morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2018-10-09
To: Kathmandu
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: heavy intensity rain

What am I afraid of?   The bear the size of Volkswagon on the Pacific Crest Trail? He¢d reach me in a heart beat. Literally. They sprint 30 miles an hour. He could gobble that twenty yards between us in just over one second. I reached for my camera and got off two shots. Every fiber was alive. Was it stupid not to be frightened? I wasn¢t.¢Are you carrying a gun?¢ Every long distance hiker gets that one. I don¢t fear mountain lions, bears, bull moose or elk. Okay, I do have a healthy fear of rattlesnakes and of skunks. But I lose sleep over none. I¢ve never dreamed and woken concerned. One of my remaining hopes and trail dreams is that in my lifetime I will see a mountain lion in the wild.   Heights? No. I¢ll see if I can find that great picture Rolling Thunder took of me on Mt. Katahdin¢s Knife Edge. Lightning? I probably should. On Mt. Taylor, barely off the 11,000 foot summit in my tent, bolts shot, fifteen, twenty to the minute. They were so close together that I couldn¢t tell which flash of light went with which clap of thunder. I was elated, shouting for joy and hollering out praises to the seamstress who¢d sewn my tent. (Z-packs¢Joe, thank whoever was sewing your Hexamid Duplex around four years ago).On the PCT my greatest fear was back-to-back days of freezing rain. Would I crumple? Leave the Trail?  What am I afraid of? Why is this trek different from every other trek? Again, just as I said the other day, it all boils down to people.On the CDT three years ago, I hiked alone for over half the distance, 1500 miles. On the AT, I was alone a lot. When I did hike with others, we still felt extremely independent. I was free, just like a bird reacting to wind currents as I chose. As for hiking with Frodo--the entire PCT and 600 miles of the CDT¢we were a partnership. The pair of us out there is its own kind of raw freedom.What I also loved was that almost always, I had a reserve. Maybe it¢s left over from my Scoutmaster days. When I do hike with others, I watch the edges. I¢m on the lookout for signs--Is someone hurting physically or mentally? Whether they know it or not, they become my pack, they¢re under the shelter of my wing.How will I feel being the sheep? In the Himalayas I will be in someone else¢s flock. I¢m used to carrying my own weight. I carry others¢ if they need it. Here I¢ll carry a day pack and porters will haul the bulk of my gear. I feel almost embarrassed to share this with you.  I feel petty. A good hiker friend, ¢Why Not,¢ looked me in the eye a few days ago, ¢Scout, that¢s how the porters make their living. They like it when you bring more weight. There¢s more work to go around.¢ I like being the one who comes to the rescue. I like being the lead hiker or the tail end Charlie. Gosh, I¢m whining, aren¢t I? But why do we go out? We go to get out of our comfort zones. Into the breach I go once again.I¢m writing this on a layover in Canton. They¢ve just called our flight to Kathmandu.Thanks for listening¢¦.Scout
Date: 2018-10-09
From: Home

To: Kathmandu
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: moderate rain

We are here in Kathmandu after a long flight on China Southern Airlines. Our first leg was about 15 hours, from Los Angeles to Guangzhou, China. That¢s a LONG time. After a two-hour layover, we flew 5 hours to Kathmandu. Some impressions of the Guangzhou airport: They make you go through a passport check and security check even if you¢re making an international transfer, but the also have a health check. They make you pass one by one through s scanner that senses your body temperature. I assume that if you have a fever there are some consequences, but I don¢t know what those are. Do they have a quarantine hotel there? Do they send you to a hospital? The photo is of an area of the terminal that includes a couple of gates. There is lots of open area, much more than in any US airport I¢ve seen. There was a children¢s play area in another part of the terminal, too. Everything looked really new. Getting our visa and our luggage in the Kathmandu airport took a while. Unfortunately, one of our two duffels wasn¢t here. The baggage folks were able to tell us that it¢s still in Guangzhou and should arrive this evening. Wilderness Travel picked us up and said they¢ll take care of picking up the duffel. Yay! Nice to have someone competent and local dealing with these kinds of things. Traffic in Kathmandu is crazy!!!! Lots of cars and motorcycles (driving on the left side of the road), with lane markers either non-existent or virtually ignored. No traffic signals, but traffic police at a few intersections. Pedestrians seemed to take their lives in their hands crossing the street. But our WT guy, Kihm, laughed at my aghast-ness, so I guess it must work for them.  The Hotel is very nice, with beautiful grounds. We had an orientation with our fellow trekkers in the gardens. Everyone seems to be very congenial, which is good since we¢ll be spending the next 3.5 weeks together. We learned that our group of 7 hikers will have about 20 support people ¢ A trek leader and 3 Sherpa assistants, a cook and 4 kitchen boys, and about 12 porters. Wilderness Travel has a special arrangement with some of the lodges, whereby they get to use the lodge kitchen and cook our meals for us. So many support people seems overly decadent and rather guilt-inducing, but we keep reminding ourselves that this provides needed employment for them.  We all had dinner at a tourist-oriented dinnerhouse. It was great. We got to try many different traditional Nepali dishes (including our first mo-mos, really good!) and we got to watch several traditional dances, from different regions of the country. Really interesting! I thought the hand motions in a couple of the dances looked a lot like hula.Tomorrow we have a full-day tour of the city. Prepare for sensory overload!
Date: 2018-10-10
To: Kathmandu
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

I went to Europe and I took with me..... It was a children's¢ game. It could¢t hold an candle to Milton Bradley¢s monopoly or to hula hoops. There actually once was a time when mini vans didn¢t have video screens in the seat backs, and in fact¢ there once was a time when there weren¢t mini vans. What did kids do? We¢d play ¢slug a bug¢ and we¢d play ¢I went to Europe and I took with me...¢ for hours in the car. ¢I went to Europe and I took with me an apple.¢ The next person would add something that began with the letter ¢B.¢ I went to Europe and I took with me an apple and a book.¢ And on and on, first you¢d recite the list from memory and then add one more item in alphabetical order until one person, under the weight of all the items, couldn¢t recite them in order from memory. ¢You¢re out.¢ You played till the last one standing. I went to Nepal and I took with me ¢¦¢. The photo is what¢s in my 33-pound limit gear bag. That¢s more than three times my backpacking baseweight. And I¢m not packing a sleeping bag, pad or tent. What are you carrying, Scout? I am also carrying around a six-pound day pack in addition to those 33 pounds. Scout¢s gone wild. I can¢t bring myself to write out the list. The photo is above.Today, the seven of us loaded into an van, toured Kathmandu and were very, very, grateful. We were grateful none of us were diving. Motorcycles zoomed in and out like swarming bees. It was more like amusement park bumper cars. We saw the tallest Buddhist Temple in southeast Asia. You can only walk around it in one direction. There were prayer wheels the size of pick up trucks. You only spin them clockwise. You only use your right hand. It is good luck. I¢d walked a 20-foot circle around one, spinning as I went, and as all that good luck flowed in I Iooked up and my group was gone out of sight, ¢I¢m lost!¢ Scanning the crowd, I thankfully spotted one familiar back. Whew.Yes, we are jet-lagged. So far we¢ve managed not to take it out or on the other, I better keep on spinning prayer wheels.This morning, we discovered that our ATM card wouldn¢t work. I actually reached Chase, our bank. They said, ¢Not us.¢ We need some 80,000 rupees, mainly to tip our guides and porters. ¢ Do it in Kathmandu,¢ we¢d been advised. Wrong. They must have been spinning their prayer wheels in the wrong direction. We tried different ATMs but to no avail, which was how I found myself in the upper floor, corner office sitting across from the head of IT for 74-branch Sanima Bank. More on the next entry.
Date: 2018-10-11
To: Phakding
Miles today: 6.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Sandy: Long day. We had to meet in the lobby of the hotel this morning at 5:00. We set the alarm for 4:15, since we needed time to check our suitcase into the hotel's storage (they'll hold it for the three weeks that we'll be gone - nice!) and then check out of our room. Of course we woke at 3:30 and realized we wouldn't get back to sleep. So we got an earlier start than planned. We flew in to Lukla early this morning, on the 6:20 am flight. So all day it felt like it was a good 2 or 3 hours later than it was. The jet lag didn't help, either.We hiked only 6 miles today, lots of ups and downs, with net loss of several hundred feet. We crossed a couple of the big metal suspension bridges that make me really nervous. I can't look down and I have to frequently touch the cable with my right hand. The more people there are on the bridge, the bouncier it gets. And the bridges are really long. They don't seem to bother the yaks, though, or the donkeys. I feel lucky that we've never been halfway across when a group of yaks starts across going the other way.Our room tonight is surprisingly nice, with our own bathroom and flush toilet. The mattresses are quite nice and Wilderness Travel provides two good sleeping bags for each of us. Here's our room for the night: http://www.trailjournals.com/journal/photos/21828/1190535 We spent the evening hanging out in the common room between teatime and dinner. Very pleasant.Scout: The Flight to the World¢s Most Dangerous Airport¢We are so many sardines packed tight into the fourteen-seat Twin Otter, straining to claw its way into the air. The thin attendant has to push hard, squeezing past knees up the aisle. She hands out one thing. Cotton. That¢s a new one. Hands shove cotton deep into ears. If you had loose fillings, you¢d be seeing your dentist when you got home.Frodo points out the window. BIG mountains. She¢s as excited as a five-year old ready to blow out the candles on a birthday cake.One passenger leaned way into the tiny cockpit. The pilot wasn¢t annoyed. He takes his hands off the controls, points out mountains and leans far over so Kim from our group can take her pictures. You have love small planes.The Lukla airport comes rushing up like it¢s going to smack you in the face. We bounce once and head straight for the concrete barrier at the end of the short runway. The props scream like a boiler factory. The ten-for high letters above the crash barrier read¢ ¢WELCOME TO LUKLA.¢ We¢re here.
Date: 2018-10-13
To: Namche Bazaar
Miles today: 5.0
Weather: broken clouds

Frodo: We woke up to glorious views of amazing mountain peaks. We stepped out the door of our room as our morning tea was being delivered and our jaws dropped. We have five rooms for the seven of us and they all open on to a large balcony/courtyard. On both sides were drop-dead gorgeous views of mountains, with the last of the clouds thinning to nothingness. Right in front of us we can look down the valley we climbed up yesterday, very green with steep walls.I'm not sure we mentioned it, but yesterday was pretty cloudy and cool. It wasn't a big view day anyway, so we didn't fret. Today was a good day for clear, sunny weather.Today has variously been referred to as a "rest day" and an "exploration day". We did some of each. During the morning we climbed (didn't we do enough of that yesterday?) to a great view point near the National Park Headquarters, then climbed lots more (up many obnoxious big stone steps) to an even better view point at the Everest View Hotel. We sat on the balcony there and had drinks (non-alcoholic ones), which felt pretty decadent. Pemba told us that there is oxygen in each of the rooms, since Japanese tourists often come up by helicopter (two landed and took off while we were there) without acclimatizing (or is it "acclimating"?). I could see spending some of our kids' inheritance to do that in 15 years or so.After our lunch of pasta with tomato sauce plus saut©ed bok choy, cucumber salad and a donut-shaped Tibetan bread (good and hot - yum!), we all headed down into town to do a bit of shopping. Scout and I ended up with an eclectic mix of warm gloves for Scout, buffs for both of us, an adaptor for the outlets here, a bag of dried cranberries (to help keep everything moving), and a couple of candy bars. I looked without success for an eyeglass strap and a jacket that would be lightweight, easy to get on and off, a color I like, and cheap. Not like I'm fussy or anything. Nor could I find herb tea. Heavens.A buff is a long tube of lightweight material that you put around your neck and then pull up to cover your mouth and nose. It helps keep you warm, but it was strongly recommended by Pemba to keep dust out of our respiratory systems and avert the "Khumbu cough". Not sure how I'll like it, especially when I can barely get enough oxygen as it is, while climbing up the steep trail.Scout: I walk out the door of our tea house room into a second story patio. Boom. It's like a thunderclap for the eyes. To my left, two sets of glacier-clad slabs of mountains. And when I turn right, my gosh, if the three princesses were here they'd be squealing. In your face, huge, grey and white, rock and ice, scimitar blades of rock unsheathed. Frodo, these are the BIG mountains you wanted. And it will only get better from here.At the end of the "rest" day's 1,400-foot climb, we had a great view of - Frodo how could you not mention it - Everest, the mother of mountains herself.
Date: 2018-10-15
To: View Entry
Miles today: 8.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Scout: At breakfast this morning another trekker at the tea house said, ¢I was eyeing you and Frodo last night, but I thought it was impossible.¢ Strawberry Pop had stayed with us on April 27 a year and a half ago and successfully thru-hiked the PCT. ¢Scout! And after hugs he came over to our group and exclaimed, ¢Do you know you are with trail heroes?¢ Life is wonderful and amazing.Before we came out here we heard an awful lot about the Khumbu Cough. Our friends Colleen and John said buy two bottles of cough syrup in Kathmandu. I did. On our first day hiking up out of Lukla a third of the folks heading down wore face masks. Trail dust mixes with yak dung and cooking fire woodsmoke. It doesn¢t seem to affect Frodo (Frodo: at least of YET, but we¢re only starting our fifth hiking day.), but it has grabbed me by the tonsils. You know how I love to talk and tell stories. I carefully ration out my talking time. I sneak sips of cough syrup like a drunk hoarding a paper bag of Red Dog. I bought a face mask in Namche Bazaar two days ago and am wearing it religiously. I look like a misplaced cowboy on the dusty plain. My cough is getting a little better. So let¢s talk dung. Dung, dung, dung. (princesses, I did that so your parents would have to say dung a bunch of times.) When you walk on a rock-wall-lined lane in these villages don¢t casually brush your hand against the wall. Instead of hard rock, you might brush yak dung. The walls are just a great place to dry the fresh dung. Don¢t try this at home. Tonight we¢ll sit by a warm stove fueled by dry yak dung patties. Finally, I am going to disagree with my wife. Yesterday, she was faulting herself for not keeping up with the lead group. But let¢s take a look at those four, Ted, Don and Kim and Lisa West. Three of them live over 7,000 feet, and all year they hike and exercise even higher, and the one who lives near sea level like us, Lisa West, she runs triathlons for gosh sake. So, my dear Frodo, if you show up ten minutes later after a hard steep climb, that¢s something to be proud of, not some thing to denigrate yourself about. Frodo: My humble husband is neglecting to mention that HE is usually in the lead group, at almost 67 years old and living at sea level. Ha! But I did do better and feel better for most of today¢s hike.  I¢m not sure we¢ve ever explained what route we are going on here in Nepal. There is a typical trek from Lukla to Everest Base Camp (EBC) and we are doing that. But Wilderness Travel adds on extra stuff. So from Namche Bazaar we hiked for a day west to the town of Thame, where we spent last night. Tonight we are in the town of Kamjung, a bit north of Namche. Tomorrow we re-join the hordes on their way to EBC. We¢ll take a few more days to reach EBC, then we do more extra stuff. [Scout¢s turn to try a snarky comment: Extra Stuff! That¢s what you are calling Kala Pathan, at 18,500 feet? That climb some folks call the the hardest in their life?] We¢ll head over Cho-La Pass to Gokyo, then back down to Namche. There¢s a good map among our photos posted for today.
Date: 2018-10-16
From: Khumjung

To: Tengboche
Miles today: 5.5
Weather: light rain

Trail Journal Tuesday Scout: The furry beasts were covered in a thick layer of frost this morning. If John Denver were here he would have written a song with the first line, ¢There¢s frost on the yaks, and the Sherpa tea is strong ....¢Frodo is looking at me like I¢m strange, but then she gets a good idea. After dinner each of us will add one more line. We¢ll see if we get a Himalayan top-forty hit. Actually I am avoiding mentioning today¢s hike. Two thousand feet down and then two thousand feet up. It is very, very nice to be looking back on it. If on the Appalachian Trail the path was ¢roots and rocks,¢ here it is ¢rocks and rocks.¢ You have to keep your eyes riveted on the ground. When you do sneak a peek away from the trail, the views are gorgeous.I hope that Frodo won¢t edit out this paragraph, but I have two challenges for Jessica, the youngest of the princesses. Apparently she has gone on a dictionary rampage ever since I wrote that when we visited a few days before she left, Jessica was speaking almost exclusively in four-syllable words. The first challenge is to send me a complete sentence composed of words all more than four syllables. The second one is to find a four-syllable word for poop. Excrement has only three syllables.  We are in Tengboche, at nearly 13,000 feet. Tomorrow is my birthday. I bet that my mother never thought that in a thousand years any of her children would celebrate a birthday in Tengboche, Nepal, heading to Everest Base camp. We are never too old to give our mothers a few new gray hairs. Thanks for having me, Mom  Frodo: Though 2000¢ down and 2000¢ up was tough, we got here to Tengboche by noon. After lunch scout and I took a nap, then had tea with our group at 3:30. At 4:00 most of us took the short walk to the monastery, the largest in the region with over 60 monks. They started a ceremony at 4:00 that included lots of chanting, with occasional episodes of drum thumping and blowing of horns small and twelve-foot long. Aspiring mountaineers (probably headed to Ama Dablam) came to be blessed by the monks and that was interesting to see. Our good friend Rolling Thunder will climb Ama Dablam in a couple of weeks; I wonder if he¢ll come here to be blessed.Our room for the night is the smallest so far and this is the first time we¢ve had a shared toilet. In two days we have a rest/exploration day. I¢ll do the former, Scout will do the latter. I¢ll spend some of my time explaining what a typical day is like and what a typical lodge is like.  Like most nights on this trek, I expect I will sleep vey well tonight. Exhaustion tends to do that to me.
Date: 2018-10-17
To: Pangboche
Miles today: 5.0
Weather: clear sky

Scout: We are hemmed in by rhododendrons and brown fall leaves cover the trail. We are in a tight-bound green tunnel. Pemba has taken us on a little-used high path to Pangboche. But if you spun me around five times, like in the game pin the tail on the donkey, and asked me what trail I was on, I could just as easily have answered, ¢We¢re on the Appalachian Trail."One of the day¢s photos shows seven-year-old Reuben Scout with the Everest ridge in the background as if he was here. He isn¢t. He is with his parents in New Zealand. When he saw the first photo we sent of his cardboard cut-out high in the Khumbu, his dad SunWalker wrote and said, ¢The expression on Reuben¢s face was better than on Christmas morning.¢ They recorded a short video which we picked up today with three interesting facts: Reuben¢s parents both have the same birthday, Sir Edmond Hillary was also from their New Zealand (we did know that), and Hillary and Reuben¢s parents all three share the same birthday.Today¢s hike, some five miles with mildish ups and downs, was called easy by Pemba. True, and yet nothing near 13,000 is ¢easy.¢ We are staying two nights here in Pangboche. I will admit that our rest/exploration day has me a bit daunted. For ¢rest¢ we are climbing 2500 feet to Ama Dablam Base Camp, where we will ¢picnic¢ at over 15,000 feet. Tonight we sleep at over 13,000 feet. It will be they highest I have slept. Tomorrow, as I pass though 14,500 feet I will stand at the highest point I have ever stood on the face of this planet Earth.Frodo: Today is Scout's birthday. I notice he neglected to tell you that. Today he is 67 years young. He is the oldest of our group by more than 5 years. I think everyone sees how well he's doing and is encouraged. "Maybe I can still be strong and adventuresome when I'm that age!"I brought a birthday card for him (that's a bit worse for wear), let him use my really nice pack towel after his shower, and gave him lots of affection today, but I did not schlep in a gift. I hope we'll have a date night to celebrate when we get home.Pemba and the staff and our new friends went out of their way to make the day special for Scout. Everyone wished him a happy birthday at breakfast. Then at dinner, Pemba gave Scout a card that everyone had signed. There were cloth napkins, wine in real wine glasses, and roast chicken. But the piece de resistance was a lovely cake with yummy chocolate frosting and candles, that they turned all the dining room lights off to bring in all lighted up. We sang Happy Birthday and the group here from Spain sang a Spanish version as well. I hope he felt celebrated and loved today.Make sure you check out the extra photos we are posting. The best way to see them is to click on the lead photo so it becomes larger, then use the 'next' and 'previous' buttons to see others. Unfortunately, those seem to be reversed, at least on my iPad. 'Next' takes me back in time and 'previous' takes me forward in time. We'll post some more photos, including some from the birthday celebration in a little while.