Simonson

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Dear Mountain Zone,

This is Eric Simonson calling from the rooftop of the Hotel Tibet, from Kathmandu, and I have a report for you on the last couple of days of our expedition. Since I called the last time, our yaks arrived at Advanced Base Camp — all 35 of them — and we were able to move in one shot down to Base Camp, which is a distance of about a dozen miles and descending from 18,500-feet down to about 15,000 and change. It's a amazing how even a descent of a few thousand feet really makes a difference and we could all really feel the difference when we got back down to Base Camp after a day of hiking.

Our trip down was pretty straightforward, except for having to cross the river below the Gyabrag Glacier and we had to wade that, which was interesting. Otherwise, no problems. We had a great party the night that we got down to Base Camp, including ourselves, and also the Russell Bryce Himalayan Experience group, and the Henry Todd Himalayan Guides group and together we all drank some beer and had some fun.

The next morning, however, we got up really early and we loaded our two trucks, and we had four jeeps, and we headed out from Base Camp on the rugged road on down across the plains of Tingri, to Tingri itself. There we headed on to Zhangmu, where we eventually ended up last night and we spent a night in the Hotel there in Zhangmu. Again, we were able to cruise the town a little bit last night, we checked out the Chinese disco, which was a lot of fun.

And then again got up really early in the morning and moved down to Kodari where Chinese customs is, having exited China officially at Zhangmu. The road conditions were really bad today, coming down from Zhangmu. The road was really rutted and muddy — in places darn near axle-deep — and a lot of the traffic moving uphill was having trouble because of the deep mud. In several places we had to wait for landslides and stuck vehicles. Since we were going downhill, however, it was a little easier and we were able to keep moving and eventually we got down to Kodari and exchanged our Chinese trucks for Nepal trucks and off-loaded all of our baggage. We were able to move, eventually, down in a Nepal truck and across the Friendship Bridge where we crossed into Nepal officially.

From there, it was about a five-hour drive through Nepal to get here to Kathmandu and, again, the road conditions were terrible. It was one of the worst I've ever seen it — save actually having the road blocked by landslides. In many places the road had washed away and had been just hacked in narrowly and it was quite scary, in a couple of places, to travel across these precipitous drop-offs where the road was washing away, right as we watched. In fact, in one section they had a front-end loader moving dirt and mud out of the road and as soon as it moved by, the mud would continue to ooze down across the road again.

We actually passed one wreck, from yesterday, where a truck had gone off the road and caused flames and burned right on the spot, killing several of the passengers, so it was quite sobering. These road conditions are not exactly up to AAA standards.

Eventually, though, we got back here to Kathmandu and everything's going well; our team's doing well, and we're looking forward to a heavy day tomorrow of accomplishing all of our chores of sorting and drying our equipment. Unfortunately, the monsoon still does not seemed to have abated because it rained very heavily this afternoon...[Transmission Fails]...

So we're wondering, a little bit, exactly what's going on with the weather. But hopefully we'll get an early start tomorrow and be able to dry out all of our tents and gear and stow that gear in my storeroom on Kathmandu. Otherwise, everything's going really well, and the team's all in good spirits, and we're looking forward to booking our flights to Bangkok here in the next couple of days. I know a few of us will be enjoying some beach time there in beautiful Thailand on the way home.

So, that's about the story for now. I'm going to put my thinking cap on here over the next day or two and I want to at least send one more dispatch with some thoughts on Himalayan climbing and I've been thinking a little bit about it already, so stay tuned to Mountain Zone and I hope I can catch you on our wrap-up dispatch. This is Eric Simonson signing off from the roof of the Hotel Tibet in Kathmandu. Adios.

— Eric Simonson, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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