One More Step

When my husband, Dean, and I discussed taking a year to travel, I thought it sounded like the greatest adventure. He had told me about his time spent in Nepal - as part of a team designing and building a climbing school in the Khumbu Valley leading up to Mt. Everest - and I couldn’t wait to start our trip by seeing a place and meeting the people that are such a large part of his life.

I knew that hiking to Everest base camp wasn’t going to be easy but in Colorado, we’re no stranger to mountains and I’ve climbed a 14’er before, so I thought I was prepared. I mean, hiking is hiking, right?

I started to get some sense of what I had gotten myself into when we flew to Pokhara, a tourist area in western Nepal and the starting point for expeditions to Annapurna (the 10th highest peak in the world). Flying in a small 20 seat plane, we cleared the smog from Kathmandu and immediately saw the huge mountains that up until now were hidden by pollution. It’s the strangest thing, looking out the window to see mountain peaks that are higher than the plane’s flight path. The sun was setting on our flight back to Kathmandu and I was desperately trying to peak under the wing in order to see the glowing pink summits. 

On our flight to Lukla (9,300 feet) from Kathmandu (4,600 feet), we got our first glimpse of Mt. Everest. The magnitude of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. To provide some context, we will be gaining 9,200 feet in elevation over the next 6 days, in our trek culminating atop Kalapattar, a minor hill overlooking the base camp glacier at an elevation of 18,520 feet - sitting a full 10,500 feet below the summit of Everest.

We ascended roughly 2,000 of those feet yesterday on “the big hill” to Namche Bazar, the valley’s market village. Starting our day at 6:45am, we hiked steadily for the next four hours, dodging lines of mules and yaks, passing a handful of waterfalls and several times, being passed by porters carrying loads over 100 pounds. Dean had told me about the hill, but had failed to mention that it can take 1.5 to 2 hours of steady plodding to ascend. I received that memo after climbing a sizable rock stair to cross a swaying suspension bridge above the rushing runoff from the surrounding peaks and glaciers.

Throughout the breathless 90 minutes of seemingly endless cobble stairs and dusty switchbacks, constantly dodging deposits of yak dung, my mental mantra was “one foot in front of the other.” I’d like to think that I could have gone further, but I’ll admit to being extremely relieved when we could finally see the outskirts of the village and I had an endpoint to push towards.

After settling in to our guest house and eating lunch, I confessed my mental trick to Dean and how it reminded me of something I used to tell myself when starting out in sales. If you just put your head down, work hard, and do the right things every day, the results will follow.

At that moment, the metaphor struck me; we’re all climbing our own mountain, striving toward some goal. Like me, at the outset many people don’t realize the magnitude of what they are trying to accomplish and how much work it’s going to take. We get discouraged when the trail meanders, we step in shit, or we look up and see how far we still have yet to climb. But in that moment, I think it’s important to take a look around, see how far you’ve come, and enjoy the process. 

As I’m starting to realize, climbing to base camp is going to be one hell of a process. But if I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, I can’t help but arrive.