Chapter 14 

Chapter 14

River Deep Mountain High

Part One  ‘I quite fancy a go at that’

‘Oh Nooooo…Shiiiiiiittttttttttt….. !!!’

There’s always a moment, usually just a fleeting second or two, when excited, nervous anticipation is suddenly transformed into a feeling of dread and impending doom.

The brain is working overtime: the rational, calculating side is trying desperately to come up with an escape plan, or at best a damage-limitation option.  Shouting it down, getting in the way of the clear thinking that’s urgently required, is the panic-stricken emotional side.

‘You knew you shouldn’t have tried it.  Why did you listen to them?  You’re not good enough. This might hurt.’ In the more extreme cases there’s just one adrenaline fuelled message: ‘You’ve f…ing done it now.'

We all know how it feels.  It doesn’t matter who you are; expert or novice; gung-ho or timid; built like a gorilla or as light as a feather; using the latest expensive kit or just borrowing some tatty gear from a mate.  It doesn’t matter where you are: a mile-high vertical wall in Yosemite or a scramble across the rocks on a beach with the tide coming in; a monster wave at Hawaii’s Pipeline or a Cornish breaker about to take-out your five-year old self; a walk in the high mountains, days from the nearest road, or the path on the moors that’s petered out just as the temperatures have plummeted and the mist has come down.

‘I’m in over my head.  I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.  I’m way out my comfort zone.  Why didn’t I go the other way?  It’s alright for them, they’re better than me.  I should never have signed up for this.  You stupid prat.   Never again.’

A couple of hours later in the pub.  ‘That was bloody brilliant!  Did you see me carve that turn, miss that rock, make that move, suss the route?  What’re we up for tomorrow?'

I love the outdoors and I love the people whom I’ve shared my experiences with;  in fact it’s not quite the same for me if there isn’t someone else along for the ride.  And it doesn’t all have to be edgy, boundary-pushing activity.  Most of that sort of thing is confined to earlier decades when body and mind seem to have a different perspective on endurance and risk.  Nowadays a pleasant weariness, a good dose of fresh air and a pint (or even a cream tea) at the end of the day seems reward enough.

Let’s take another journey-through-time. Let’s re-visit those hills and mountains, rivers and seas that have left such an impression.  Whilst we’re at it we can meet the friends who’ve made the trip so enjoyable and share some of the more memorable incidents.

And before we get going, let’s be clear on one thing so you don’t get the wrong impression: I’m not particularly expert at any of this.  I’m not remotely any good at rock-climbing; I can kayak to a decent but rapidly reducing standard; I can ski down most slopes providing they’re not too icy or off-piste, and I can mountain-bike up and down moderately-technical routes if it’s not too slippery and I’m at the back and not holding anybody up.  On the plus side I’d still back myself to safely navigate a route safely up and down a big hill, no matter what the weather.

So, with that said, I’ll start somewhere near the beginning with Dad’s map collection, squeezed onto a shelf of the book case in the lounge of 89 Balmoral Drive.  Red covers for Ordnance Survey (I didn’t know what that meant and just had to look it up; its origins are from a military survey in 1745 in the wake of the Jacobite rebellion) or blue covers for the Bartholomew’s that were printed, rather strangely onto a thin matted cloth.  I don’t know what attracted me in the first place but these maps offered a key to adventure, associated as they were with holidays to Cornwall or Pembroke, or a day trip to the Peak District.  It was intriguing the way Dad could find his way to a beach, to the top of a hill, or back to where we’d left the car just by referencing the map and its multitude of lines and symbols.  I was fortunate he took the time to explain what it was all about and I seem to have inherited from him the rather nebulous, wonderful attribute that some people refer to as a ‘sense of direction.’

It was something of a family tradition at Easter to head up the A6, along the Derwent valley through Matlock before branching north-west into the Derbyshire Hills for a long day’s walk.  Our early exploits were confined to the valleys of the White Peak; Dove Dale, Miller’s Dale and Monsal Dale, where the burbling clear, trout-filled rivers carved their way southwards between the limestone crags and dry-stone-walled hillsides.  As we became older we ventured further north for longer days across the moors and edges around Hathersage and Castleton.  I’d find on the road atlas places with curious names such as the ‘Cat and Fiddle, Snake Pass’ or ‘Ladybower’ and track our progress whenever we headed in this particular directions.

‘What’re those red poles by the side of the road for?'

‘When it snows they mark where the road is.’

'Wow!  Do they really get that much?’

(Listen to 5-Live’s travel news - the Snake Pass between Manchester and Sheffield seems to close every other week in the winter.)

Dad chanced it once during the Christmas holidays.  He wanted to show us the Kinder Downfall when frozen, apparently a spectacular 30m curtain of ice, so we’d driven up to Edale and headed off, all wrapped up for the 4 mile walk along the Pennine Way to its foot.   We never made it.  It was too cold and, with snow falling, we quickly ate our corned beef sandwiches and headed back to the car.   I’ve walked by the Downfall quite a few times since then, once on a rainy, gale-force day when it seemed more water was being blown back up over the falls than was reaching the bottom, but I still haven’t seen it frozen.

I was back there again in 1975 as one of teacher ‘Pop’ Stewart’s sponsored walkers. Even for a fit 16-year-old, the 30-mile day walk over the Kinder Plateau that also took in Mam Tor and Lose and Win Hill was a tough introduction to endurance activities.  I loved the challenge and the map we were given to mark our achievement is still nestling amongst all our other maps in our study.

By my late teens things became more ambitious. We’d fill the car with friends and head for the hills (and pubs) or plan a few trips that meant we stayed in Youth Hostels.  Jackie, Sally Smith, Nico and I made such a trip to The Lakes in 1977.  Staying in Patterdale, we climbed Hellvelyn via Striding Edge in cloud and rain and only with a bit of luck found our way back down Swirral Edge without getting lost or falling off.  The guidebook says, ‘A first crossing of Striding Edge and Swirral Edge is best undertaken in summer when the rock is dry and the wind gentle. A strong breeze can easily knock you off, or unbalance you, and that will have consequences.' Too right, but fortunately for us the cloud obscured the drops, and with noses pressed close to the rocks on the ridge we had other things to focus on and were too inexperienced to realise how daft we’d been.

I think I must have seen myself as an embryonic mountaineer.  In 1975 I was enthused by Bonnington’s well publicised expedition to attempt Everest by the unclimbed South West Face. The Sunday Times provided a weekly update and Blue Peter was following the fortunes of Pete Boardman, the youngest climber on the team.  I’d read a few climbing books and was familiar with some of the characters and obstacles they faced: the deadly Icefall, the oxygen-starved Western Cwm, the notorious barrier of the Rock Band.  The news that Dougal Haston and Nottingham climber, Doug Scott, had finally made it after an audacious attempt and an overnight bivouac at over 8000m to become the first Britons on the summit was an inspirational story.

The drama was heightened the following day when Pete Boardman also summited in the company of Sherpa Pertemba, but another climber, Mick Burke, was lost in a deteriorating storm and never found.  The book, when it was published, contained stunning colour photos and I soaked up the details.  A year or so later I managed to get it autographed by Scott when he turned up for a swim at the pool whilst I was on lifeguard duty: I phoned home and persuaded Rick to run the mile from home with the book and Scott duly obliged.  By now he was something of a local hero, recently escaping with his life in 1977 from The Ogre in the Karakoram.  Having broken both legs just below the summit, he abseiled and crawled his way for three days back down to base-camp and an ultimate rescue.

By the time I went to university, I knew my way around the climbing literature and the mountain regions of the world, and had an inkling that I fancied seeing these ranges one day but had never actually tied on a climbing rope or clipped on a karabiner.

Walking past a notice board in the Students’ Union in 1978, a poster caught my eye. ‘Dudh Kosi - Relentless River of Everest.   A film and talk by Dr Mike Jones.’  The picture of a tiny kayaker picking his way down a churning white-water river was enticing and I went along to the event.  It was awesome.  The film followed the shoestring project from concept over a beer, to the overland journey by minibus along the hippie trail to Nepal (virtually impossible nowadays due to conflicts, religion and politics but a challenging adventure in its own right then).  It then described the complications of transporting all their equipment on the three week trek to the launch point near Everest base camp.  But inevitably the highlight was the footage of the kayaking.   Even without Go-Pros footage and a thumping music score, it was thrilling as these 'plucky Brits’ in their flimsy fibre-glass boats, thin plastic helmets and only the basic waterproofs, buoyancy-aids and tennis shoes (at the time they were using state of the art kit) managed to somehow paddle through an endless sequence of huge rapids and drops on their 100km descent to calmer waters.  The leader was Dr Mike Jones, a recent graduate of the University medical school, and he wrapped up the evening with an amusing Q&A session.  When asked about his next expedition he described a similar trip he was planning to paddle the Braldu, the river in Pakistan that flows from K2.  Six months later he was dead, drowned on the Braldu trip whilst rescuing a capsized friend.

The evening left a mark and I added kayaking to a list of things to try whenever the chance occurred.  Three years later, Dad and I visited Rick for the day at Atlantic College on the south-Wales coast where, as part of their community service, he’d being doing beach life-guarding plus various other outdoor activities including kayaking and had even constructed his own boat.  

I was impressed and arranged to come over for a day’s paddle later that year.  One Sunday in late November 1982, I was back, this time with Dad’s ancient roof rack as Rick would not need the kayak after Christmas and had suggested I might want to buy it for a ridiculously low price; £25 I think.  We’d paddled in the surf on the local Southerndown beach and I’d spent most of the day being capsized and dragging the boat out to empty it.  Nevertheless I loaded it onto the roof, tied it down with some old rope and set off back to Bristol where I’d abandoned Naomi in the flat for the day. 

By the time I reached the Severn Bridge it was dark, blowing a gale and chucking down with rain.  The next hour was to turn in to something of an epic, narrowly avoiding what could have been an awful disaster.  Approaching from the west, the bridge climbs steadily and initially spans the mouth of the River Wye. Buffeted by the wind, I watched in horror (‘Oh No.. Shiitt..’) as the front of the kayak disappeared from view, and after a scraping sound from the roof as the rubber mounts slid backwards, it reappeared in the rear-view mirror tumbling and still attached to the roof-rack, into the outside lane of the M4.  How it didn’t hit another vehicle I’ll never know.

There’s no hard-shoulder on the bridge so I stopped where I was, flicked on the hazards, and jogged back 100m to where all the traffic had come to a halt.  Sheepishly I picked up the boat and dragged it and the roof rack onto the adjacent footpath and raced back to the car.  Luckily it was too dark to see any 'idiot’ gestures from passing drivers and I drove on over the bridge to Aust Services and parked up.  I didn’t have much choice but to jog back over the bridge and try to recover the kayak and take it back to the service station.  It wasn’t much fun.  It’s at least a mile each way and I was cold and soaked.  I’d taken one look at the roof-rack, noticed that a clamp bolt appeared to have sheared so dropped it over the barrier into the darkness of the River Wye below.  That just left the small matter of carrying a 3m kayak along a narrow path for a mile in high winds.  The barrier is barely waist-high and as I struggled past the tall bridge pylons the wind was so strong I had to crawl to avoid the certain oblivion of being blown over.  Meanwhile the traffic sped relentlessly by, passengers warm in their cocoons, oblivious to my freezing struggles.  Eventually, I reached the other side and hid the kayak behind some hazel bushes, hoping to pick it up the following day with a borrowed roof rack, and drove the car back to the flat, absolutely exhausted.

The evening would get worse.  I was expecting some grief for being so late home, but without mobiles there was no way of letting Na know.  What I didn’t anticipate was the news that she’d decided she felt stuck where she was and needed to set off in a new direction.  Effectively she was telling me she was off to London to find a career and it was, sadly, the end of the line for us. (See the ‘A Girl’ chapter).  Christ!  I hadn’t really seen that coming but it clearly doesn’t help if you head off for a day trip and leave your girl stuck in the flat with only a few hours at her part-time pub job to break the day up.  We on-offed for a few months but it was officially all over by May and, as the Falklands War dominated the news, I found myself a single guy once more.

The kayak hadn’t been touched apart from an outing to Woolacombe during the summer when Robbo, Nico and Bean paid a visit.  In need of re-establishing a social life, I signed up for a beginners’ kayak course taking place down in the Bristol Docks that September.

The introductory evening was held in a room above what then was the North Avon Canoe Centre down near Baltic Wharf.  I found a chair and listened attentively as the organisers outlined the course content, the basic clothing we’d need and so on, showed a few slides of some of their exploits and then adjourned to the pub. There were a dozen of us signed up; a guy my age, Julian, who lived near me in Staple Hill and a smattering of girls including one called Sue who I’d noticed sitting just in front of me but who’d not made it to the pub.  No matter.  On the Saturday we did basic techniques and rescues in the Docks and the following day had a longer paddle through the Docks and onto the Avon.  There’s nothing like a capsize drill in those murky waters and hauling each other back into the kayaks like  half-drowned rats to break the ice and start a conversation.

Like all things, the more you do it the better you get and, with a willing partner in Julian, we went along to most of the novice activities arranged by the North Avon Canoe Club, including a couple of pool sessions where we tried to master how to roll back upright after a capsize.  Within a month or two we’d survived a debut trip down the friendly, gently bouncy rapids at Symonds Yat (they felt plenty big enough at the time!);  shot a few of the sloping weirs on the Avon, and had an exciting run down the Frome from Frenchay to Snuff Mills, including a couple of drops over the weirs.  The Frome is only paddlable in spate conditions so it’s a fast, buttock-clenching run, especially for someone with limited technique and experience.  I’d also clocked that Sue had decided to persevere with her paddling when she came along on another of the River Wye trips and I tentatively started to get to know her a bit.

One Sunday in early December, we couldn’t resist the chance for another go on the Frome.  I joined Julian and a younger member, sixteen year-old Phillip, who despite his age was a better kayaker than us, for what we thought would be a short afternoon paddle down the river, confident that having all kayaked that stretch before we’d be okay.  It was the wrong decision and through a combination of ill-luck, inexperience and poor judgement by all of us it had fatal consequences.

There’s a weir by the mill at the bottom of Frenchay Hill and we launched just above it, playing around for a few minutes before heading down stream.  I went over the weir first, maybe a three foot drop that day and despite noting quite a kick in the churning water at the bottom turned into the bank to wait for the other two.  Phillip came next but capsized at the bottom and immediately bailed out and bobbed up besides his kayak. The usual drill in these circumstances is for another kayaker to paddle in towards the swimmer so that they can grab the front of the rescue boat which is then paddled backwards to safety of the calmer waters.  I tried, but as I reached him the re-circulating flow of the water below the weir was sucking us all back into the turbulence and very quickly.  I was predominantly occupied in trying to stay upright myself, but without success.  Dragged back to just under the weir itself, and with the water cascading onto my deck, I lasted only seconds before I too capsized with no hope of rolling in that position.  I bailed out and tried to swim away downstream. It didn’t happen. I managed a few strokes but couldn’t get clear of the back flow so was sucked back under the weir where the force of the water pushed me down to the bottom where, after a few seconds, the away flow then carried me away from the weir along the river bed.  But after only a few metres the buoyancy-aid pulled me back up to the surface, still within the back flow, so the whole process repeated itself.  After a couple of revolutions, I was getting seriously worried.  The noise was disorientating and each time it seemed like I was spending longer under the water than on the surface.  I recalled some advice offered by one of the more experienced kayakers: 'If you’re stuck in a stopper then lose your buoyancy-aid; this will allow the river flow to push you clear.’  I’d just unzipped it when, on the next time down to the foot of the weir, I managed to get a decent push off the wall and next thing I knew I was bobbing up in the clear and being swept downstream.  I swam to the bank by Frenchay Bridge to be met by Julian and some people who’d been walking nearby.  Where was Phil?  It was awful news.

According to the coroner’s inquest somehow in all the mayhem he’d received a fatal blow.  The fire brigade eventually recovered his body downstream whilst the police took statements from Julian and me as we were looked after by the kindly owner of one of the nearby cottages.  Inevitably, it was a difficult period, trying to rationalise how things had suddenly gone so badly wrong.  It helped massively that neither the coroner, other kayakers, nor Phil’s family made any judgement on whether we’d made wrong decisions; sometimes things just happen.  Sadly, his mother and brother had been watching from the bridge and seen things unfold, and his brother had tried to help extricate him to no avail.  Shortly after the funeral they wrote me a lovely letter thanking me for my effort and insisting I use an enclosed cheque for £100 to replace my own kayak that had been smashed into several pieces. 

With encouragement from club I ordered a new boat (Palm Sorcerer) and got back on the water within a few weeks, but with a heightened respect for potential power of moving water.  Before I knew, it I’d allowed myself to get into another heart-in-the-mouth situation, a white water race down the River Barle on Exmoor.  Now I’ve paddled the Barle numerous times since then, either in my kayak or in a Canadian canoe with Sue.  It’s a beautiful, seemingly continuous run of six miles or so of friendly grade 2/3 rapids with only the occasional bigger drops to really worry about and a couple of weirs that can be shot or carried round, depending on conditions.  But first time up I was nervous, especially as I was in a borrowed boat and would be setting off in my own little time slot, a minute behind the person in front, and therefore too far back to easily follow someone else’s  line.

Let me explain something about rapids.  Firstly, when anxiously sitting at the top of one, there’s a chance to gauge how steep and therefore fast it’s going to be.  If someone’s waiting at the bottom and you can see their boat then it shouldn’t be too bad; if all you can glimpse is their head, it’s going to be more challenging; but if all you spot is the top of a paddle waving in the air to give the all-clear, then hang onto your hats, there’s going to a drop or two involved.  Typically there’s an arrow shaped, inverted V of rushing water that marks the entrance and once you’re onto this faster flow, there’s no going back - heart in mouth you’re committed, whether you like it or not.  The only safe way out is to stay upright until you emerge at the other end.  Unfortunately you can’t always see the other end, especially if there’s a bend in the river, so sometimes you set off blind to what’s ahead and have to deal with the various challenges along the way.  Trying to stay in the middle of the river is usually the best bet as it’s generally less strewn with rocks and boulders and, whilst the water is more bouncy, it’s less hazardous.  I needn’t have worried.  The boat looked after me and I somehow avoided any calamities to arrive unscathed at the finish, thrilled by a first encounter with a proper white water river.  My novice status meant it had been a fine line between excitement and panic most of the way down but wasn’t really big enough to give me any real ‘Oh No Shiiiiittt…. ‘ moments.  They were still to come.

Let’s leave me slowly honing my kayaking skills over the spring and summer of 1983 and go back to the mountains.  Over the past few years I’d organised a variety of small group trips to the Lakes or Snowdonia: the Nottingham gang’s Easter 1979 stormy night besides Stickle Tarn and the TI graduate intake’s walk up Snowdon via the craggy, exposed Crib Goch are a couple of the more memorable ones.  By the summer of 1983, I was planning something a little more ambitious.  The intention to take a year out and head off on a backpacking trip to Australia and New Zealand had been on the drawing board for a while. (See Namaste chapter).  A chance encounter with an outdoor magazine had opened up the possibility of adapting the outward route and spending time on a high Himalayan trek.  The article described a three-week self-supported route around the Annapurna massif, including a snowy traverse of the Throng La pass at a lung-gasping 5400m.

Annapurna Circuit

It was only a few months later  that I stepped off the rickety, garish, overloaded bus in the little village of Dumre, had a cup of chai in a roadside cafe, hoiked a ridiculously heavy rucksack onto my back and set off along the path, following the milky, Marshyangdi Khola river towards the distant snowy peaks.  I had company for this part of the trip; Nigel Baylis was a work-colleague who was taking some time out before starting a new job with his family’s haulage firm and we’d got along quite well.  I’d organised a Scafell trip back in the spring and Nigel had easily coped with the camping and walking so, in reality, he was as well qualified as me for a long trek to high altitude.

For two weeks, the Marshyangdi was our constant companion as we slowly gained height.  From paddy fields to terraces of barley, from deciduous woods of oak to sweet smelling pine forests, until reaching the barren, harsh landscape of scraggy goats and hairy yaks.  It was a time before the route became popular and proliferated with hotels, lodges and cafes.  Every few hours we’d enter the next village and, whilst it was always possible to find a tea shop, the lodges were few and far between.  We were on a tight budget anyway, so most nights we just camped by the river and cooked using a mix of the dried food we’d bought from home and the few vegetables we purchased along the way.  Lower down it was hot and we sometimes didn’t bother pitching the tent, taking a chance with the mosquitoes for a night of star gazing.  Reaching the pine forests we were in our sleeping bags as soon as it went dark and by the time we reached Manang, the last village before the Throng La, we would sleep in all our clothes and need to unfreeze the boots before emerging from a frosty tent.  There weren’t many fellow trekkers on this stretch; the occasional organised group of a dozen or so French or Israelis with their support crew of guides and porters contrasted with the handful of solo walkers or couples like ourselves from all corners of the world.  It was possible to walk for hours without seeing westerners, the only company being the encounters with yak trains or porters carrying goods and provisions of all shapes and sizes up and down the path.  Our slow, steady progress ensured we acclimatised well.  Bad stormy weather had forced a day’s stopover in a tiny, ramshackle village where we’d taken shelter in a dark, dingy, leaky hut and replenished our energy with numerous courses of aloo baht and three-egg chilli omelettes.  We even splashed out on a couple of ‘camp-a-colas’ and swilled numerous cups of sweet milky chai from the small clay throwaway cups; a welcome change from the iodine-tablet taste of our purified water.

There were a couple of ‘Oh No..Shit’ moments but they were more memorable for humanity reasons rather than being life-threatening.  One evening, we’d couldn’t find anywhere flat and suitable to pitch the tent so took up the offer from a family to sleep on their tiny verandah for a few rupees. The view back down the valley was stunning but it was virtually dark by the time Nigel fired up the little Optimus stove to cook our dinner.  We’d been having some trouble with a leaking seal on the stove and it chose this moment to flare up, sending a shooting flame upwards dangerously close to the overhead thatch roof.  The shouts and panic as we reacted to douse the flame drew an instant reaction from inside the house where the family had already settled down for the night.  The young wife, completely naked, burst through the door and, with no hint of embarrassment, threw a saucepan of water onto the sparks nestling in the thatch, gave us a mouthful of what we can only assume was a Nepali ticking-off, and then disappeared back indoors.  Typical of these people, it was all a huge laugh in the morning and we felt humble and entertained enough to leave a few extra rupees.

Higher up on the route, we’d virtually run out of provisions and had already forgone a meal the previous day so were eagerly anticipating the next village to find something to stock up on for a hearty breakfast.  The settlement in the distance, nestling into the brown hill side surrounded by terraced fields, looked hopeful.  We were in for a disappointment; it seemed deserted and we couldn’t find anyone.  It wasn’t a complete disaster but it certainly prompted a couple of vocal ‘Oh No..Shit’s.’ Irritated and hungry, we followed the path out of the far side of the village and the reason soon became clear; high on the hillside, blending into the landscape we could see a large group of small figures working in the fields.  It must have been the day for harvesting.  Oddly, we could also spot one figure apparently running down the slope back towards the village. A couple of minutes later a young man, not even breathless, reached us with a cheery ‘Namaste,’ seemingly wanting just to say ‘hello’ and grab a chance to practise his very limited English.   We said and mimed ‘food’ but the initial reply was discouraging as he gestured up to the fields. His next utterance was both surprising and hopeful.  It seemed he was suggesting we follow him to what, we assumed, was his parents’ home. Within half-an-hour he had blended flour, chillies and water, fired up the little stone oven and produced a welcome feast of chapattis and eggs.  In exchange, we’d parted with vital personal data such as our age and where we were from.  He refused to accept payment for his impromptu kindness and hospitality so, wanting to shed weight from my pack, I left him Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children.’

A few days later, we spent one of my coldest nights ever camped on the only small frozen patch of ground available right on the edge of the snow line at 4800m.  A noisy French group had bagged a better spot a little way back down the path and we resented them even more when they walked past us before dawn, followed by their porters an hour later. By the time the sun had hit our tent and we’d de-frosted ourselves, we were a couple of hours behind them.  We were facing a massive day: a 16km climb involving 1000m of ascent to the Thorang La, and then 1600m down to the village of Muktinath.  The views of the Annapurna massif were awesome but the effort was exhausting; at over 4000m there’s only half the oxygen you get at sea level and with loaded backpacks it was necessary to stop for frequent breathers.  Four hours later and after several false summits we reached the cairn at the top, its prayer flags buffeted by the biting wind.  Apart from a couple of Germans who had come up from Muktinath, we’d been on our own.  I’d brought a can of Double Diamond out from the UK to drink on the top; no chance!  It was frozen solid.  And Nigel’s attempt to make a brew ended with him hurling the Optimus in a snow drift in frustration as the seal failed again.  We didn’t hang around.  At least the altitude isn’t as debilitating on the descent but it seemed never ending as we slowly zigzagged downwards, finally reaching the village as the sun set.

Today, our patch of frozen ground is home to a couple of lodges (booking advised) with hot water and Wi-Fi; on a good day, several hundred trekkers and porters follow each other in a long line up and down the route.  I can’t really be too sanctimonious as thirty years later we stayed in lodges on our family trek towards Everest Base Camp, but there’s no doubt the increased popularity has altered the experience.

It wasn’t all plain-sailing in the final week of the trek. The Kali Gandaki gorge, into which we slowly descended, separates the major peaks of Dhaulagiri (8,167m) on the west and Annapurna (8,091m) on the east. If the depth of a canyon is measured by the difference between the river height and the heights of the highest peaks on either side, the gorge is the world's deepest.  For centuries it was one of the main trade routes to Tibet and is arid and boulder strewn. The rain shadow cast by the Annapurnas is responsible for this stark contrast with the route we’d taken on the approach.  The final challenge was to climb back out of the gorge; from 1200m back to 2900m in another long, exhausting, 16km, 10 hour day that terminated at the village of Ghorepani. We treated ourselves to the luxury of a dormitory room in a lodge, sharing a rowdy evening with a bunch of South African trekkers and drinking an excess of chang, the local beer.  A short walk from the village is the famous Poon Hill, a viewpoint extraordinaire where, if you make it up there for the dawn, there’s a majestic panorama of the sun lighting the Himalayan giants of Annapurna, Machapuchare (Fishtail), Nilgiri and Dhaulagiri.  Three more days of slow descent through the terraces and paddy fields saw us back in the busy, noisy, crowded bustle of Pokhara, Nepal’s second city.

No death-defying moments, but enough hard-earned spectacular views and cultural experiences to ensure I’d want to return to the big mountains.  What I also knew was that, despite all the inspirational climbing books I’d devoured, I was personally quite happy just trekking through the peaks rather than trying to scale such monsters to reach their summits.