morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2018-10-19
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 5:42 PM Barney and Sandy Mann <barneyandsandy@gmail.com> wrote:Banker entry textScout:  This is the continuation and ending of the banker story I started several entries ago.  We will also do a trail journal entry for this date. It was over a week ago that I was in a banker¢s corner office. Frodo and I knew we needed tens of thousands more rupees, but no ATM would recognize our Chase card. It was almost after hours, but the two Wilderness Travel folks had a friend in Sanima Bank¢s executive suite. We called, took a taxi, arrived and were ushered into the third floor corner office, winding our way past lesser functionaries. I was offered tea. Birkram Shrestha, Head of D-banking and IT, greeted me like family. I heard that the 74-branch bank had installed the first ATM four years ago. We quickly discovered that we were both guitar players. Except Bikram has actually been a pop star. We pulled up and watched one of his pop-star YouTube videos. Bikram and his second-in-command, Manoj Ghimire, and I all became Facebook friends right then and there. He repeatedly assured me, drink your tea, we¢ll work this out. I wondered what Frodo was thinking back at the Hotel. Was I lost? I¢d been gone over 90 minutes. Finally, some secret sign was exchanged and I was taken by Manoj to a special ATM. Smooth as silk. Rupees poured out like a winning slot machine slinging out silver dollars.Frodo was greatly relieved to see me again after two hours. I had made new friends. Thank you so much, Bikram and Manoj.
Date: 2018-10-19
From: Pangboche

To: Dingboche
Miles today: 4.0
Weather: broken clouds

Tingling. Twice a day like clockwork my fingers tingle. Is it when I am near Frodo and my heart is going pitter patter? It is at 7:00 am and 9:00 pm. Have you guessed the cause? It¢s actually simple. Diamox. The high altitude climbers friend. We started taking 125 mg twice a day three days ago. It took till day nine days of hiking before there was a breakout. It¢s really too early for this. We hiked a full morning and had a civilized climb of just over 1,000 feet. Maybe it was the altitude. But when I walked out my lodge door it was going full swing. It was a full epidemic, or rather epic outbreak of food discussion. ¢A nice filet minion.¢ ¢I¢d love a hot plate of fajitas. That sizzling sound is to die for.¢ And on and on for fifteen minutes. With nine of twenty-one days under our belts, it¢s too early.One side of the tea house common room had an steaming in the windows. When our talk has begun to wonder when we should drain the water out of our platypus bladder at night so it wont freeze, a warm corner of a room is a precious commodity. Frodo and I were like two cats curled in front of the fireplace while outside less than twenty feet away a yak grazed.Frodo: Today was a pretty sane day. We hiked only about three hours this morning and gained about 1200 feet. We're now in the village of Dingboche at 14,200 feet. We can no longer see Everest, but we can still see Nuptse Ridge and Lhotse, as well as some new mountains that include Island Peak. We also have a totally different perspective on Ama Dablam, which continues to look very vertical.So now we're sitting in the dining room after lunch. It's gotten a bit windy and cold outside, but the sun is coming through the window and we're pretty toasty. We'll be here for two nights. Tomorrow we have options for day hikes, to help with our acclimatization. Even I plan to climb 1000 feet to an overlook.
Date: 2018-10-21
To: Loboche
Miles today: 5.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Scout:I feel like I could be on the verge of recovery. My chest cold could have peaked. But what doctor would order you to wake to yak dung smoke, to raise my sleeping bed from 14,100 to 16,100 feet and to hike what Pemba calls the first of four hard days. I am no wuss, But this would be hard at sensible elevations. Has a little whining crept in? If you could see the state of my bandana this morning, the dried hard plugs of mucus, you might say that I¢m allowed The steepest part of the day was the 1,000 foot climb of the terminal moraine of Everest¢s Khumbu glacier. Seeing the clumps of trekkers probably numbering in the hundreds make their way slowly up it reminded me of a scene from over a century ago. In the 1896 Alaska Klondike gold rush, the most feared segment of the route was Chilkoot Pass, another short steep, crowded climb. Take a look at the lead photo and google old photos of Chilkoot Pass and see if one doesn¢t evoke the other. We were way grateful to reach the top.Princess Jessica sent a sentence of four syllable words today:Dear Scout and Frodo, here is my sentence:"Elizabeth Amelia Victoria's television educated Cinderella's magnificent veterinarian's enthusiastic, sympathetic, undemanding, responsible, ordinary community."I hope you are feeling better! Love, Princess JessicaTomorrow we start hiking an hour early at 7:00 am. We rise to our Sherpa lodge at Gorek Shep, at 17,000 the highest we will sleep on this trek and likely the highest place I wil seep in my lifetime. Then we will push on to try for Everest Base Camp.
Date: 2018-10-22
To: Gorek Shep and Everest Base Camp
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

We climbed first thing from Loboche to Gorek Shep and arrived to a crowd scene at our 17,000 tea house. It was so jammed it felt like there should be a bouncer outside determining if folks were worthy enough to enter.The tea houses all have main rooms that are very similar. In the center there is a single dried yak dung stove. It¢s not lit till four usually. They pour in a cup or two of kerosene and throw in a match. If we are lucky, it lights and draws well and yak dung smoke doesn¢t fill up the room. Usually the room is ringed with tables with windows on three sides. Our Sherpa guide prearranged a table for us at each tea room For others it is catch as catch can and they order off the menu.How cold was it last night? There was ice in my water bladder when we woke up¢inside our room. Another trekker brought his frozen stiff socks to breakfast. The high was around 25 and the low was 9. My cold is worse. I now sound like a 40-year-long chain smoker. I need to lose altitude. Tomorrow night we will sleep 1200 feet lower.]BUT I CLIMBED TO EVEREST BASE CAMP TODAY! We reached there around 12:30 after a 7:00 am start.One of our group¢s strongest has been felled. He didn¢t come to dinner and won¢t be setting out for Kala Pattahr tomorrow. That¢s way sobering. On our PCT hike a very strong couple quit in the middle of the Sierra Nevada. It really shook Frodo and I up. My parents just wrote and told us to, ¢Make wise decisions.¢ The two of us may decide to go only half way up tomorrow.Quacky, the ranger rubber ducky, broke his own record today when he, too, reached Everest Base Camp.Till tomorrow.
Date: 2018-10-23
To: Dzongla
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: fog

Scout: We had no internet today and so this is getting to you late. And even tday it si so po that I can¢t load photos.By the way as we have gotten higher, the cost to recharge has gone up. Back in Namche Bazaar, where the air was positively thick at 11,000 feet, we actually had sockets in our room. But as we rose to 13,000 and 15,000 the room plugs disappeared and they were charging 200 rupees an hour for a place at the one power strip in the common room. At 17,000 feet, the charge went to 400 rupees an hour and the phones on the one power strip looked like piglets rooting to get access to a teat. I last recharged my two external battery packs four days ago and still have a few days left. 400 rupees is about four dollars.Yesterday near Everest Base Camp there was a sign that informed us, ¢No Necked Photos at Base Camp.¢ Maybe the temperature was in the teens. ¢Necked¢ photos were my on my mind.It was a hard hiking day but harder still was the decision Frodo and I made. My parents had written¢ ¢Make wise decisions.¢ Tomorrow is Cho La pass which will culminate four hard days with likely the hardest of all, getting over the 1800-foot pass which will require our micr0 spikes and rock scrambling. It¢s not avoidable, but the early morning, 6:00 am side trip to Kala Patthar is optional. I still felt bad making the decision, but if I had been home I would have already spent a couple of days in bed trying to knock out this cold. Even with the concession, it was a long day hiking, but blessedly we are sleeping back down at 15,300 feet.Tomorrow is Cho La Pass. I think about it as much as my five-year-old self thought about waking up to my birthday. But one was wth excitement and joy, the other was with no small degree of fear.By the way, Frodo¢s entry has been written for yesterday, but her iPad has gone dead and won¢t release it. We will let you know when it is posted. Same for today¢s photos.
Date: 2018-10-24
To: Dragna
Miles today: 7.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Scout: We were on the trail the earliest ever. Our wake up knock was at 5:45, breakfast at 6:15 and we were walking at 7:00. The yaks, who can claw their way up anything, can¢t make it up Cho La Pass. We won¢t see most of our gear for two days. Our micro spikes are in our packs and we expect to use them. We leave with the temperature in the single digits and maybe it will be at the teens midday at the pass.(Princess alert) We pack a little night kit like a boyfriend hoping he might get lucky. I¢m surprised I wrote that. Using a population of one, I have proved that male libido falls exponentially with altitude. I guess I am trying to avoid writing about how hard it was. I walked behind Frodo and I would try holding off looking up until I knew I could see significant progress. Steep, rocky and at any time a rock you thought looked rigidly in place might rock or give way. I employed all my mental games, singing my way through a legion of songs in my head while my breath pumped like a highballing freight train. It was a relief to finally have to put on the micro spikes because we could see that we only needed to climb through a few football field lengths of ice and we would be nearly at the top.I was Traction Man. At the top I leaned into Frodo¢s shoulder and sobbed. We¢d made it.Frodo said it was the most difficult thing she¢d done in her life. Henceforth, anytime one of us says something is difficult, the other is just going to say, ¢But it¢s not Cho La Pass.All the way up there was something I wanted to do at the pass. Sandy turned on the video. I just posted it on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/barne...
Date: 2018-10-25
To: Goyko
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Scout: Quacky¢s rubber duckie fans go wild upon learning of new world record. The princesses captured the moment for prosperity. Do you know what event nearly overshadowed Queen Elizabth¢s coronation in 1952? The princesses should know this. It was Hillary and Tenzing¢s first ascent of Everest.It was billed as an easy day. Anything could be billed that after Cho La Pass. We crossed the miles-wide Nogumba Glacier. Wipe from your mind those classic sweeping white, Mississippi river of compressed snow views you¢ve seen of Alaska¢s or Antarctica¢s rivers of ice. The surface of the Nogumba was covered by rocks and gavel with a series of random hills. There were frozen lakes we threw rocks upon only to hear the sound of a deep kettle drum. We wound our way over the living glacier with more twists than a writhing snake.We did reach Goyko not long past noon. We were reunited with our team of four yaks which meant we we were reunited with out great, too. Hopes of my first shower in five days faded as it turned to late afternoon and the prospect of a weak, barely warm stream in a sub-thirty-degree room was too daunting even to a person who has climbed Cho La Pass. I have lived in the same base-layer long underwear for these five days and will do so for one more.I spent half the afternoon prone on my bed in our room. Trying to catch up a little on my sleep. Maybe tomorrow the high will rise over freezing.
Date: 2018-10-26
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Trail Journal Friday, 26thScout: Today will be relatively short. I am actually doing what I would have done a dozen days ago if I was anywhere else.. On this layover, optional hike, day I am going to spend the majority of it in bed. What a concept. I was never sick on any of my three thru-hikes. That¢s fifteen months under high physical and mental stress. During three years and ten months I was writing the PCT memoir I am trying to have published, I was never sick. The week after I finished that first draft, I had a cold that landed me in bed. The stresses here have been extreme¢high altitude, yak dung smoke and dust, rooms full of trekkers hacking away as if it was the 1919 world wide flue epidemic. I feel a little bit better this evening.
Date: 2018-10-30
To: Lukla
Miles today: 6.0
Weather: moderate rain

Scout: We can¢t help but be a little nostalgic about today¢s hike. It¢s about four hours and it covers the same ground as our first day¢s hike. ¢This is where we stopped for lunch.¢ ¢This was our first break spot, remember?¢ We can¢t help but commune with our first-day trekking selves and marvel at the distance we¢ve come.We see faces obviously right off the morning planes into Lukla and wonder what they are thinking? The last steps into the town of Lukla I slow down, wait for Frodo to catch up. We will walk these last steps together.We walk past stalls filled with Everest and Himalayan souvenirs¢pullover caps, yak wool shawls, t-shirts, yak bells and rows of curved daggers in scabbards. These curved short swords look like they could be made of damascene steel, straight out of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves.Do you know of Damascus steel? In the middle ages, the finest blades ever produced were forged of Damascus steel. Even today we can¢t produce steel that will hold an edge any better. The exact formula has been lost. What is known is that the steel in these blades was subject to repeated cycles of heating, hammering and then cooling. How have Frodo and I fared on this trip? Did it stress, did it test our relationship? What this trek did was thrust us into the forge once again¢the rigors of altitude, sickness and covering some of the hardest ground we¢ve ever hiked. We were hammered and through it all there was never a harsh word, just empathy for what the other was going through. And humor, lots of humor, even at times if it was closer to gallows humor than anything else. Once again our marriage was thrust into a forge, heated, hammered and allowed to cool. One more wavy layer of steel was laid down over our forty-one year marriage, our blade made of Damascus steel.That night at Lukla, we partied, dancing to Krishna¢s flute and to Nepali bubble-gum pop rock. Most nights after our 6:30 dinner, we started heading off to our rooms by 7:30 or eight at the latest. Tonight we stayed up till 10:00.Tomorrow we fly back to Kathmandu. It is time.  Frodo: We¢re back in Lukla! No more hiking! No more scary suspension bridges! It¢s very nice to feel a sense of accomplishment but now be able to rest these weary bones and muscles. The trail was pretty crowded this morning ¢ lots of folks heading in-country as they start their treks. We kept thinking how innocent and na ve they look and thought, ¢If only you knew¢¦¢ It¢s been interesting, noticing who all comes out here. The largest number of trekkers come from Germany. The second largest group seems to be from Australia. There are folks from the UK and France and Spain. Americans are definitely in the minority here. We spent the afternoon here at the lodge napping and reading and letting ourselves start recuperating. Look in the photos to see a typical set of tall steps. That¢s Lisa West, and she¢s several inches taller than I am. No wonder my quads and glutes are so pooped!
Date: 2018-10-31
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Scout: Rolling Thunder made me cry. He knew he would.We roll out of our sleeping bags well before dawn. It¢s 4:30 am. We pack our duffels for Pemba and his crew. For the last time. At 5:15 we have ¢porridge.¢ For the last time. We are set to fly out on one of the first flights from Lukla to Kathmandu. We need to be at the airport before 6:00 am. We are so ready to be down at 4,000 feet. Ready to relax in a hotel room where the temperature isn¢t below freezing. Ready to have a shower that¢s more than a trickle. I promise myself¢I am going to stand in the shower for at least twenty minutes. In the middle of the night I woke and realized I¢d forgotten something important. You remember that I¢d climbed up to Ama Dablam base camp two weeks ago and left a surprise packet there for our good friend Rolling Thunder. He¢d written back to say that he¢d left a package for me here in Lukla at our Villa Sherpani Lodge. With the intensity of finishing our hike yesterday and then dancing away the evening, I¢d completely forgotten about it. This morning, I tell Pemba first thing. Starting at 5:00 am Pemba starts calling the lodge manager. No answer. Fifteen minutes later, no answer. Same at 5:30. We make contingency plans. Pemba will pick the package up after our plane takes off, email me a photo and try to get it out on a plane tomorrow. At 5:45 the manager picks up the phone. I get Rolling Thunder¢s package. I open it. It is a custom T-shirt he had made. Above a line of Nepali prayer flags it says, ¢The Triple Crown¢ and below the flags he had embroidered, ¢And Everest Base Camp Too.¢And that¢s me, a Triple Crowner who has now set foot in Everest Base Camp. I felt very loved and cared for. Rolling Thunder you did well.The Lukla airport scene is everything you might imagine about a crowded third world airport. Chaotic, planes landing and an airport attendant sticks her head in the waiting room door and over the roar of the prop wash tries to holler out the plane number over the din. In groups of fourteen, trekkers duck their heads and hurriedly scramble up the ramps into the tiny planes. They land and take off again fully loaded in under fifteen minutes. That puts even Southwest airlines to shame. We are the sixth group. And from the moment we take off, we are descending. Down, down, down. We see the first roads we¢ve seen in three weeks.At the hotel I fulfill all the promises I made to myself. I make the only phone call my parents will ever receive from Kathmandu.I have seen the big mountains. We have persevered. Life is good.
Date: 2018-11-01
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Final Entry. Scout: Tomorrow we fly out to go home. Twenty hours flying. Today is our last day for the seven us to see each other. We make plans for dinner at Rum Doodle, a famed haunt of Everest climbers and trekkers. Hundreds of expeditions have signed nearly yard-long cardboard yeti feet and then hang their names and group¢s exploits from the ceiling.Rum Doodle is a 40,000 and a half foot peak. Yes, I typed that right. ¢The Ascent of Rum Doodle¢ is a famed 1956 spoof of big expedition mountain climbing. A recent re-print sported a foreword by Bill Bryson.I indulge in eating most the day. I still fill handkerchiefs with an amazing volume of the most god-awful colored stuff to ever come out of my nose. I don¢t think I¢ve told you my final thoughts about being an expedition-led sheep. I¢ll be honest. Many aspects were really quite nice. Having a rolled steamed towelette given each of us right before dinner. Our sleeping bags laid out on our beds with our bags in our rooms by the time we arrived at that night¢s tea lodge. Feeling mutual respect between the seven of us and Pemba, our guides and the rest of our staff. What was hardest on me was being on someone else¢s schedule for 21 days, having next to no control over what¢s for breakfast, lunch or dinner. On a long trail, I am so used to making those small and large decisions and that sense of being able to control those things is so important to me¢that¢s what sheared this sheep, what ended up being the hardest.The lead photo is of us at Rum Doodle¢s with our Yeti foot ready to hang with the rest. Thanks to Don and Kim, Lisa east and Lisa West and to Ted¢we could not have asked for better companions.Finally, let me tell you where I am right now--Nov. 14th. I am finishing up a book tour in Colorado for my new book about the Continental Divide Trail. Two nights ago we had a full house of 80 at the Boulder REI. Next up are appearances in San Diego, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. Please come out if you are nearby and please pass on these dates to family and friends.Nov. 28, Wednesday, 7:00 pm Adventure 16 in San Diego Nov. 29, Thursday, 7:00 pm Adventure 16 in Los Angeles [details for both at: https://www.adventure16.com/blog/barney-scout-mann-s-the-continental-divide-trail ]Dec. 1, Saturday, 6:30 Mt. Hood Museum, Government Camp, OR https://www.facebook.com/events/2328385650524371/Dec. 3, Monday, 7:30, Powell¢s Books, downtown Portland, OR   Order the book at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Continental-Divide-Trail-Exploring-Ridgeline/dp/0847863018/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542217575&sr=8-1&keywords=barney+scout+mannThanks so much for following along. Over and out, Scout
Date: 2017-06-20
From: Springer Mountain

To: Hot Springs, NC
Miles today: 273.4
Weather: overcast clouds

Hmmm.  This spring wasn't exactly my finest hour!  It consisted primarily of a series of fits and starts, dubious decisions and self-inflicted fiascoes.  So, um, here's to summer!!Thus far on the AT this year I have hiked only 273.4 miles, from Springer Mountain to Hot Springs, NC.  So at this late date any realistic hope of completing a thru-hike will mean that at some point I will have to flip-flop up to Katahdin and hike southbound.  That's not exactly the end of the world, of course -- in fact it sounds like great fun to me.  But I will defer that decision until a later date.  What I really need to do now is to get back to hiking and to stay focused on hiking!
Date: 2017-06-21
From: Hot Springs, NC

To: Hot Springs, NC
Miles today: 0.0

Here I go again, on my own.  Ha!!  Actually I'm heading back to the trail with great assistance from my best friend Tara, the good folks at Greyhound and my cousin Marti and her husband Chris.  I can't remember the last time I did anything worthwhile on my own.  Most likely, I never did.  So here's to friends, family and still-relatively-cheap-if-not-all-that-rapid-or-direct-or-efficient public transportation! Overnight tonight a series of no fewer than four (count 'em, four!) buses will zigzag me down to Asheville, NC, and from there either Marti or Chris will ferry me back to Hot Springs.  I hope to be back on trail by late tomorrow morning.  Right, um, after having breakfast at the Great Smoky Mountain Diner, of course.
Date: 2017-10-08
From: Hot Springs, NC

To: Dickey Gap, VA
Miles today: 242.9
Weather: overcast clouds

Oh my. What a phantom journal this turned out to be! Apologies to all for my undeniable selfishness. The hiking, the trail, the hiking partners, the hostels ... all were wonderful. I had a grand time. Sorry I didn't write about it. I was very much caught up in the moment.This year I hiked 516.3 miles on the AT, from Springer Mountain to Dickey Gap in Southwestern Virginia. I left the trail on July 5 to attend a family reunion, and I did not return. I'm okay with that. The AT is incomparable, but for me the second time around just wasn't the same. Personally, I think I have a need to experience new adventures and new challenges, on different trails.  So, on October 4, I began an attempt at a SOBO thru-hike of the Benton MacKaye Trail. This trail is positively lonesome compared to the AT! There's virtually no one out here but me. Which means, there's plenty of time for reflection and journaling, even for a terribly undisciplined writer.Please come on over to my BMT journal if you wanna. I'll do my best to stay focused on the journaling as well as the hiking.  And to everyone I met on the AT this year: I'm glad we crossed paths. You made my life better. Thank you.