Trip Reports

Mera Peak - 12 April to 5 May 2019

Written by Leader Alex Langdon, May 2019

A PERFECT SUMMIT

TEAM: Adam. Andrew, Gary, Nigel, Tony, Paula and Chris

In early April 2019, the God of air travel (I shall call him Norbert) got out of bed on the wrong side. As a consequence, months of pre-planning for many Himalayan expeditions, including ours, was thrown randomly up in the air and landed in a soggy, chaotic and very expensive heap.

For a start, Kathmandu domestic airport was out of action while it underwent a (much-needed) several month face-lift. This therefore necessitated a ‘delightful and interesting’ 4 hour drive to that well-known hub of Ramechap Airport. To top that, the day before we were due to fly, Jet Airways decided to cancel ALL their (our) flights from Heathrow to Kathmandu.

It’s when things go wrong that you get a better idea of how a company looks after both its staff and its clients. Steph (and all the office staff) worked overtime to contact everyone and get all of us on Qatar flights, with minimal disruption to most people’s travel plans. If I’m forced to fly Qatar Business Class in the future and have to ‘endure’ rehydrating on champagne again, I promise to cope!

So, Norbert had been temporarily thwarted and 2 Jagged Globe teams had arrived in Kathmandu and then been transported to the oasis that is Ramechap Airport. However, it transpires that Norbert is a persistent God and Ramechap was heaving with hundreds of other trekkers and mountaineers also trying to get into the mountains. Further delays had happened due to a dreadful plane crash at Lukla which had closed the airport for a day.

Despite heroic efforts from our Nepalese friend, Kewel we didn’t get allocated any of the small planes leaving for Lukla that day. As despondency began to set in, 5 of my team got lucky and were suddenly whisked away by a Swiss helicopter pilot to Lukla. The rest of my team and all of Patrick’s team ‘revelled’ in a day spent in Ramechap. As the sun literally set on this dreamy day, a small miracle happened and the rest of my team and 2 interlopers form Patrick’s team found ourselves an unlikely hero in the form of helicopter pilot, Alasdair. I very nearly blew our new found luck out the water here……never, never, never mistake a Canadian for an American! After putting the helicopter into a vertical dive to register his displeasure at my error, our pilot thankfully retrieved his (CANADIAN) sense of humour and landed us safely on a square inch of flat ground 2 hours hike from Lukla. It was my first flight in a helicopter. It was awesome.

A 20 minute walk reunited us with the rest of our team, who had walked down from Lukla and a much-deserved round of (very expensive-thank you Nigel) beers celebrated the Mera Peak team finally making it into the hills. We all slept well that night, despite the torrential rain; and grumpy Norbert went back to bed.

The next two weeks found us in a fairly regular trekking routine: up at 6, breakfast by 7 and hiking by 8. Most days involved about 7 hours of walking and could easily include 1000m of height gain or loss. The landscape slowly changed from rhododendron and magnolia forests to barren, snowy uplands and then into steep glaciated valleys with tantalising views of huge snowy mountains…..including ours.

Our weather pattern had also become reasonably predictable with gorgeous clear mornings and usually light rain or snow by early afternoon; quite an incentive not to leave too late or walk too slow!

Towards the end of our second week, we reached Base Camp and our mountain began to seem a real possibility, not some unattainable distant peak. By this time we had a very close-knit, organised team who were generally well-matched in terms of pacing and fitness.

We set off from High Camp at 2-30am on Monday 29th April and five hours of really hard work later found ourselves standing on the summit of Mera Peak in perfect weather conditions. We had seen almost no-one else on the mountain (apart from the other JG team) and we had the summit entirely to ourselves. The views really are spectacular in all directions; we did our best to name as many peaks as we could. I think it would be fair to say that we all felt unbelievably lucky to be able to experience such an incredible environment on such a wonderful day.

It’s not all downhill from the summit of Mera Peak back to Lukla. There’s the not insignificant obstacle of the Zatra-La to negotiate. If memory serves me correctly, not all the team found this an undiluted joy; but Pringles can be such an incentive…..!!

Our lovely Sirdar, Giljin had sounded less than keen on the prospect of a last night party, so we were all fully expecting an early night after the traditional ceremony where we thank our Nepalese team and hand out tips. His error here however, was then supplying a kettle-full of rum punch. Extraordinarily awful for the first mouthful, Nepalese rum punch improves markedly after the first half glass; perseverance here is key. It transpired that the rest of the Nepalese team were more than keen to spend the night celebrating the end of the trip and demonstrate their dancing skills. Adam did a fine job of keeping everyone supplied with beer and emptying his wallet in the process. A most excellent unplanned evening!

Thankfully Norbert was fast asleep on our journey home (although I think he may have caused Chris & Paula some grief two days later.) Lukla to Ramechap to Kathmandu was relatively pain-free and we all thoroughly enjoyed our 24 hours in Kathmandu relaxing, sightseeing, eating and shopping. Qatar were a luxurious delight to fly home with, although I’m not entirely sure the feeling was mutual.

A big ‘thank you’ and a huge ‘well done’ to a fabulous team!

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