October 2009 Mera Peak Trek

In October, Iain travelled to Nepal to assist in guiding 8 guys from 3 Para Regiment in the UK, from Kathmandu to the top of Mera Peak 6476M - the worlds highest trekking peak in the Himalayas.

After a couple of nights in Kathmandu the team headed off into the mountains and this is a picture of us all at Paphlu airstrip. In the background are the Twin Otter aeroplanes that we used for a very exciting flight to Lukla.

Unfortunately, the weather was rather poor during our first week when we trekked from Lukla to Namche Bazaar and we only got glimpses of snow covered peaks first thing on a few mornings.

We followed the Dudh Kosi river valley on our trek . This river flows all the way from Everest and this picture was taken from one of the many suspension bridges we had to cross in what was fairly typical weather that week

This picture shows Billy & Graham, two of our clients with Namche Bazar behind them. Also in the backgound was a 6000M peak - somewhere in the cloud!

On this day we were heading to our high point at 4000M above the village of Khumjung having climbed over the last 3 days from Lukla at a hieght of 2840M. Each day involved climbing a little higher than the previous day and also sleeping higher too - necessary if we were going to acclimatise sufficiently for Mera Peak.



The next day we left Namche Bazar and returned to Lukla in one day and at this point the weather chose to clear up. On this day we could see lots of snow & ice covered peaks all around us but unfortunately a good view of Everest had been denied us the previous day.

However, on the descent from Namche to the Dudh Kosi River we were were rewarded with this distant view of Everest - this was the first time any of us had ever seen it!