Summer breeze

Looks Can Be Deceiving (the guidebook lied)

June 8, 2014

I am going to write my own climbing book. It will present the facts as to how difficult a climb/walk is as well as the terrain to expect to walk on. I’m going to use the following phrases to paint the levels of difficultly:
“OH HELL NO!”
“What the bloody Hell!”
“This is a bitch”
“This sucks”
“Suck it up”
“Tough, but you can do it”
“That was a walk in the kiddy park”

I will not deceive my readers by offering lovely descriptions to lull one into believing that the trail is a breeze to do. The word, “easy” is in the eye of the beholder and for the hiker who is in tip- top form. Think of an Alp mountaineer, not me.

Which is why, I need to write hiking books. I will put my picture on the cover along with my body stats and say, “If I can hike, climb, walk or crawl to these places looking like this, than you can trust my description of what the path lays in store.”

Such were my thoughts today as I hit an area on the trail that I thought I might succumb to heat stroke. The guide states it is “Easy” and there is a 300m ascent just prior to entering the village of Maneru. Ok…I’m thinking…not too bad. What it failed to describe was that you are walking/climbing almost straight up the trail in some areas ( oh…who am I kidding…most areas) on slippery little ground up shards of rock. I am pretty sure that when it rains, the water and mud just bleed down the mountain. Oh…it is a mountain. We started out on a very nice flat terrain meandering along side fields of grain when we took a turn and kept on climbing…up…up…up. By the time we reached the top and looked back down, the tractor and farm equipment looked like miniatures!

And also, walking on this type of trail, watch what time of day you decide to walk. For instance, when the sun is mid- way in the sky, those light colored rocks reflect the sun right back at you. And check your water bottle. Don’t be like us and run out of water. Ug.

But in the end we did make it. Not that we had a choice, but it was a struggle. I was just happy to have lighten my backpack to be able to channel my nanny goat power (slugs would have fried in a nano second) and sing Sound of Music songs in my head, intermingled with curse words in every language I knew.

Now that is what I call motivation.