Christen ~ While they summit

Bit from the letters ~

“Remember that the “summit” is merely the halfway point and that there is plenty more adventure to be had on the “return” portion of the trip.”


Before this trek, if you had asked me for a definition of a crampon, I would have guessed it had something to do with a menstrual cycle, and self-arrest may have been a citizen’s arrest you perform on yourself.

[Maybe there should be a mountaineering version of Balderdash for those of us not in the know.]

This, among many other reasons, pretty much disqualifies me from making the summit climb, as I would be roped to other climbers who would need me to respond like a functionally trained climber while crossing glaciers, avoiding crevasses, and repelling down mountain faces. (I think all of that is lingo-ly correct?)

As the rest of our team attempted the summit on Mera Peak, Luke and I descended roughly 5,000 feet to counter Luke’s altitude sickness, which meant I got to take my first hot shower in about ten days.

[By ‘hot shower’, I mean standing in a shed with an old, large, plastic paint bucket affixed with a plastic spigot and filled with boiling water sitting on a shelf above my head, with another paint bucket on the floor, filled with ice cold glacier creek water and a small pitcher, to temper the boiling water.]

Then, on to having some clean clothes, because we got to do our laundry.

[By ‘do our laundry’, I mean taking a large basin, filling it with cold creek water, scrubbing down our clothes with bar soap, and then hanging them out to dry.]

With the waterfalls in the background and the playlist Ange made me for this trip playing on Luke’s phone while we scrub, it is not a bad way to pass a relaxing, sunny afternoon in Khote, a mountain village at roughly 12,000 feet.

Khote - boy in waterfalls









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