Its been about a year since I trekked the Langtang Valley in Nepal with my friends Bill and Bob. At our easternmost point in the valley we ascended Kyanjin Ri. If I recall correctly we climbed 3,000 feet in 2 miles.
We set out at about 4:30 am. An amusing hand-painted sign directed us up into the darkness. The mountains around us were hulking shadows and the moon had this weird halo around it.
The sun hit the peaks of Langtang 1 (Langtang Lirung) long before it lit our slope. For the entire trek Langtang 1 and Langtang 2 (Ghenge Liru) kept appearing and disappearing, depending on cloud cover and our altitude.
At this point the sky is lit and we are on the shadowed side of the Himalayan range. This great golden light was limning the peaks around us. To the lower right you can see some of the tributaries that flow down the valley into the Langtang River. We had been trekking east along the river for 4 days.
As we summited the sun was cutting across the peaks on either side of the valley in a perfect horizontal plane. The clouds hid everything below us.
We stood at roughly 15,000 feet above sea level. I've never seen anything like this. Even though the Himalayan peaks were always 6-10 thousand feet above us the optics of distance and the moving clouds made it seem like we were standing next to them. Tibet is about 9 miles northeast of here, if you can somehow get over the Yansa Tsenji peak. Everest is 60 miles east.
I couldn't have asked for better friends to go on this adventure with. These guys talked me into the whole thing, and they kept me motivated when I was struggling. And there were struggles. I trained a lot in the months before the trip, but I didnt have any real way of preparing for the thin air.
Everything functions differently at high altitude. Lungs, muscles, inflammation- even your skin seems to change its MO. One day I became hypothermic and the temperature wasn't even remotely close to freezing. I think it was 45 or 50 degrees F. On the other hand, this was the most otherworldly thing I've ever done. I cant imagine a bigger departure from my day-to-day life. Crazy.
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