The Cho La Pass – A Walk in the Park

Sagarmatha National Park actually.

I had a poor night’s sleep and there was nothing for breakfast other than rice pudding or porridge. I had rice pudding with honey. The lad made the mistake of passing us the honey jar, which we burgled, spooning lots into our dishes.

Setting off on a sunny autumn day was a delight. It rattled the cobwebs away.

We were lucky that our path took us up through the valley that looked like Grindsbrook, and it was in the shadow. No sweat. This was a route of false horizons, with quite a few skylines appearing, only to reveal another skyline which wasn’t Cho La.

Lots of wild birds, mostly Snow Cocks, strutting around us and flying past.

By the first real incline Dan had charged ahead, and missed out on my disbursement of jelly babies. Nir loves them, but not as much as he loves Kendal Mint Cake.

We haven’t seen a shower or warm water for 4 days, but last night’s guest house had antibacterial gel dispensers on the table. So before breakfast this morning I went in to the common room, squirted a handful into my palm and went back to my room. I laced it over my stinky nether regions and it stung like hell but I felt a lot cleaner. I hope you aren’t eating.

Back to Cho La.

I was enjoying this section of the trek and I knew that, however difficult I found it, I would climb all 17,700 feet of Cho La.

We caught up with Dan and had a break in the sun which by this time shone further down the valley as we had walked up to meet it. Nir gave Dan a seminar on the local peaks.

We climbed and we climbed, Oh, how we climbed, My, how we climbed.
Thanks Eno.

We must be at the right altitude soon, I thought to myself in a curious way. We nearly were. But the next brow revealed a deep drop down into a valley, before our path rose up again to distant Cho La.

This vid puts it in perspective.

We dropped down to the valley floor and then started the long climb up. The usual stuff, huffing, puffing, counting steps and resting. Some people came past the other way and some asked me my age. I said it was an incredibly rude question to ask a 70 year old. I’m the oldest they’ve seen on this trek by a good margin but so what.

Let’s put this into perspective. We’re tourists. We stay in houses, not tents. We eat at least twice a day. We’ve got porters to carry our heavy stuff, otherwise we’d struggle to do this. We’ve got a guide who keeps us safe and who can bail us out of the shit, like he did on the last trip here.

But it didn’t stop the climb hurting for an old get. And it was rough.

As we got closer to the wall Dan and Amit went ahead and I made steady, slow shuffles and step ups. Nir and Bikram drop back to give me my space so I don’t feel like I’m holding them back.

I realised that the route went past the base of the wall to the far side and that someone had fixed wires to the rock face. Whilst some had rusted and come away the bulk of them were sound. Even so it was a challenge and this is higher and steeper than it seems in the photo.

As I was about to pull myself up on a wire a group came down, so I let them pass. The last one was a young woman waltzing easily down with a GoPro camera on a stick. She was filming, and then I realised she was filming me. She said into the camera microphone,”this is Uncle Dave, he is seventy years old and he is very strong. I am coming down to give him a hug”.

We’ll blow me down! I asked her name and where she was from. She said she was Marilou from Singapore. She descended and said, “now I give you a hug”. I was taken aback really, but it would have been rude to refuse. I said that would take the pain of the climb away and she duly obliged. What a nice lass.

As she slipped away to her party I looked up to the next ledge, about 60 feet up, and there were Amit and Dan pissing themselves laughing. On the way down she said to Dan that he was big and strong. He said to her that was nothing, at the bottom of the climb was Uncle Dave, 70 years old and strong as an ox. He also added that I have a successful you tube channel so she should get down there and give me a hug. I felt like Harvey Weinstein. That’s verging on procurement. Nice lass though and nicely distanced but friendly hug. God bless, Marilou.

Nir and Bikram caught me up now we were proper climbing, although most of it was made safe by the wires. They made sure I didn’t do anything daft, particularly as there were patches of ice on the rock higher up and little pockets of snow. They were also happy to wait whilst I puffed and wheezed at frequent breather breaks. After nearly an hour the rock face became much less steep and I realised I could make the top in one go.

Looking to the side of the pass, over the back, was a steep ice and snow sheet.

The route in front of us dropped down, again with wires, but there was considerable snow and ice for the foreseeable. What I didn’t realise was that this was another glacier of a very different kind.

We had two pairs of crampons (boot spikes) between the five of us. Nir fitted his to my boots and Dan opted to proceed without his crampons. I was so glad that I had them. I could clamber down the ice with confidence and made good time. On advice from Nawaraj I had left my brand new Grivel spikes in Kathmandu!

The ice turned to glacier, and it was very smooth with small streams running on the surface. We couldn’t assess how deep the ice was but, unlike the bigger, lower glaciers, this one didn’t have any rocks on top.

Then the streams started dipping into crevasses and disappearing. But you could still hear them and you knew they were somewhere underneath you. I hoped the tunnel roofs I was walking over didn’t collapse. Like this one had.

Where do you step? Where Nir went and keep your fingers crossed.

But the side views of the mountains still impressed me despite my predicament.

At last we scrambled off the glacier at its end.

And all felt relieved.

Now for a power drive down to Dzongla, our next destination. Scree scrambles and crossing streams that became rivers on stepping stones that we sometimes had to chuck in.

And away…….

We arrived in Djongla, ate in Djongla and we’ll sleep in Djongla.

Night night.