. 

The first order of business was the trail towering above our hotel. The village of Namche Bazaar is essentially a number of buildings arranged stadium-seating-style perched on the side of a steep canyon. The ridge that defines Namche's Eastern border continues steeply out of the high side of the village about 900 vertical feet up to the Syangboche airstrip. It is a steep and beautiful climb up stone steps and has been calling my name ever since we got here. The current record is 12 minutes 40 seconds (pretty sure I can cut it to under 10).

I snapped this gem on an early morning blast up the hill

If you're up for a morning trail run but you're not in the mood for trying to decide if your legs or your lungs burn more, you can take the trail that wanders along the slopes of the Khumbu valley:

It is probably worth mentioning that the afore-mentioned trail stares straight into the face of the tallest mountain in the world. Everest is the leftmost peak, Lhotse is next to the right, and the incredibly picturesque summit on the far right is Ama Dablam.

These views are best in the morning because the weather around here runs like clockwork: beautiful sunrises and clear blues skies in the morning followed by wind and hazy dust in the afternoon followed by the occasional late clouds just before dusk. If there were ever a time for the weather to mix things up, however, it would have to be our day off. After a long day of working hard in the lab on Saturday with the sun shining through the windows, we woke up the next day to dreary cloudy skies. So we had to go for a quick day trek in through stunning Himalayan villages without the sun smiling gently upon us (cry me a river, right?)

From Namche we headed straight up the Khumbu for a little less than an hour before hanging a left towards two villages called Khumjung and Khunde (fun fact, jung = lowland and de = highland - as you may suspect Khunde is immediately above Khumjung). This area is considered the middle of the Khumbu region (thus the use of the "khum-" root). The area has been heavily influenced by Sir Edmund Hillary who spent a lot of time here both before and after he and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa became the first two men to summit Everest in 1953. In Khumjung, he helped the people immensely building schools and hospitals like these:

If anyone can think of an accomplishment worthy of having my golden face put atop a concrete wall painted with characters like Mr. Football and Miss Bat, please post in the comments section.

The hospital usually gives tours but when we arrived there was a long line of people waiting out front and no doctors in sight. We took some quick pictures and made our way back down.

Taking an alternate route back down to Namche, we found it a bit difficult to navigate until we spotted a few yaks wandering untended over a ridge. They were kind enough to show us the way back to the airstrip above the village and we made it back for mealtime before the snow kicked in. They really are quite personable, yaks. We have spent a lot of time explaining to people trekking through what Xtreme Everest is all about, but this guy here was the first member of the animal kingdom to show any interest:

All in all, it was a beautiful couple of days off. This morning we awoke to 2-3 inches of freshly fallen snow which quickly melted off under the sunny blue skies. The bad weather delayed flights into Lukla so we'll have a couple days to get ready for our first group of Sherpa study participants to arrive in a few days. Y'all come back real soon now, you hear?

Namche coated (briefly) in this morning's snowfall

Namaste

Science! (someone's got to do it)

So apparently they actually want me to work pretty hard up here. Since last I posted, we've been hard at work in the laboratory. The team which will be doing research at Everest Base Camp is currently staying here at the Hotel Sherwi Khangba with our Namche Lab team. In order to stave off symptoms of AMS, Acute Mountain Sickness, everyone stays two nights in Namche Bazaar. While they're here we test them for two reasons: a) many of them are experts and we can troubleshoot and b) as my mentor back at Duke often says, "You can never have too much data."

So here, in brief, is a Welcome to the Namche Laboratory:

At altitude, the low pressure of air means that with each breath of gas, there is a lower pressure of oxygen filling your lungs causing lower amounts of oxygen to filter into your blood which means that less oxygen flows through your vessels and less oxygen arrives at each of your cells in your muscles, brain, and various other organs. It is this eventual result, less oxygen arriving at the cell level, that we are primarily concerned about in medicine. Less oxygen in cells, called hypoxia, means cells shift their energy production to different chemical pathways which, if left to run, will exhaust themselves and cause a number of medical problems. It isn't just high altitude trekkers and climbers who get hypoxic. Understanding the mechanisms behind this phenomenon could shed light on how our bodies act when faced with a number of conditions from sepsis to cyanide poisoning. If you really want to see some of the science we're doing here, check out some of Xtreme Everest's past publications dating back almost ten years: http://www.xtreme-everest.co.uk/article.php?newsid=66

Our day of science starts out from the moment my alarm sounds at 6:00 am (although, jet lag has usually got me up a bit earlier, reading my fancy new Kindle - thanks Mom). Every morning we complete a diary which consists of listing mountain sickness symptoms followed by a measurement of basic vital signs - heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. Both before and after a rigorous exercise seen here:

Stepping Your Way To Science - apart from being a fantastic aerobic program for physiology nerds, it's how we start each day.

Now that all sounds quite nice but, in truth, studying physiology at altitude is no small undertaking. Cold breaks things. Altitude breaks things. Needless to say, we've broken a lot of things. We are, slowly but surely, making headway and we actually got a bit of fantastic data today. I can't divulge our secrets (hint: get creative with blow-dryers, electric blankets, and a couple of doctors who are impromptu electricians on the side) but here is a shot of our exercise bike guru, Phil, getting some hearty encouragement from yours truly:

We wear several layers in the lab, because it is usually about 6 degrees Celsius in the morning. I don't remember what that is in fahrenheit but y'all can look it up because your Google definitely runs faster than mine.

I should also mention that I am apparently one of the best motivators for the bike tests (which take a considerable amount of effort). One participant said, "It was so great. I felt like I was on an American sports team!" I'm not quite sure what that means, but I'll take it.

Lastly, no good science can be done on an empty belly. There is a lot of great food here, but I don't support taking a picture of everything you eat (I'm looking at you Instagram). I couldn't pass this one up:

Popcorn and soup? For an appetizer? Don't mind if I do!

Well that's it for science. This weekend we'll have some free time to explore the mountains that I so longingly look at through our lab window. Cheers!

We're there, man

I'm in Nepal. For the last month I have often been heard to say, "I'll be doing a blog but I haven't got it set up yet - when I do, I'll send out the link." While I'm sure my tardiness is quite vexing to my mother, there is a significant benefit to you, the reader: you will be spared the obligatory, "I've never done a blog before but I decided to try it out" post because now I actually have something to report. I will share one quick thought that I recorded in my journal somewhere on my 29-hour journey from Raleigh, NC to Kathmandu:

"...in spite of the many hours of research I've done in to the area, the work, and the schedule, I really have no idea what this experience holds in store."

This idea highlights the age-old dichotomy between book-smarts vs. street-smarts, knowledge vs. wisdom, facts read and researched vs. experience. Obviously both sides can and should coexist but it's easy to get caught up and forget the importance of gaining experience and I expect that this one should be pretty grand. 

Without further ado, a brief summary of the past few days in photos and a brief orientation to my experience here:

I am involved with an expedition called Xtreme Everest 2, a group based in London that has been getting massive amounts of cutting edge data on high altitude and hypoxia physiology in trekkers in the field for many years (the 2 in the title signifies that this trek follows 1 which occurred in 2007 and included the highest ever arterial blood gas - measured at the Balcony, 27,600 ft elevation). This time around we will be running 60+ studies on some 200 trekkers including sherpas and children. It goes without saying that I am quite blessed that they have agreed to have me along. I spent a day by myself checking out a hostel that the American Alpine Club cooperates with and then headed to the Summit Hotel who were quite welcoming as you can see here:

 Here was our welcoming banner. I took this picture mostly because of the sign - I didn't have it but I don't think theirs would compare to North Carolina "Bar Be Cue"

Kathmandu is a wild city. If you've been to a third world country before you know that it is never sufficient to describe in words a city like this one until someone has been there. Perhaps I can spend some more time covering the ins-and-outs of the place when I return in May, but if there is one thing that bears mentioning it is the traffic. There are no lanes, there are no lights, and there is no such thing as waiting for an opening. People drive their cars like I would walk on a busy sidewalk. I was nervous for about ten minutes and after that I couldn't help but chuckle any time I went anywhere. This next picture was taken as we first breached the dense smog that engulfs the city. It's not a great photo, but you can imagine how excited we were for a change of scenery.

First glimpse of the high Himalaya. If we rolled down the windows I could touch the prop.

To begin trekking towards Everest Base Camp, you must first fly to Lukla at 9,383 ft. We woke up at 4:00 am to do some quick research and then headed to the airport where we took the stunning albeit short flight. Below is the fabled Lukla airport runway. It is in the top 5 most dangerous airports in the world and you land uphill so you can stop before the canyon wall and take off downhill in order to have some room to get up to speed. To top off the experience, if you get a seat at the front you can see out the pilot's window because the cockpit has only a curtain which they leave open. I was so stoked.

Here's the thing: that landing is actually steeper than it looks.

Once in Lukla we begin the two-day trek up to Namche. To make a long story short, you hike up a deep canyon with an incredible blue-green glacial river at the bottom stone shrines and prayer wheels dotting the path, yaks, ponies, porters and too many incredible views to put on one blog. Here's one:

 Words don't do it justice. The clouded peak in the background is Kongde, which is also pictured below.

 Currently, this is the view out of my bedroom window. I'll be here for two months. And it is like this for 360 degrees. Around every corner is another jaw-dropping vista. This afternoon I frequently said: it just keeps getting better.

My pictures got a bit out of order but this is our welcoming ceremony in Kathmandu with my friend Tom. They gave us a spot of red paint, a necklace of marigolds, and orange hard-boiled eggs. They were decent.

And here is home sweet home. I'll be working here in the Namche lab at 12,303 ft for the next two months testing trekkers as they pass here on the way to Everest Base Camp. There will also be a lab at Base Camp and in Kathmandu. A guy could get used to this.

And that's a wrap. It's late because it took me some time to figure this out. I've got to get up early and so I'll head off to bed. In closing, I'll say, "you need a license to drive a car, to buy a dog, heck, you can even get a license to catch a fish, but they'll let any fool be a blogger." - Keanu Reeves from Parenthood (obviously not exactly what he said).

Hope you enjoy sharing my experience!