She almost died – my God it was so close! It was just our first day on the trail backpacking into the Himalayas and already the extreme danger of what we’re about to face made itself apparent.
The head geologist had arrange for the porters ahead of time, but he hadn’t taken into account how many of us there would be on the trip, and so on the first day there weren’t enough porters to carry all the gear. As a result, we were backpacking our own gear into the Himalayas. We all came prepared with backpacks, and most of us had backpacking experience before, especially the trekkies some of whom seem to be well experienced backpackers. Still, we were going into the mountains for 12 to 14 days, and that’s a lot of gear to carry, more so than the usual weekend backpacking trip in the Sierras. Our packs were heavy. Normally that would not be a problem, but in this situation it was a very difficult problem. The trail would be uphill for four days – we were climbing up to 14,500 feet (with a smaller part of the group continuing up to 16,500) – and the trail was in very bad shape. It had been the worst monsoon season in at least 10 years. The monsoons in India occur during the summer months and taper off in the early fall, and we were hitting the trail in mid-September which meant that the rains were still coming on. Worse, the hard monsoon had done terrible damage to the trail. In some places it was just gone completely because of waterfall erosion or landslides. The head geologist told me later that he was really worried when he saw the condition of the trail on the first day thinking that we might have to turn around and the whole trip would be wasted. We came with no climbing gear – no ropes, no harness, no anchors, and no carabineers – nothing. And so we started out on the first day without even porters to carry our backpacks. It may sound kind of wimpy to not want to carry your own backpack, but in places the trail was astonishingly dangerous. I personally wouldn’t want to be caring anything while attempting to cross some of those hazardous areas on that trail, let alone try to cross them without have the proper safety gear either. It was a nightmare.
Now the locals, adapted to the elevation because they live there, were used to walking those trails in all kinds of conditions every day for their entire lives even as little children; they had no problem carrying heavy loads (they did it all the time) on barely existing trails. I remember watching one porter load up the propane tank on his back using only long strips of cloth to make a strap backpack to carry it. And this wasn’t just your ordinary barbecue propane tank, this was a great big honker. I’m not actually skilled enough in propane tanks to tell you how many gallons it carried or what its weight was, but suffice it to say they had to cook for 15 people for over two weeks with one tank and two gas burners – it was a big tank! And he carried the whole thing every day wearing nothing but flip-flops on his feet! I kid you not!
At some point before we arrived the locals who walk the trail every day had created “workarounds” for all of the washed out areas that consisted of makeshift bridges, foot holes dug in the side of the mountain to climb up and over areas, narrow little paths eked into cliff-like ledges, etc. In many areas the trail was in quite bad shape or it was totally gone, and this is the route that we started out on with fully loaded backpacks.
When you walk these long narrow trails into the mountains all day long, the fast people pass the slow people, and eventually everyone gets strung out on the trail. If you’re lucky you’re walking with someone else at about the same speed, and if you’re not lucky you’re just trudging along on your own enjoying what the head geologist like to refer to as “gob-slapping” scenery. Yes it was immensely rugged and beautiful – and very, very dangerous. On this first day we came to a landslide that had obliterated the trail. The trail just stopped on one side of the landslide, and somewhere out in front of us on the other side of the landslide it presumably picked up again. The locals had eked a narrow little trail across the body of the landslide and we were supposed to cross the landslide on that little trail. Now all landslides are a little bit different depending on the terrain, the rock type, and the climate conditions. This landslide was in a type of metamorphic rock called a schist which is sparkly and shiny and very platy, so the entire landslide consisted of thin plates of rock ranging from an inch to 6 inches in width that slid over each other very easily. The entire pile of rocks was at its maximum angle of repose, which means the slope was as steep as it could get without rocks sliding off of it. This kind of slope is referred to as a scree slope. Walking on it would be like trying to walk on a steep slope covered with silver dollars; you can imagine how they would slide with each step you tried to take on them. There was a little narrow trail about the width of your foot that the locals had worked across the body of the slide, and if you didn’t hit that trail just right, well… the scree slope continued down at maximum angle of repose for about 100 feet and then it just dropped abruptly off a cliff. I don’t know how high the cliff was, but we were pretty high above the valley floor so I imagine it was a pretty long drop off down to the rocks and the raging river below. And on a scree slope, if you start sliding you go all the way – there is no stopping. So you might be getting the picture now. One false step crossing this landslide and you were a goner. That much was plainly obvious to me when I first stopped and assessed it. It was going to be a really tricky crossing, and not one I really wanted to do with a 45 pound pack on my back.
Next week: To be continued! (You know what’s about to happen don’t you?)