I’ve dealt with stomach issues before. When I was in Ecuador in 2018, I recall shivering uncontrollably in the courtyard of La Universidad San Francisco de Quito despite sitting directly underneath the high mountain sun. I persevered to the end of the day, retreated to a sunny corner of the bus home, and stumbled out onto the streets of Quito. I remember walking to my host family’s apartment alone and disoriented before collapsing into bed. When I told my host brother that I’d begun to lose feeling in my hands and feet, he deduced that hot lemon tea wouldn’t be enough to cure my condition, and sooner or later I was in the hospital where the nurse handed me a pair of gloves and a clear plastic cup, making a motion toward the toilet.
A stool sample revealed a double bacterial infection. A few hours on an IV, a few days’ rest, and a few weeks of antibiotics had me back on my feet soon enough. I was in the Amazon Rainforest two weeks later, on the summit of Volcán Cotopaxi shortly after that, and island-hopping in the Galápagos within the month.
Now, in Langtang, there was no apartment. No hospital. No IV. No host mom to care for me (Dios te bendiga, Maria José). No toilet. Hell, I didn’t even have a bed. Sure, I had our guides Amrit, Chandra, and Pasang, but they also had 15 other trekkers for whom they were responsible, not to mention those who were already in poor shape from altitude and exposure. In the dark of my tent, I laid on my back trying my best to ignore the ring of fire tightening around a snake pit in my stomach, breathing in the cold night air. I drifted in and out of fitful sleep, waiting for the sun. Ultimately, it was not the sun that moved me.
The details of what happened in the latrine tent early that morning as the sun rose over Sumcho Top Lodge are unfit for these pages. Any shred of dignity I had left was used to clean myself after it was all said and done. I will say that I was equally horrified and impressed by the blast radius.
Hesitant to add to his stress levels but feeling left without options, I sheepishly approached Amrit that morning to tell him that I had “something going on” and needed medicine to calm my stomach.
“And your poop?”, he asked.
“Yeah, it’s water. Consistency zero out of ten,” I replied.
He gave me a pack of green gels to take after meals for indigestion and told me to keep him updated. Whether it was an infection or something worse, all I could do was treat the symptoms. Antibiotics would have to wait until Kathmandu in seven days. I returned to my tent to begin the process of cooking breakfast and breaking camp. The time was around 7am.
———
Feeling drained but strong enough to continue onward, I loaded up my ruck and descended from camp down the trail, headed toward Tharepati Pass. Keeping pace, I was optimistic that the previous night’s events were an unfortunate one-off. As soon as I started in on lunch—chapati (flatbread) with curried potatoes and a slice of cheese—my condition began to deteriorate. The food didn’t stay down for too long, coming up every five or ten minutes in viscous acidic clumps that burned my throat where my fingernails had scratched the night before. I downed another two green gels that laced my regurgitated-turmeric-flavored burps and baby vomits with a touch of mint. Another 300 meters of ascent and 200 descent remained in the hours ahead of us.
By the time we arrived at our planned campsite to find the nearby streambed completely dry, a spatial separation had formed between the healthy team members and the unfortunate indisposed. It was decided that some should take extra weight, press ahead to find water, and set up camp while the rest of us moved at a more relaxed pace. After walking another 90 minutes, I arrived at camp a shell of myself near a massive waterfall, somehow feeling both cold and overheated.
Nonetheless, hovering around a small flame, boiling water for tea and spooning mouthfuls of steamed rice and vegetables made with friends, I was in relatively good spirits and saw no reason to further lament my health. There was nothing more to be done about it. We were laughing, telling stories, and going over the day’s events when I noticed Riley wasn’t saying a word. In fact, they weren't reacting or responding at all. Their expression was blank and despondent; their eyes looked forward in a way that could not see that which was before them, but instead looked seemingly inward, seeking shelter within. Outwardly, there was clear and irrefutable evidence of only one thing: fear.
With an unresponsive victim deep in the Langtang backcountry, the situation seemed dire, and with a rush of adrenaline we sprung into action. Unsure of their condition but well aware that they at least needed warmth and shelter, three of us lifted Riley from a seated position on the ground to be carried up the hill and into a tent. There, we positioned them between my legs, leaned back against my torso as we wrapped them in every sleeping bag we could get our hands on.
Riley communicated a sense of awareness but remained largely unable to speak, eat, or otherwise support themself. Their vital signs were stable, but it was decided that an evacuation was necessary. We were still going up, and regardless of Riley’s specific situation, it seemed likely that increased altitude would only aggravate it further. Five of us remained in the tent with Riley for three or four hours that evening until Amrit told us we were safe to go to bed.
The next morning, Amrit hiked to a nearby hilltop long before the sun rose and spent hours on a satellite phone ringing for a helicopter pilot in Kathmandu. The weather windows had to be perfect in both Kathmandu Valley and Langtang for a successful helicopter evacuation. Talks had long since begun regarding a Plan B: we would construct a litter from two sturdy branches, a rope, and a tarp, and carry Riley out of Langtang to the nearest place accessible by car—a few days’ walk at least. 10:30 AM was the deadline for a helicopter evac; at 10:22, we received confirmation that a chopper was inbound, and before long we heard the tuck-tuck-tuck of a chopper making its way through the clouds.
Watching Riley go was sobering. Thus far we as a group had spent nearly every moment together since arriving in Nepal. Now, one of us was being evacuated to a hospital in Kathmandu, and there was nothing we could do to help them. In a matter of minutes, the helicopter arrived, Riley was helped on board, and they became a dot in the clouds before the sound of the blade slap faded into the haze.
When your days are spent on foot and in search of water, when you tend only to your basic needs, like the tent, the stove, the forecast or footpath—incidents of the surface, really—the reality begins to fade. Seeing the helicopter was jarring after so many days out. It was a relic from a world we had mentally left behind us, gone as quickly as it had arrived. Like the feeling of waking from some vivid dream, I peered around amidst the deafening and impenetrable silence that closed upon us as the sea might close on a diver, trying to regain a sense of where I was. The helicopter had diminished the air of remoteness surrounding Phedi Dawa, but from the mountain’s recesses reemerged that feeling of isolation, as if the terse and unrelenting whip of the chopper’s blades had temporarily obscured the mountains’ gaze, indescribable but ever present, that loomed over us always. Hardly anyone spoke. Unnamed mountains towered above, their summits enshrouded in mist. Waterfalls cascaded down rocky chutes in eternal crash and tumble.
A motion from the deep brought me back to reality, and I leaned over the edge of a short cliff for a quick pre-departure vomit. Ahead of us were 900 meters of vertical ascent and 300 meters of descent to follow. The sovereignty of the mountains overtook us once again.
A sign painted onto the side of a vacated mountain lodge reads “Welcome to Hotel Phedi Dawa, Baby”. Altitude 3730m.
A helicopter from Kathmandu descends near Hotel Phedi Dawa. Behind it stands an unnamed mountain where, in 1992, Thai Airways International Flight 311 crashed into the mountainside, killing all 99 passengers and 14 crew members on board. Debris remaining from the crash can be seen along the trail through Tharepati Pass.
As we inched ever closer to the crest of Tharepati Pass, we realized that the weather overhead was descending upon us; rather, we were climbing up closer to it. Soon enough, we were not under so much as we were in the weather. And the weather was cold. What began as a sunny, short-sleeve slog uphill turned quickly into a test of willpower and a clash against the elements. Altitude reinforced its position as The Great Equalizer, slowing down much of the group as the weather continued to worsen. The skies darkened and began to release bits of ice and snow that whipped in the wind and stung against any exposed flesh. In between regurgitating bits of whatever I’d forced down that morning and afternoon, I did my best to hover around my PTS and ignore the weather. Surya Peak had served as our landmark for the last four days, and we were now engulfed by a storm at its base in a landscape transformed.
Lakes dotted the mountainsides around us, frozen pits of snowmelt sunk deep into the earth. The foliage had changed from a biodiverse and vibrant green underbrush to a terse, beige-colored afterthought. Unlike the forest far below, where red pandas leapt from tree to tree and the life around us everywhere to be found … life up here, save us, the pikas, and the elusive snow leopard, was largely reduced to the hardy lichens that speckled the rocks and scree defining the space around us. Prayer flags snapped taut in the saddle, where the wind blew strongest. There, the flags served one of their many functions as a visual and audible waypoint for the wandering mountaineer.
Prayer flags fly in the wind under a dark sky at the crest of Tharepati Pass, with Surya Peak in the background.
For weary trekkers who come to rest at its shores, it is immediately apparent why this place is a World Heritage Site and the destination of annual pilgrimage. Because it sits just over the crest of Tharepati Pass, approaching the lake from high above makes it appear as if its edges pour directly into the sky.
I wrote in my journal that the day’s hike “wasn’t too bad.”
Gosainkunda Lake, 14,370 ft. On the right near the end of the trail is our huddle of yellow tents, by a small collection of mountain lodges that open alternating days of the week so as to share business fairly.
To stay sharp and entertained, Amrit invited each of us to lead a brief instruction session on a topic of our choice during downtime throughout the expedition. He started us off with Tomb’s “Expedition Behavior” on Day 3; we had lessons in map reading and triangulation; basic jiu jitsu movements and submissions; and, how to avoid heuristic traps. We had long known that this trek would include a summit attempt, and had heard the name ‘Surya Peak’ for days before it revealed itself to us. Now camped at its base, it was my turn to contribute a lesson: how to prepare yourself for a summit bid.
I volunteered to co-lead the day with my tentmate Gavin. There was no direct trail to the summit, and so we studied the maps’ contour lines to locate the most forgiving route up the mountain. I commenced the briefing by saying something along the lines of “this may be one of the most physically challenging things you ever do.” By now we had all felt the debilitating effects of altitude even in stable weather conditions. Surya Peak stands at a respectable 5145 meters (16,880 ft.), higher than any mountain in the contiguous United States, and all but two peaks in Europe. I wanted the group to be physically and mentally prepared, and thus shared with them my experience on Cotopaxi, where I vaguely remember gulping at mouthfuls of half-oxygenated air. Exhaustion and delirium had brought me to my knees, and I crawled the last two hundred yards to the summit.
I woke up just before 5am the next day, second-guessing every preparatory decision made the night prior and ultimately repacking everything I’d put together. Crawling out into the dark, I walked down to a three-sided aluminum shed where Krishna and the porter team were busy preparing breakfast and sack lunches for the team. Around camp, I saw yellow tents lighting up like fireflies as people slowly awoke and put together their summit packs. It was bitterly cold, the sky tinted the faintest lilac awaiting the rising sun. I sipped tea and bombarded a diminished appetite with bland mouthfuls of rice and oatmeal. My stomach hadn’t worsened, but it certainly hadn't improved either, and the altitude wasn’t doing me any favors. Still, I knew I would need calories to fuel the ascent, so with gulps of water and minimal chewing I washed down as much as I could.
The first leg of the approach was forgiving. We retraced the same trail we’d taken to arrive at Gosainkunda Lake, staying careful to avoid translucent patches of slippery ice. Snowmelt from the previous day had frozen overnight across the rock and scree, now thawing underfoot as the sun crept slowly over the horizon. Surya Peak loomed off to the left, a burly gray pyramid capped in white that glistened in the morning light.
“Uhh...I think this is it,” I announced to the group with middling confidence near a place I thought looked like a way up. Looking to the guides for reassurance, I was met with shrugs. They were testing my navigation and map reading skills, and thus offered very little advice or direction. Pasang grinned and nodded in the direction of the summit. Gavin gave me a halfhearted thumbs-up. I figured that was as much as I could hope for, and stepped off the path onto the rocky outskirts of the Surya massif. Reaching the edge of the first boulder field, our porter Neema stepped up front, and I followed his lead through a landscape that shifted underfoot. One misstep in this terrain could lead to a broken ankle, or worse. We followed the cairns and tread carefully through the cascade of boulders shed by the mountain over an unfathomable amount of time. As with any mountain, Surya’s placid indifference to our presence was palpable.
Just before the saddle was a ledge roughly half the size of a basketball court, large enough to accommodate the whole group for a pre-summit lunch break. Navigating the boulder field with the necessary care and precision had taken the better part of the morning, and we needed to refuel before a brief Class 4 scramble up a small chimney to reach the saddle and base of the summit block.
The chimney itself required a type of precision different from the boulder field: extending the arms and legs to compress oneself in the open-book feature, and trusting the rubber on our shoes to stick onto tiny edges, reaching high for the next handhold. In most cases, a fall here would not have resulted in serious injury or death, but it was nonetheless the most exposed section of the climb thus far. What awaited us at the top of the chimney was unlike anything I’d ever seen before in the mountains.
For most of my life I had heard stories and seen photos from the Himalaya: massive white peaks bursting forth from the horizon, taking up half the sky, their summits resting in that ethereal realm where our shallow, earthly blue blends into the deep, ominous navy of the upper atmosphere. As Conrad Anker details in Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s Meru, the Himalaya has been described as a place where Heaven, Earth, and Hell all come together. From the saddle beneath Surya Peak, this convergence was, all at once, on full display.
A frozen lake just over the crest of Tharepati Pass.
(Left) Chandra Ale (yellow) and Pasang Dawa Sherpa (gray) work their way up the chimney beneath the saddle of Surya Peak.
The group slowly climbs up the gentle foothills near the base of Surya Peak.
The Langtang Himal as seen from the Northwest saddle of Surya Peak at roughly 16,000 ft.
From our position around 16,000 feet, the Langtang Himal came into full view for the first time since our arrival in Nepal. The mountains were so massive and domineering compared to anything else nearby that they looked as though they were painted onto the landscape. Multiple six-, seven- and eight-thousand meter peaks were now visible. Manaslu, the Mountain of the Spirit, stood to the west, partially cloaked in a whirlwind of snow suspended in the winds. And somewhere beyond the far east reaches of the Langtang Himal loomed Shishapangma, one of the more elusive 8000ers, nestled across the border in Tibet.
Their stillness, however, does not in the least resemble peace. I knew that far away in the reaches of the Langtang Himal tumbled countless avalanches, serac falls, glaciers that groan and shift underfoot as a warning to those who set foot on such tumultuous terrain. The Himalaya are the youngest mountains on the planet. Driven forth from the earth by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian Continental Plates some 40 or 50 million years ago, their prominence is a result of their adolescence: unruly, untamable, vicious, apathetic, and cruel. Like Manaslu, the tallest mountains in the range were largely obscured in clouds of snow being blasted off their upper sections by the jetstream. Many of the planet’s highest peaks stand in proud defiance against the persistent assault of atmospheric winds that encircle the globe. As such, they exist in near-constant states of battle as winds, rain, snow, and ice shear away bits and pieces of the mountains over eons.
Vigorous as they are against the forces of the planet and life itself, the Himalaya will ultimately lose this battle. And someday, millions of years from now, they will look something like the Appalachian Mountains of the United States, formed almost 500 million years ago. Though difficult to fathom, it is almost inevitable that the mighty Himalaya will eventually be reduced to mere remnants of their former selves, calmer by nature and more conducive to life on Earth.
Now, in their magisterial youth, their appearance was humbling, mute to the ears, but through the eyes and thus into the soul they chanted, yet whispered: ‘Come and find out.’ In the saddle of Surya Peak I stood silently, in awe of the great chaos that lay before me.
Neema of our porter team, who led the way up the final summit push.
Neema floated effortlessly through the snow-covered boulder field on the summit push. Despite following his path to near-exact foot placement, I managed to repeatedly deepen his footprints and sink into the shallow crevasses up to anywhere between my ankle and waist. The others were thoroughly entertained, careful to avoid the many places where I had fallen into the snowpack. Soon enough, the prayer flags fixed to the mountaintop came into view, flapping in the wind.
I was surprised by how well-adapted to the altitude I felt compared to previous experiences. We’d been at a sustained altitude of at least 12,000 feet for several days, and had slept at 14,000 the night before. Our bodies were acclimatizing naturally, and now, nearing 17,000 feet at the summit of Surya Peak, I felt noticeably more energized and at-ease than I had on past climbs in Colorado, for example, far lower in elevation than where I now stood. The journey to the summit, though carefully pursued, had hardly been strenuous.
We didn’t stay long, heading down shortly after a quick lunch and a few photos. Our descent was uneventful, which is about as good as one can hope for when returning from the reaches of a high peak. The way down is more dangerous, statistically speaking. With the summit in hindsight, often our senses tend to dull and fatigue settles in, making us more prone to error. In any case, summiting is not necessarily indicative of a triumphant expedition. Getting home safely, summit or not, is the measure of a successful outing. It was not until returning to the pass that we felt we could truly relax, with Gosainkunda visible in the distance.
Gosainkunda is a place of pilgrimage and cleansing to the followers of multiple religions. Throughout the day we could hear the blade slap of helicopters carrying folks to and from the shores of the lake to take part in their own cleansing rituals. And so, it only felt right that after nine days without showering, we should all participate in a cleansing of our own. We made sure to confirm with Amrit that it would not be considered offensive or sacrilegious for us travelers to take the plunge and, upon receiving permission, hobbled to the lakeshore and stripped our layers.
I find that there is something deeply meditative and incredibly relaxing about jumping into cold water, and particularly all at once if possible, rather than submerging oneself slowly. Like a natural ice bath, the cold eases soreness and fatigue. The shock factor of full and instant submersion presents a greater challenge to regain control over rhythmic breathing. The end result, when I find myself floating on my back, breathing rhythmically, eyes either closed or gazing up into the sky, is a unique sense of presence and awareness I have only found while fully immersed in the silent, piercing stillness of alpine lakes.
This was not the case in Gosainkunda.
My body was stiff and sore as I stepped gingerly toward the holy lakeshore. The water itself could not have been more alluring as I drew closer: a bright, crystalline cerulean painted with reflections of surrounding peaks that shimmered in the waves. The sun shone high overhead, and it was warm for 14,000 feet. It felt refreshing to peel away my shell after so many days of not bothering to change much more than my socks and underwear.
With bare feet I stepped up onto a boulder jutting out from the shore and steeled myself for the cold. To my right, clouds hung at eye level where the mountainside fell away into a valley far below; to my left, Surya Peak. Peering at its summit from so far away, it almost didn’t feel like I had been up there just a few hours ago. In front of me was the clear blue surface of Gosainkunda. I could almost see the bottom.
Eight years of competitive swimming, jumping into icy-cold pools at 5am, and all the frigid bodies of water I had previously plunged into did not prepare me for this. Diving headfirst, arms outstretched, I knew as soon as my fingertips punched through the surface that the impending sensation would be overwhelming. In the split-second it took for the water to pass my elbows, my whole body tensed.
The cold was all-consuming, dictating that every action I took thereafter should be only to get myself out of the water as fast as possible. The water temperature couldn’t have been more than 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and a rush of adrenaline washed over me as I shot up from below, desperately sucking in a lungful of brisk mountain air. I tried to gain control of my breath and force it into rhythm, but the cold felt like a python constricting against my chest. Every part of my body was begging me to get out of the water, and so I dipped back down to quickly scrub off as much dirt and grime as I could before swimming full-tilt towards the shoreline.
Clambering over the rocks in a desperate search for my towel, I was able to breathe again. The air felt much warmer now, and I was revitalized by the lake’s quick, cold shock juxtaposed against the heat of the sun. It was a clear afternoon, and for the rest of the day I lounged around the campsite snacking on Nutella and chocolate cereal.
Two hours later, I watched from the vestibule of my tent as purple lightning illuminated the night sky, and a thick layer of snow accumulated on the ground. Amrit told us we were witnessing a rare phenomenon—a snowstorm accompanied by lightning—and explained that the unique combination of elements was the cause behind the royal purple hue flashing in the sky. The storm persisted through the night, and every so often I would awake to see the amorphous silhouettes of snow gathering atop our tent, providing insulation. Nonetheless it remained bitterly cold inside and out, and my stomach forced me to brave the elements every few hours and trudge to the latrine tent.
Though the snow filled in my footprints each time I ventured out from the warm confines of my tent, my path through the dark was highlighted with every strike of electrified indigo, and despite the discomfort I couldn’t help but marvel in the wake of a day so simple and fulfilling. We were set to leave Gosainkunda the next morning and continue along the Helambu Trek. I slept as well as I could beneath my various disheveled layers in a sleeping bag packed with loose clothing for extra warmth.
The following morning initiated as they all had, with the added thump-thump-thumping of fists pounding from within our tents to remove the blankets of snow that had amassed overnight. We had reached our high point, and from here our path trended generally downward, descending once again into the forest.
Camp was broken, stomachs filled (myself excluded). Our porters had gone ahead. One by one, in single file, we began to walk.
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
— Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Langtang Lirung (23,734 ft.) as seen from Surya Peak. Langtang Lirung is the tallest mountain in the Langtang Himal and is listed as the 99th tallest mountain in the world.
IG @rob_kyte:
It’s not often I get in front of the camera. But here, I couldn’t help but capture a feeling of purpose and content just before reaching the summit of Surya Peak (5145m, 16,880ft) with the Langtang Himal and the mighty Langtang Lirung (7227m, 23,734ft) as the backdrop. These mountains here eventually constitute Nepal’s border with Tibet. The majesty of the Himalaya is daunting, alluring, magical, and terrible. It is a holy place to all, not just those who answer the call of its highest and most remote reaches.
Congrats to everyone who summited on this day, April 8, 2021. To stand on a high summit is to edge a little closer to the limits of one’s endurance through a test of physical and mental fortitude, to concentrate what is beautiful about the human experience into a measurable window in time—a tangible uphill pursuit of something that is, by its very nature, intangible and everlasting.
These photos, shot from roughly the same spot, were taken mere hours apart from each other. (Left) Gosainkunda Lake, just before I took a short-lived swim. (Right) Gosainkunda Lake the morning after an overnight snow storm passed through.
