The Manaslu Adventure: Three Hapless Friends Try to Climb a Big Mountain: Footsteps on the Mountain Diaries

THE MANASLU ADVENTURE

Three hapless friends try to climb a big mountain

By Mark Horrell

Published by Mountain Footsteps Press

Copyright © Mark Horrell, 2018

www.markhorrell.com

All rights reserved

First published as an ebook 2012

Revised edition published 2018

Originally published as The Ascent of Manaslu

Except where indicated, all photographs copyright © Mark Horrell

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy via the links at www.markhorrell.com/TheManasluAdventure. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

ISBN (paperback): 978-0-9127480-0-6

ISBN (ebook): 978-0-9934130-9-4

Front cover photo: Mark Horrell

THE MANASLU ADVENTURE

About this book

The mountain gods were protective of Manaslu, a two-pronged peak in the Nepal Himalaya, and one of the world’s fourteen 8,000m peaks.

Many years ago, a Japanese team tried to climb it, but the gods had sent an avalanche in their wake which destroyed a monastery and set the local people against them. When they returned the next year, they were met with sticks and stones, stripped naked and sent home with red cheeks.

Mark Horrell and his two friends Mark and Ian shared a dream to climb an 8,000m peak, but it seemed the gods were against them too. They had made no fewer than eight attempts without success (though they had managed to return with their clothes on).

With towering ice walls, monsoon rainstorms, arm-twisting crevasses and – most dangerous of all – welcoming teahouses ready to entrap them, would it be different this time?

About this series

The Footsteps on the Mountain Travel Diaries are Mark’s expedition journals. Quick reads, they are lightly edited versions of what he scribbles in his tent each evening after a day in the mountains.

Mark’s first full-length book, Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest, about his journey to becoming an Everest climber, was published in November 2015.

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Mark always puts together a good mountaineering story which is underpinned with humour.

For a lover of mountains and adventure these are not to be missed. Every one has been worth it.

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THE MANASLU ADVENTURE

Three hapless friends try to climb a big mountain

Footsteps on the Mountain Travel Diaries

Day 1 – Leaving civilisation

Saturday, 3 September 2011 – Soti Khola, Manaslu Circuit, Nepal

The adventure starts at 12.30 on Friday in a place called Dading Besi, about three hours’ drive from Kathmandu. Twelve climbers of seven different nationalities sit on benches in the back of a rickety old truck and start the long ride along an atrociously rutted dirt track to Arughat in the Gorkha region of Nepal.

As well as myself, a Brit, we have my two regular climbing partners Mark and Ian, also from the UK; two Americans, Robert and Steve; Robin from Canada; José the Colombian; Karel the Czech; Anne-Mari the Finn; Mila the Russian; and expedition leader Phil Crampton, owner of Altitude Junkies, the expedition operator we’re climbing with, an ex-pat Brit living in New York, who spends most of his life in the Himalayas.

I had hoped our ride in the truck would be short, but it ends up providing seven hours of discomfort. A ridge of metal digs into my back every time we go over a bump. I keep hitting my head on the low roof, and after only an hour of driving I have blisters on my thumbs from clinging for dear life to the struts. We face each other on benches along the sides of the truck. Our bags are piled up in front of us, so there isn’t much legroom. It would be bad enough without a hangover, but I’m feeling a little fragile after last night’s boozing in Kathmandu. My stomach isn’t in the best of shape, which is a concern for the people sitting across from me.

Phil sits beside the open back of the vehicle.

‘Dude, do you want to come and sit here? You look like you’re going to throw up at any moment.’

The truck slides around as the road climbs through jungle, with a steep drop to our right. We are tossed around like a canoe in a gale, and it doesn’t help when Steve remarks how bald the tyres are.

We spend around two hours of the journey by the side of the road, waiting for vehicles that have broken down or are stuck in the mud. On one of these occasions I’m able to grab a few minutes’ sleep, impossible when the truck is moving. Robert, who owns a motorcycle dealership and knows a thing or two about vehicle mechanics, wanders down the hill to find out what the problem is.

‘They’ve got a broken leaf spring,’ he says when he returns.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Steve replies.

I have no idea what a broken leaf spring is, but I gather from this exchange that it must be a bugger to fix. I walk to the front of the queue and have a look myself. A truck is hitched up on a jack, with one of its wheels off and various bits of metal lying on the ground underneath. A dozen Nepalis are crouching down, fiddling with the debris. Luckily someone happens to be carrying a spare leaf spring and they get the vehicle moving. We all jump back in our trucks, but only a moment later we grind to a halt when a vehicle in front drives into a ditch. Eventually they get it out and we continue. It’s clearly going to be dark by the time we reach Arughat. We reach the bottom of a hill and cross a wide plain among rice fields, but when we start driving up the other side I wonder if we’re ever going to reach our destination.

‘This place does exist, doesn’t it?’ I ask Phil.

‘Dude, it’s unheard of to reach Arughat in one day,’ he replies.

This is his third expedition to Manaslu, and on each previous occasion he had to stop somewhere on the way, find porters and walk. This time we make it. Even more surprisingly my stomach survives the ordeal without decorating the back of the truck with its contents.

We stay in a lodge instead of pitching tents in the dark. I expect to experience bed bugs during the night – the Manaslu Circuit trek isn’t as developed as other parts of Nepal – but the lodge is very clean, and I get a good night’s sleep to make up for last night’s binge.

In the morning 150 porters are waiting in the yard behind the lodge, ready to take our 5,000kg of equipment up to base camp. It’s more porters than we need, but many are no more than boys, so our Sherpa team have no problem weeding them down to the requisite 102. I watch for a while. Although it looks chaotic, there’s no sign of the furious arguments that you sometimes see on the first day of portering.

Porters assembling for work in Arughat

It’s swelteringly hot and still early in the morning when we leave. Arughat is at an altitude of only 610m in a valley between jungle hills. Although there is some cloud cover, when the sun is out it’s warm and humid. We set off at around 9.30, and for the first two hours we walk through a sprawl of villages. People cluster in doorways doing little but watch the world go by. They don’t see many trekkers around here, and the kids are friendly, running behind us and calling out namaste (hello) every step of the way. It’s exhausting, but I keep smiling, put my hands together and mutter namaste back to them.

We stop for a water break in the shade of a large pipal tree. Robert seems to be good with the kids and they cluster around him. While Mark, Ian and I were out on a Kathmandu bar crawl two days ago, Robert spent his evening at a nunnery orphanage. I ask him about it, and an interesting story emerges that puts us to shame.

‘My daughter is a Gurung from a place called Jharkot on the Annapurna trail. We adopted her and took her to America when she was two, which allowed her single mother to remarry and start another family with a new husband. They’ve since had five kids, and the middle one, a daughter, was put into a nunnery at a young age. It’s the tradition in Nepal for the middle kid to become a monk or nun. But she has problems with her eyes. Sometimes the pupils roll right up into the top of her head and you can only see the whites. She has trouble focusing on short and long distances. I think of these people as family, so I wanted to do something to help. We found a specialist ophthalmologist in Kathmandu on the internet, but you can’t just show up and take the kid away, so I spent Thursday meeting the nuns for a few hours, talking to them and trying to build their confidence that I really wanted to help this girl. I don’t know whether her eyes can be treated, but we have to give it a shot.’

At 11.30, after two hours of walking, we stop for lunch in a grove of trees beside the Budhi Gandaki, the river whose valley we’ll be following for the next few days. Our fourteen-strong kitchen crew unpack a mine of steel pans and spread them out across the grass as we stop and chill out for a leisurely two-hour lunch break. I find a comfortable rock to lean against, but have to change position after the sun moves through the branches of a tree and I suddenly find myself in burning heat.

We only have a couple of hours to walk after lunch, but the heat is unbearable and I sweat buckets. I carry my water bottle in my hand so that I can swig regularly. The dirt track is still passable to vehicles for some of its length, but only just. We have to cross the river. A Land Rover is stuck in water nearly up to its bonnet. The truck behind tows it out, and it’s able to drive through the deep ford at the second attempt.

It isn’t much easier for us. I take my boots and socks off and begin wading in water almost knee deep, but the current is powerful and I find it difficult to stand up on the rocks beneath the surface. Fortunately, Robert, who is walking behind me, lends me one of his trekking poles. With the extra support it’s simple enough, but it isn’t made any easier by the young kid swimming in the water beside me, who paddles right up and laughs at me. I’m not an aggressive man, but if I didn’t need the walking pole I’d be tempted to belt him with it. I wouldn’t get washed away by the current if I fell, but my camera would probably be ruined on day one of the expedition, which I wouldn’t regard as a fair swap for a small child’s entertainment.

I find I’ve regained my sense of humour a little later when we pass through another village and a small girl starts pointing at me and laughing.

‘Monkey, monkey,’ she cries. This definitely isn’t a friendly greeting, but the sheer bare-faced cheek of it makes me laugh.

I’m not the only one providing entertainment for the local people. An hour later two young porter women walking ahead of me start pointing at Mark and giggling.

‘You know why they’re laughing,’ I tell him afterwards. ‘It’s because you’ve got big feet,