Mark Horrell - The Ascent of Manaslu: Climbing the worlds eighth highest mountain

The Ascent of Manaslu

Climbing the world's eighth highest mountain

by Mark Horrell

Published bySmashwords

Copyright (c)Mark Horrell, 2013

www.markhorrell.com

All rightsreserved

Except whereindicated, all photographs copyright (c) Mark Horrell

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This ebook islicensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not bere-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to sharethis book with another person, please purchase an additional copyfor each recipient. If you're reading this book and did notpurchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then pleasereturn to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you forrespecting the work of this author.

Front coverphotograph: Mark Horrell

ISBN: 9781301292530(ebook)

The Ascent of Manaslu

About this book

The mountain gods were very protective ofManaslu, a huge two-pronged peak in the Nepal Himalaya, and theeighth-highest mountain in the world. When a Japanese team tried toclimb it in the 1950s, the gods sent an avalanche in their wakewhich destroyed a nearby monastery and set the local populationagainst them. They returned the following year, but were met withsticks and stones and made to undergo what in schoolboy parlance isknown as a "de-bagging".

While Mark Horrell had never returnedtrouserless from an expedition and intended to keep that record, hewas determined to give the mountain a go, and set out to climb itwith regular climbing partners Mark and Ian in Autumn2011.

A more luckless trio of wannabemountaineers would be hard to find. Between them they had made nofewer than eight attempts to climb an 8000 metre peak withoutsuccess, and Mark was on his fourth attempt alone. Would it be anydifferent this time? And perhaps less importantly, would they keeptheir trousers? This is the story of their climb as part of acommercial expedition team.

About this series

TheFootsteps on the Mountain travel diariesare Mark's expedition journals. They area lightly-edited version of what he scribbles in his tent eachevening after a day in the mountains. They are quick reads,self-edited, and available at a budget price.

Mark's first full-length,commercially-edited book,Seven Steps from Snowdon toEverest, about hisjourney to becoming an Everest climber, is published in December2015.

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Get a free copy of In the Footsteps ofWhymper when you sign up to Marks mailinglist for his weekly blog post about mountains and occasional infoabout new releases.

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"Mark always puts together a good mountaineering story whichis underpinned with humour"

"For a lover of mountains and adventure these are not to bemissed. Every one has been worth it."

The Ascent of Manaslu

Table of contents

Day 1 - A monsoon jeep ride;leaving civilisation

Saturday, 3 September 2011 Soti Khola, Manaslu Circuit,Nepal

The adventure starts at 12.30 on Friday in a place calledDading Besi, about three hours' drive from Kathmandu. Twelveclimbers of seven different nationalities sit on benches in theback of a rickety old truck and start the long ride along anatrociously rutted dirt track to Arughat in the Gorkha region ofNepal. As well as myself, a Brit, we have my two regular climbingpartners Mark and Ian, also from the UK, two Americans Robert andSteve, Robin from Calgary in Canada but originally British, Josthe Colombian, Karel the Czech, Anne-Mari the Finn, Mila theRussian, and expedition leader Phil, owner of Altitude Junkies , the expeditionoperator we're climbing with, another ex-pat Brit living in NewYork who spends most of his life in theHimalayas .

I hope our ride in the truck is going to be short, but in theend it takes over seven hours and is extremely uncomfortable. Everytime we go over a bump a ridge of metal digs into my back justabove waist level. I keep hitting my head on the very low roof, andafter only an hour of driving I have blisters on my thumbs fromclinging for dear life to the struts on the roof. We face eachother on benches along the sides of the truck and our bags arepiled up in front of us, so there isn't much leg room. It would bebad enough without a hangover, but I'm feeling very fragile fromlast night's boozing in Kathmandu and my stomach isn't in the bestof shape. Phil sits beside the open back end of thevehicle .

"Dude, do youwant to come and sit here? You look like you're going to throw upat any moment."

The truck slides around a good deal as the road climbs upthrough jungle, with a steep drop to our right. We get tossedaround like a canoe in a gale, and it doesn't help when Steveremarks how bald the tyres are. At least two hours of the journeyare spent by the side of the road waiting for vehicles that havebroken down or are stuck in the mud. On one of these occasions I'mable to grab a few minutes' sleep, impossible when the truck ismoving. Robert, who owns a motorcycle dealership and knows a thingor two about vehicle mechanics, wanders down the hill to find outwhat the problem is .

"They've got abroken leaf spring," he says when he returns.

"Oh, Jesus!"replies Steve.

I have no idea what a broken leaf spring is, but I gather fromthis exchange that it must be a bugger to fix. I walk to the frontof the queue and have a look myself. A truck is hitched up on ajack, with one of its wheels off and various bits of metal lying onthe ground underneath. A dozen Nepalis are crouching down fiddlingwith them. Luckily someone happens to be carrying a spare leafspring and they get the vehicle moving. We all jump back in ourtrucks, but only a moment later we grind to a halt when a vehiclein front drives into a ditch. Eventually they get it out and wecontinue onwards, but it's clearly going to be dark by the time wereach Arughat. We reach the bottom of a hill and cross a wide plainamong rice fields, but when we start driving up the other side Iwonder if we're ever going to reach ourdestination .

"This placedoes exist, doesn't it?" I ask Phil.

"Dude, this isunheard of to reach Arughat in one day," he replies. This is histhird expedition to Manaslu, and on each previous occasion he hadto stop somewhere on the way, find porters and walk. This time wemake it, and even more surprisingly my stomach survives the ordealwithout bringing its contents back up again.

We stay in alodge instead of pitching tents in the dark. I expect to experiencebed bugs during the night the Manaslu Circuit trek isn't asdeveloped as other parts of Nepal but the lodge is very clean,and I get a good night's sleep to catch up on the previous one'sover-indulgence.

In the morningthere are 150 porters in the yard behind the lodge ready to takeour 5000 kilograms of equipment up to base camp. It's more than weneed, but many are no more than boys, so our Sherpa team have noproblem weeding them down to the requisite 102. I watch for awhile. Although it looks chaotic, there's not the furious arguingthat you sometimes see on the first day of portering.

Porters assembling for work in Arughat

It's swelteringly hot and still early in the morning when weleave. Arughat is at an altitude of only 610m in a valley betweenjungle hills. Although there is some cloud cover, when the sun isout it's warm and humid. We set off at around 9.30 and for thefirst two hours we walk through a sprawl of villages where peoplecluster in doorways doing not very much but watching the world goby. They don't see many trekkers around here, and the kids are veryfriendly, running behind us and calling out namaste every step of the way. It'sexhausting, but I keep smiling, put my hands together andmutter namaste (hello) back to them .