I’ve been meaning to write a bit more about our day-to-day here: where we’re staying, some of the local sights and oddities, etc., but first I need to get to our latest expedition – I set a personal record! Trevor had already reached the summit of Patalsu twice, but it was not only my first summit of the mountain, but at 4100 meters, the highest I’ve ever reached under my own power, and definitely the highest I’ve ever skied (pictures). I know Trevor usually does the ski posts, so forgive my lack of technical detail, but I’m really excited about this one.

We were planning to set out on the 5th, but put off our departure after looking at the weather forecast. We have three different sources for online weather here, and the three rarely agree, and only occasionally reflect reality. But our interpretation paid off, and we ended up with a very nice weather window leaving on the 6th. The first part of the trip was on dirt until well after Old Solang. Joe came along for the hike to the snowline, and was kind enough to carry my ski boots up, and our hiking boots back down, which made the hike much nicer. Skinning up through the trees is really beautiful – what we think they call oak here is actually an interesting broadleaf evergreen tree, with small, round, leathery leaves that are dark green on top and yellow underneath. This forest provides winter cover for a number of larger pheasants, grouse-like birds and quail. My first encounter with the HP state bird – the Himalayan Monal – reminded me a lot of running into a grouse at home. A bird about the size of a chicken exploded out of some low cover 5 feet in front of me, making a high screaming call at the same time. When my heart started beating again, I noticed that it was a beautiful bird flying away, though all of their iridescent purples, blues and greens are much more dramatic in the sun.

We set camp above most of the trees at about 3300 meters, which put us into excellent position for summitting the next day. It started snowing lightly just after dinner, and I had a sense of Gulaba-vu, hoping we wouldn’t end up snowed in the next day instead of skiing off the summit. We woke up to only a couple of inches of “dust on crust”, and took off skinning at 8. It was tough going with the new snow slipping over the firm layer underneath on every traverse, but we had a gorgeous bluebird morning. We crossed over several sets of fox tracks, and saw tracks that were probably snowcocks. At about 11, with the snow getting sticky on our skins but still slipping, and the altitude taking its toll, I thought seriously about whether or not I would make it to the top. We had a break 600 meters below the summit for some water and one of our carefully rationed Clif bars, and then decided to continue. I made a mental bargain that it couldn’t possibly be more than 1000 steps more to the summit, and sticky snow or not, I could surely manage that. With Trevor behind me trying not to laugh at the extra 5 pounds of snow stuck to the bottom of each of my skis, I made it to the summit one step at a time. 896 (more) steps, to be exact.

The summit itself is pretty cool. You can skin all the way to the top, and then find yourself on a fairly narrow peninsula of snow a little over a meter across, with steep dropoffs on three sides. I was moving very, very carefully while we had our snack and took our skins off for the descent. The ski down was amazing – my legs were burning by the time we got back to camp. Trevor dug us a little snow couch, and we had a game of rummy in the sun, until a cloud settled in and made it just chilly enough to head in.

The next morning we set out to ski the ridge, and made excellent time back up the mountain with much friendlier skinning conditions. The new snow from the day before had been warmed by the sun and frozen hard with a rough surface, perfect for gripping skins. Cooler temps slowed the softening of the snow, and we relaxed for 45 minutes at our high point of 3850 meters on the ridgeline while waiting for the sun to do its work. While we were hanging out, Trevor noticed something very unfortunate: the part of my binding that locks my heel down to descend was broken. (We’ve since heard from Caley at Pro Ski that this is not an unusual problem, and they’re going to ship us a replacement heel piece ASAP. Pro Ski rocks.) We were still able to get me locked down for the descent, which was possibly even a better ski than the day before – like velvet.

After packing up camp, we had a nice descent to the treeline, and even through the trees, to our surprise. We saw the female monal (she was kind enough to make her noisy takeoff before we were right up to her) and managed to descend on snow all the way to our skins-on point from two days before. The steep hike down in ski boots was less than enjoyable, but when we finally dragged our aching feet into the Iceland (home sweet home) Trevor put in an order for chai and finger chips (french fries, freedom fries, whatever…), which were promptly delivered to our room, and the hot water was on enabling us to take scalding hot showers. Overall a very successful mission, followed by a lovely homecoming.

Speaking of the Iceland, I don’t know if we’d said much about where we’re staying. From the outside, it’s a fairly plain looking, 3-story, green-and-white concrete box. Inside, it’s really very cozy. We’ve been staying in #9, on the top floor. The rooms have red carpet, pale wood paneling set in interesting patterns cover all the walls, and the ceiling is wooden beams and paneling painted white. Our window looks down the valley at the cliff wall where the Beas river descends toward the entrance of the Rhotang Valley, so we see cliff, trees, and the goings-on and laundry at the neighbor’s house below us. Khem, the owner, has been extremely nice to us, and all of his employees have been very good as well. Singh, the cook, is a gem. The prospect of going somewhere else and having to eat our own cooking does not appeal after he’s been taking care of us. We usually get omelets in the morning (cheese for me, plain or veg for Trev) and some plain parathas (a sort of leathery flatbread that’s amazingly heavy and filling). Lemon tea is one of our morning favorites, and the regular (milk, black, or spiced masala) tea (chai) is good, but the coffee is Nescafe, so we don’t get that often. A typical day here sees at least 4 or 5 rounds of tea. Lunch is usually cheese sandwiches and fingerchips, or chowmein, or some soup. We could order specific dishes for dinner, but we usually just say dinner for however many of us there are, and they bring out some rice and chapati (different kind of flat bread – lighter than parathas) along with three different dishes – always a dal (lentil) and/or bean dish, usually something with veggies and potatoes, and then a third thing, usually a curry but varies quite a bit from peas and mushrooms, to curd, to the stuffed peppers we had the other night. All of which is ordered up and served by a small flock of young 20-something local employees referred to collectively as “the boys” (their term, not ours). The dining room is very nice, with 270 degrees of mountain views, a huge propane space heater, and satellite TV, quite often tuned to cricket, but with several English-language movie and news channels (actually way more channels that either of us are used to).

We also have the option of letting “the boys” do our laundry, in which case everything comes back ironed and folded, even our underwear. It is a little expensive for how we’re trying to live (10 rupees per item, 8 for a pair of socks – the dollar being worth 42 rupees at our last exchange) so we’ve just been doing our own by hand in the bucket that comes with every bathroom here. It’s a bit of work with a big load, but not too bad when the hot water is on. The hot water schedule (there is a central boiler) is baffling, but we’ve gotten used to not counting on it, so the hot showers 2 or 3 times a week when it coincides with our schedule are a nice treat. If we need to get clean and it’s not on, one of the boys brings up a bucket of hot water and pours it into the bucket in our room. There’s a little plastic 2-pint cup that comes in handy for “bucket baths” that way.

The village where we’re staying is mostly new buildings around a set of 5 or 6 concrete guest houses/hotels, while “Old Solang” sits across the river up on the hillside. Aside from a few houses scattered in between, there isn’t much going on when there aren’t many tourists around, like now. We do get bus service here a couple times a day, so the 45 minute ride to Manali is fairly easy and very cheap (10 rupees). If we miss the bus here, we can walk half an hour to Palchan and only pay 7 rupees for the bus, which comes there maybe 6 times a day. Some of the bus times are more fixed than others, though, and more than once we’ve been left wondering how we managed to miss it. Aside from the lack of chickens and goats, the buses are about what you might think. Aging, decorated with all kinds of artistic flourishes, and skillfully maneuvered around hairpin mountain turns by the drivers, who are assisted by a sort of conductor who goes around and collects the money, and signals the driver to stop and go for pickups and dropoffs through liberal use of a whistle. One whistle means someone wants off. Two means it’s ok to go. When the driver needs to back up the bus, some code of almost continuous short whistles tells the driver to keep backing (we think) and also serves to warn pedestrians (at least in our case).

Speaking of the bus, we need to get things together and catch the next one. We’re on our way into town to meet up with some friends for dinner at Chopsticks – the yummy Tibetan place. Hopefully all is well for all of you. Namaste!

Labels: India, Kullu Valley, Patalsu, ski touring