Anna Frost: Running Himalayas....
Renjo la Pass
Episode one documented their arrival in the Nepal region, and the Namche bazaar. In episode two of Frosty’s epic trip to this years Everest Marathon she talks about her’s and Gil’s (Matt Gilbert) continued ‘acclimatisation’, the introduction of porter Raj, plenty of sun and…snow!
after a nice rest day in namche topping up on treats we left with our porter for the higher ridges and passes of the himalayas.
our porter raj carried one bag with both mine and gil’s stuff while we had just our day bags allowing us to run from village to village. it worked a treat, however we were a little bit restricted by the altitude height that we could climb in a day. we headed up the thame valley to where there was a big ceremony in a monastery to pay respect to an old mok dude who had passed away…it was quite amusing to see the offerings being ‘biffed’ over the side of the hill of the monastery…very pure?!
Renjo la Pass
we arrived at the base of the renjo la pass just in time to snuggle away from the snow…and didn’t it snow. all right we thought we would have to turn back but the next morning greeted us with amazing beauty. sun galore. we walked over the pass with raj leading the way, through wide valleys, frozen lakes, and finally up 300m of vertical rock steps arriving at the pass at 5360m alt, and then nearly being blown off the pass by the shear incredibility of the view across to everest, makalu and gokyo village.
Cho La Pass
the next couple of days we basked in the sun, and ran our way up to gorak shep 5140m (the last village before base camp) stopping at a few tea houses on the way. and just our luck, after coming back don from kala patar – a view point for everest and base camp the snow came in and this time didn’t stop. so we headed back down the valley this time on the marathon race course. it felt good to be on the course but at the same time created a little bit of anxiety as it is extremely rough, technical and mostly down! not to mention covered in snow and freezing cold!
Thame Valley
on the way back to namche we stopped at a little friendly village called sanasa which looks straight over to ama dablam. from there we said our goodbyes to raj and did day runs on the last 15km of the course…what i think is going to be the hardest.
Sanasa
back in namche and an apple pie down, we have met some of the other athletes and are getting prepared to head back up to gokyo before going to gorak shep for race day – 4th december.
i am feeling great and cant wait for the race, though i have had to eat like food is going out of fashion since i am shivering all my calories off.
next update after the race i guess…
namaste, anna
