Himalayan Odyssey (1)

A chance remark from son Dominic started this one. We were having a Yum Cha lunch in April in Canberra the day after Martin, John, Garry and I had completed the Lone Pine Hut walk in Southern Namadgi NP the previous day. Dominic had joined us for Yum Cha but had not been on the walk having just arrived back from Beijing on the day of the walk. In conversation he just "happened" to mention that he was planning another trip to Nepal for around mid-September timeframe and, this time, to do the Everest Base Camp trek. My attention was caught immediately as his previous visits to Nepal (5 of them) had all been to the Western, Annapurna side which had not been of any interest to me. However, I had thought about doing the EBC walk as far back as about 1986 while living in Tasmania but had never got around to doing anything about it. Now here was an opportunity to 'fill in the hole'!

On expressing interest Dominic showed willingness for me to come along. The group to go on the walk had not yet been finalised although he had a couple of other definites (Barry and Shirley) besides himself - the only issue being timing as they were due to start building a house on a farm block that they own. Anyway he said he would send me some info on the proposed itinerary and I could make my mind up along the way. From my point of view I thought that I could give it a good shot, the only potential issue being whether I could perform well enough at the high altitudes involved (up to around 5, 500 metres). The timing would also give me about 4 to 4.5 months to boost my fitness levels over the winter.

Wife Patricia also questioned whether I would really be able to do such a strenuous trek having had a couple of angioplasty's and suffering mild Angina during exercise while the muscles are still cold. I based my decision on the full-day walk we had done a couple of years previously around the Snowy Mountains Main Ranges track which had seen us walking in temperatures of -6C to -8C which, with wind chill, put the effective temperature down around -28C. On that occasion, even although it was only a one day walk, I was very pleased with my own performance in extremely trying conditions. For the EBC project I thought that I could make a good fist of it and, if needs be, I could stop at a lodge along the trek and await the return of the others, or even just turn around and make my own way back down to a lower altitude (but with a guide/porter).

Anyway, thus the idea was born and the only thing left was to start the planning - always the exciting bit working out possibilities etc.