McLeod trekking

McLeod trekking

At just 1768 meters (5834 feet), McLeod is not very high in Himalayan terms. In Oregon that elevation would put it near Timberline Lodge. Here, it puts it just barely up in the foothills, more like Sandy.

From the village, you see first a ridge that reaches to around 2000 meters (6600 feet), then another at around 3000 meters (9900 feet). Those are both just wooded foothills. The next ridge begins the true mountains, a jutting ridge of granite, rising to about 4500 meters (15,000 feet). Beyond that, but hidden from view, rise progressively higher and higher ranges as the earth has buckled and broken with the Indian tectonic plate jamming itself underneath that of Asia.

Unfortunately, Fran was unable to do much hiking since she would invariably slip on the loose shale and re-injure her arm. So after a while, I began day hikes alone or with other friends I met along the way. Most were just simple hikes for the day, up a few thousand feet to a waterfall, over a few miles to another village, or such. But I decided to get a good hike in, one that I could really feel physically. I had thought occasionally along our trip that we had yet to get in a really arduous hike, one that left you wobbly at the end of the day and achy the next. Looking up at the Himalayas, I figured I could get a real hike here.

Fran encouraged me to set out for a couple of days, instead of just continuing day hikes waiting for her shoulder to heal. I didn't want to hike alone, so I picked a fairly popular route on which I knew there would be lots of people. There were also several potential destinations, so I could adjust how far I went based on the weather and how I felt.

The first day was a short day. I just hiked from 8:30 until noon, covering 12 km (7 miles). The main challenge was just the climb up about 1450 meters (4800 feet). I had figured on stopping at Triun, a beautiful bluff with a panoramic view of both the village and plain below, and the Himalayas above. But there were quite a few people camped out there and I also wanted some quiet, so after taking in the view I pushed on a little further.

I spent the night at the Snow Line Café. That sounds like a real fancy place, but let me describe it. At this altitude, there are many large slabs of granite. In fact there are quite a few little caves created under boulders piled together at odd angles. In one of the spaces between large boulders sits the Snow Line Café. Two walls are formed from piles of rocks coming out from the back wall, and the roof is just a blue tarp held down against the wind. There is no front wall, and the floor is flat rock with some cardboard tossed down for padding. The proprietors were kind enough to let me lay out my sleeping bag on the cardboard for the night.

The café has quite a tidy little kitchen in deep near the large boulders. On one side is fashioned a stove, consisting of two large rocks for sides with a sheet of metal over the top. A hole in the wall of the café serves as the chimney. On the facing wall are several wood planks held by sticks crammed into the loose rocks. This modest kitchen is stocked with a couple of pots and pans, metal plates, rice, lentils, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, greens, eggs, milk, sugar, spices, tea and coffee. To accelerate the good service, they even have a pressure cooker. They also have chocolate bars (a real hit with the female hikers!), cashews and bottles of soda.

The proprietors are two brothers who live down the hill at Bhagsu, a small village near McLeod Ganj. They open this little café in March and keep it open until December. About once a month one of them will head down to the village to get new supplies (on donkey) and to visit friends and family. They are two of six children, one being 45 years old with a family and child and the other 25 and still living at home. But most of their life is spent up at 3200 meters (10,500 feet) working at their café.

The café is right at the tree line and base of the first granite ridge. It is back far enough from the rock face that you look directly north into an 1100 meter (3600 feet) wall of granite. For a brief moment at sunset the rock glows a delicate pink. Looking west, the sun disappears into the haze beyond the first ridge, and another, and the little hill and village of McLeod, and the plain below. The crows cry loudly as the sun drops, and the eagles settle down from the sky for the night. The temperature drops below the freezing point in just a few hours.

Six visitors stop at the café for the night. One has carried an enormous telescope up the trail to view the full moon. It is so powerful that aligned correctly he says we should be able to see the American rover parked in the dust. A small haze obscures the view, but we get a few clear glimpses of the moon. It looks just like NASA photographs, only live. The moon moves so quickly, and the telescope is so powerful, that the craters just sail from right to left through the lens. There is an auto-tracking feature on the telescope, but it requires quite a bit of setup including aligning the telescope perfectly level and facing north, and setting the longitude, date and time perfectly. Instead we just keep nudging the telescope along, catching occasional glimpses through the clouds.

Two women hikers also stay at the café. One is very much on a spiritual journey and will stay for several days to meditate in the serenity of the mountains. The other wants to attempt a climb up to the pass, and has asked one of the café brothers to serve as a guide. I join in, as does one of the other men. Of about thirty people who reached Triun today, nine made it to the Snow Line café, six staying at the café and three in a nearby cave. Those other three plus the three of us will attempt the climb the next morning, in two groups. On the way up to this point I encountered two groups who attempted the climb but both turned back as they lost the trail and encountered difficult rock faces and snow. I'm glad to have hooked up with a group and a guide. Back in town at the government Regional Mountaineering Center, they had told me that to get past Snow Line you really need a guide, and it looks like this was the case.

Actually, they told me that getting past the glacier required a guide. And the map I had showed a glacier just a kilometer from the café. But all that remains is a rocky slope. The glacier disappeared a couple of years ago as the area warmed up and snowfall declined. The towns below are now in serious trouble because their water supply has slowed to a trickle. This was reminiscent of Kilimanjaro in Africa, where we could see just the last traces of the glacier that has existed for all of history, but is forecast to be gone before the end of this decade. Global warming is also blamed for the total absence of the monsoons in India this year, as well as drought in eastern Africa. For anyone still in denial about global warming, I can say it is very real to the people who are beginning to suffer the effects. Coming from the country that emits 36% of the greenhouse gases (with just 5% of the world’s population) I think back to all of the cars, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, and houses kept toasty with natural gas. The comfort of the USA comes at a price that is being paid by other people, as water dries up, crops fail, and villages are forced to relocate. It is embarrassing that our government withdrew from the Kyoto protocol, and is instead expanding oil development in new areas such as western Africa. But alas, since most Americans do not really feel the effects of global warming yet, the necessary cutbacks remain in the distant future, while other people feel the impact.

We plan to set out the next morning at first light. We will eat breakfast at 5:30, and leave with the first light at 6:00. It is important to get up to the top early, since the clouds set in each day between 10:00 and 12:00 sometime, and obscure the mountain until 4:00 or 5:00. Often there is rain at midday. Two days ago a hailstorm came through. We wanted to get the good view at the top and to get down before any rough weather starts.

Our guide is not a rich man. We didn't realize it, but he does not own a watch. So at some point he figured it must be getting close to daylight, and got up to start breakfast. None of the rest of us thought to check our watches right away, so we waited a little while for the porridge to cook and then started to get up. The other man who will hike with us checked his watch and found it was just 3:30! Our Guide quipped "No good guess!" and we all headed back for bed. This time we overshot the other way, so we slopped the porridge down quickly and hit the trail at about 6:45 with a little time to make up.

The trail leads down from the wooded ridge, past the defunct glacier, and then begins to climb. We pass the cave and see that the other party has left already. We spot them up the mountain a little ways. The guide thinks they are a bit too far to the right and might have lost the trail already.

We hike up for about an hour. There isn't much air up here. The guide, who lives at this altitude, simply skips along, getting a little bit ahead so he can stop and smoke a cigarette while he waits for us. The rest of us huff and puff our way up to meet him. The woman starts asking if we are halfway yet at about 45 minutes. I figure that we will take 3-4 hours to reach the pass. The guide just says not yet. After about and hour and a half, she is getting quite tired and turns back. I want to finish the climb, but offer to accompany her back down. She is not too concerned and is able to point out the trail as it wanders back down. We aren't really to the difficult or hazardous part yet, so she heads back down alone, and she makes it back to the cafe without any mishaps.

We take no breaks as we climb, since we got a late start. Over the course of the last 7 kilometers (4 miles) we will gain 1450 meters (4800 feet). I’m the slow one of the group now and not sure that I can make the top, but I do know that I can always take one more step. The legs turn to cement and begin to wobble, but no one gets AMS (acute mountain sickness). We just keep climbing.

The trail is basically a granite staircase. For much of the distance, you can reach forward and touch the steps since they are so steep. In fact I hike that way much of the time since I am a bit wobbly from the altitude. The hail from two days early was still present on many of the stairs, and I didn't relish slipping.

I ask the guide how long it takes him to climb to the pass by himself. He remarks casually, oh about an hour. The human body is an amazing thing, with the ability to adapt to so many extremes. He is 45 years old and not particularly fit, but with the acclimatization to the altitude this is just a walk in the park for him. To me, we are climbing to 4350 meters (14,350 feet), several thousand feet higher than the highest mountain in Oregon. And this is just a low pass in the Himalayas! The human body can adapt to living in the cold and the hot, in the dry and the wet, and low and high. Truly amazing.

Occasionally our guide would check out the other group of hikers. They were well off the trail by now, and have to scale a difficult rock face, and then cross a sloped snowfield. He was worried that they might keep going and get into trouble. They progress slowly, going a bit to one side and then the other, but continuing to make upward progress.

The other hiker and I have both hiked enough to know that often you see false summits long before the real crest. It can break your spirits when you reach what you think is the top, only to discover more mountain above you. So as we hiked we agreed that the ridge we could see was likely not the top, but just the first of several false summits. We were pleasantly surprised! At 10:00 we were standing on the top. Our guide stopped to make an offering to the small Shiva shrine, while we looked at the view. To the south we could see each of the hills we had climbed, descending down to the village and the plains beyond. To the north were first a lower ridge and then a much taller one –about a thousand meters higher than where we stood. It blocked the view of the next range, which was taller yet, and so on. We could see the valleys between the ridges, and while we knew they were inhabited, they looked isolated and desolate. At our feet was a memorial to three people who lost their lives climbing this pass, a vivid reminder of the inherent dangers.

After just a few minutes we began the descent. Knowing that more injuries happen on the way down than up, I took it quite slowly. By 10:20, the clouds began to close up the mountain. We had just made it in time for the view. We could see the other hikers still climbing, but too far from the top. Soon they gave up and turned back down. Of the six tourists that started that morning, only two will make it to the top today.

Unfortunately, my knee began to hurt. Fortunately, with the experience of the meditation retreat behind me I was able to just let it hurt and keep going. We continued down, always just ahead of the clouds. We made it back to the café for lunch at about 1:00 pm.

I figured I’d eat and then decide whether to continue down depending on the weather and my body. The clouds and the sun continued back and forth, with no rain. By 2:00, the chance of rain had passed for the day and I was feeling stronger again. Off I went.

The couple with the telescope and the other hiker who made the top were headed down at the same time, so we went together. Since the man carried the telescope, the women ended up with a heavy load of other gear. I carried some of it down to Triun where they stopped for tea. I wasn't so confident that I would get down the hill before sunset if I stopped for a break, so I kept going. It was a very nice walk down, with beautiful views, birds, monkeys, goats and sheep.

I reached the guest house about ten minutes before six. The sky was starting to turn pink. The other hikers had not caught up with me, so they were finishing their hike in the dark. I was glad I had pushed on. Also, I finally felt the good tiredness of a real hike. I didn't quite realize how far I had gone that day until the next morning when I traced it out on the map. On the second day alone, I covered 28 kilometers (17 miles), climbed 1450 meters (4800 feet), and descended 2900 meters (9600 feet). And my legs are sore. Ah, that feels more like it!