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 Marty Schmidt - dispatches from Lhotse & Ama Dablam, Nepal | ||||||||
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This mountain is the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, and being 6,812 meters in height it stands beautiful and proud as we trek towards it along the Solu Khumbu Valley, the same trek for Everest south side. Just a quick one from the city of Sydney, Aussieland. I keep forgetting how beautiful this city is from the air as well as from the ground. I'll be in Kathmandu on the 1st Oct, pack and plan logistics for our expedition till the 5th Oct when Lee arrives, finalize our gear and fly to Lukla on the 7th Oct to start our trek to Ama Dablam base camp. We are planning on climbing till the 8th of Nov, when we fly back to our homes. I'll write again in a few days letting you all know what is happening. So exciting to be back in the Himalayas again. Talk soon, much love and light. Cheers, Marty 10/07/2010: Namaste from KTM, Nepal. Sending good thoughts to you all from this magical city. For the past 60 years this land and it's people have been catering towards Western folks and their ways into the mountains. There are a lot of individuals and families being taken care of by the wave of foreigners traveling from all over this planet to this land of Nepal. It is such a win/win situation for everyone. Lee arrived on the 5th of Oct, settled him down in his Yak and Yeti room, not an easy thing since for the past 2 months KTM has been fully booked, no rooms anywhere. We are fortunate, I have been using Iswari now for more then 10 years and he is the best, he was able to get us nice rooms for these 2 nights. The old classic saying... it is not what you know but who you know, I personally feel it is best to have both of these in your quiver. I just finished up with the packing of food and gear and dealing with the permits. We met Elizabeth Hawley this morning for our normal gathering before an expedition begins. We fly off to Lukla at 0500 in the morning and begin our trek into Everest BC. We have had a bit of a change with our plans. Both Lee and I thought it would be best to acclimatize for Ama Dablam with trekking to Everest BC, at 5,300 meters, this way Lee is getting the best chance with the altitude for Ama Dablam. Then he mentioned to me that while he is resting and training around this height of 5,300 meters, I should run up Lhotse. So this is what the plan is now, my permit is in my hand and I will check out the route through the Khumbu, then the Cwm, onto the Lhotse head wall and see how the conditions are treating me for a climb up the Lhutse coulior to the summit of 8,516 meters. After this we will head down to Ama Dablam for our climb to this summit of 6,812 meters of technical rock climbing. Looking forward to all this together with Lee. I will be phoning in my dispatches through Daan at Macpac again and letting you know how all is going in the Himalayas. Good thoughts to you all from this wonderful place on this earth. Talk soon again, cheers. Marty 10/12/2010: Namaste and greetings from Namche Bazar. This is the place where everyone in the Solu Kumbu comes to sell and buy at the Saturday market place. And today it's Saturday and we experienced this historic gathering place. Lee is going well, for the past 3 days we have been trekking from Lukla, the airy airstrip on the side of a steep ridge where 100s of flights come and go through out the trekking/climbing seasons. This place is buzzing with people from around the world and we just get into our mountain ways, learning to adjust to the altitudes daily, our bodies tell us what is happening, good or bad and our minds are at peace working hard towards our goals. Lee told me he has 4 goals with this journey... 1st, to make it to Everest BC feeling good, 2nd for me to summit Lhotse, 3rd for us to summit Ama Dablam and 4th for Lee to loose 30 pounds. Great to have goals on this earth. This dispatch is to let you all know that we are doing well and are happy with our day to day living in the Himalayas. We will head off to Panboche and onward towards Dingboche, Loboche, Gorak Shepe and Everest BC for the next 6-7 days. We will try to send more dispatches from computers along the way, but for sure we'll be in touch with our Sat Phone dispatches. Looking forward to seeing how the Kumbu Ice Fall is feeling and then the Lhotse face, once I get up there to feel it out I'll know where I will be standing. I will keep in touch with you via dispatches. Very exciting days coming up and this same excitement runs deep in my veins as I write to you all right now, living in the now. Life is good... Good thoughts to you all from the Himalayas, talk again in a few days time. Much love and light, cheers, Marty and Lee. 10/12/2010: Hello everyone, (inaudible) at Tengboche the most beautiful monastery... highest monastery in Nepal and it's just powerful and magical. We just saw the Mandala (inaudible) created inside the monastery and (inaudible) the coloured sand and they prey pretty much for 3-4 days (inaudible). So it's really powerful to witness and just be a part of. We had an early morning, we got up here and saw Ama Dablam and that was very welcoming for us. We trekked up here to the river camp and on into Pangboche, so that's what our goal is the next 2-3 hours, we'll be walking the foothills of the Himalayas. It's a beautiful little town and (inaudible) cellphone coverage... we're on sat phone right now... thereafter will definitely be sat phone. We see everything up here; we see the crows, the yaks, the buffalos... the monks residing within this monastery year round. Some go down to lower lands to be with their family but they usually come back up and commit themselves for the years on end. Some monks come her at 7 years of age and then leave at 18 and they go off in the world with the education they get in this amazingly powerful place. So yeah, this is it, this is us. We're getting into the rhythm of the Himalayas and as we walk each day, we're acclimatising and feeling good and Lee is doing great. He charged up this hill, about a 300 meter hill and did it in a couple of hours and that's a really good beginning step for him and our goal is to be able to keep acclimatising him all the way to Everest so he feels good when we go after Ama Dablam. OK hat's good enough for now. We'll talk to you later. Thanks a lot Daan for making this happen again. OK good bye from Tengboche, Nepal.
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