ONEincredibleCLOUDYday

One Incredible Cloudy Day...

April 22nd-23rd

Pheriche- Phortse



The White Yak hotel in Pheriche had offered us a refuge of warmth and happiness after our two biggest days of hiking on the trip, Everest Base camp and Kallapathar. Last night, the girls in our group; Pamela, Theresa, Ruby, Renata, Sarah, Lhakpa and I, were singing in delirious joy around the fire place, which is typically set in the middle of these cold teahouses. Yak and Dso Dso (pronounced Jok Jok) dung that was burned to keep us warm didn’t smell at all, and our songs and laughter roared through the lodge. There were only two groups in this lodge, one was our group of Canadians and two Kiwis and the other, was a group of Americans. A few of the younger men in the American group were looking over and smiling at the ‘Canadian babes,’ singing away, and likewise we received a few glares, namely from an aggressive looking middle aged woman with short hair. She was probably just surprised that she wasn’t the only ‘babe’ in the lodge this time, well, that, or she was annoyed with the loud singing from the women and the boisterous laughter of the men in our group who were already quite a few beers in. No matters, this was a night to celebrate!!



After a good night’s sleep in Pheriche, on the big comfortable soft mattresses which Lhakpa and I had pushed together and shared, like we had been doing the whole trip, Lhakpa is my new best-friend in Nepal, or my Sherpa hot water bottle, Big Pete and Goat the Kiwis liked to tease, we ate breakfast, a muesli and hot milk for me and we were once again off on our adventures. Outside while waiting for the group to start we watched Pasang our cow herder and Asuk our cute and incredibly shy twenty year old Sherpa porter, load the cows with our luggage. One particular cow kept resting his head on our bags while waiting for our porters to load him up, he looked at me as if to say ‘What?,’ and I can’t blame him since he has a long day of walking like us, but he’s carrying all of our heavy gear.



To get to the high-perched village of Phortse, we had to hike up a mountain all day. The first leg of our uphill hike, I clicked into wrestling mode, which I did on various and randomn occasion annoying my fellow hikers since I was usually at the back, kicking up dust balls in my efforts, and couldn’t stop myself from going faster and faster until I was all but running up the mountain, just wanting to get to my goal, the top. In the end, Sarah and I, an old team mate from university wrestling, booked it to the top.



We stopped at a teahouse at the apparent, top of this mountain and drank some lemon tea as per usual on our hikes. From outside we could hear Al, the magician of the group, doing a magic show for a large group of Indian hikers. There was such a big commotion coming from outside, as there always is when Al gets going, and I was tempted to go to see which trick he was doing, ‘the disappearing pen?’ maybe ‘the reappearing coins?’ but even the notion of standing up and walking a few steps was so tiring that I remained inside listening to the laughter and applaud, while I drank my lemon tea. Junior, or Greg the youngest member of our expedition, provided some entertainment inside, by eating a bag of sour sugar. His face in this single moment said it all, the pain, the anguish, the intensity of his poor taste buds. Needless to say, all inside were thoroughly impressed.



On the second half of our hike, Jim, the new group leader since Papa left who was soon to be demoted to assistant, assistant group leader but that is another story, Theresa, my best-friend Lhakpa and I took the rear. We ended up behind a group of Indian hikers who were singing crazily and dancing, stopping to take pictures every few steps while also trying to hike this steep ragged trail. Lhakpa, though Sherpa knew a few Hindi songs and soon she joined in singing familiar songs with the Indians. It was cool to see her jump in with them and just as crazily as our activities last night around the central fire, belt out some tunes.




The trail ahead of us was engulfed by the grey misty cloud covered sky, and most people in the group would agree that it did indeed rise into the high sky above us. Though in the back of the pack, I could hear the unanimous groans coming from the group, ‘Why?,’ was echoed in the hollow wind, I heard their cries ‘Why?,’ it bounded off the high raw stone cliffs on our right falling down thousands of feet into the deep gorge on our left before plummeting into the cool river below us like Gaia’s tears. Why is this path still going uphill? Jim would tell Theresa and I, ‘This is the last one,’ only to reach the top the rocky hill, turn a sharp corner and be faced with another uphill jaunt. Jim would then say ‘Oh, no this is it, this is the last one,’ and when he was wrong would continue ‘well, it has been a few years since I hiked this trail,’ no worries Jim, if we were all your age we’d be losing our minds too.



The jagged rocks below me were in the shape of witches sharp fingernails or the devil’s crooked, twisting spirals, that lead to his most dark and isolated lair, had my imagination spinning and twirling in delight. The wind blowing mist and cloud by me in such a fury, I forgot that I was standing on the edge of this deep gorge, rooted to the earth and felt, that I was actually a free bird flying through the highest and most mysterious places of the world.



A few hours later, we reached Phortse, it was nothing too special, rock stone walls as usual, and a few scattered guest houses lay below us in this quiet mountain village.



The next morning Jim asked who had honestly enjoyed our hike up the unessecarily steep mountain trail. I can’t remember if I raised my hand, but hope to always remember this one particular cloudy day.