Reader Adventure - Long Nights in Bhutan
Hike, News — By Outdoor Adventure Guide on April 30, 2014 at 1:16 amWe teamed up with Ellis Brigham to offer our readers the chance to become published adventure writers.We were inundated with entries, and picking the winner was far harder than we imagined. After much debate, we whittled the list down to six entries, with the overall winner being published in our May issue, and the five runners-up being published online.
The second of our runners-up is Gordon J Sutherland, with his tale of an eventful trek in Bhutan.
Long nights in Bhutan
We were in Bhutan on a trek to explore the remote region of Lunana and to reach the base camp of Gangkar Punesum, now the highest unclimbed mountain in the world. Our group of twelve trekkers was being led by Steve, a member of the last team permitted to attempt to climb Gangkar Punesum, and Ugyen, our Bhutanese guide. We were all excited about the adventures that lay ahead.
After three days trekking, we enjoyed our first rest day at the hot springs of Dar Sachu. Luxuriating in the natural stone baths, watching hummingbirds flash through the lush vegetation and listening to the rushing Mangde Chu river below, we were very content with our place in the world.
Things started to go wrong when we discovered that the bridge we had to cross over the Mangde Chu a mile or so upstream from our camp had been swept away in a recent flood. Fortunately, two of our group were engineers and over the next two days they project managed the construction of a superb new bridge. We were switching our transport from ponies to yaks at this point but the yaks, which were semi-wild and about to be used as beasts of burden for the first time that season, would not cross the new bridge and so we had to physically move all our equipment and supplies to the other side of the bridge ourselves.
The move was completed over the course of a morning and, as we were now two days behind schedule, Steve decided that we should continue to the next planned campsite, with the yaks to follow once they had been loaded with our equipment and food. It was almost dark as we carefully descended from the Nephu La (pass) to our campsite at Warthang at an elevation of 14,500 ft. There was no sign of the yaks so we huddled together on the dirt floor of a yak herder’s hut, which was roughly built in stone and had a small supply of wood and some empty hessian sacks inside. The yaks did eventually arrive but, in what was now complete darkness, we could not pitch the tents and only some of us could find their sleeping bags. Realising that the hut was to be our home for the night, we used the wood to fuel a fire on the floor of the hut. I was lucky I had found my sleeping bag but all of us, and particularly those sleeping in the hessian sacks, endured a long, cold and smoky night.
The next day, as we traversed a path thousands of feet above the Mangde Chu gorge, two of our yaks had a fight and plummeted to their death. They were carrying most of our food and we were now on a radish and rice diet for the next 10 days. They were also carrying all the cooking pots and these had to be retrieved by our cooks who then had to bash them back into shape as all the pots fitted together in the manner of a Russian doll.
Apart from having to endure a radish diet and damp weather, which had been a permanent feature so far, the next eight days of the trek were relatively uneventful and saw us successfully reach Gangkar Punesum base camp before continuing to a campsite at a place called Gechey Woma, where the following day we would cross the Gophu La, at 17,200 ft the highest pass on our trek.
By late afternoon we were within an hour or so of reaching the Gophu La. I had been aware of Ugyen looking behind at the path we had followed and knew he was looking for the yaks following us. This would not normally concern me unduly as we were now used to reaching camp before the yaks but Ugyen appeared to be particularly troubled and the reason for this became clear when we learned that the yaks were not following us at all and we would have to turn back. It transpired that there were two routes to the Gophu La and the yaks, for some unimaginable reason, had been led up the alternative route. As nightfall was imminent, we descended as quickly as we could, gathering anything that would burn on the way as we realised that we would have to spend an exposed night in the open. We set up ‘camp’ on a small meadow at 14,500 ft where we built a primitive but functional windbreak and established a fire that smoked heavily when lit, as much of what we had gathered to burn was green. We knew this was a more serious situation than our night at Warthang as this time there was no food, no hut, no tents and no sleeping bags; not even a hessian sack.
Nightfall came quickly and with the change in light came a change in wind direction. All through that long, long night we lay as close to the fire as we could, huddled together for extra warmth, but still shivering uncontrollably and with our scarfs or hats pulled down over our noses and mouths to mitigate the effect of the smoke, now trapped by the windbreak. Every so often the smoke became unbearable and you had to move away from the fire until you could no longer suffer the cold, returning then to the warmth of the fire augmented by the body heat of your companions. We were very lucky it did not rain that night.
Although night falls quickly in the high mountains, sunrise is a long drawn out affair and it seemed an eternity before we could feel the warmth of the sun on our faces.
The rest of the trek was far from uneventful but, after 26 days, we arrived safely at our last campsite, all a little older and wiser and with experiences and memories that would last a lifetime.
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Tags: bhutan, hiking, reader adventure
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