Day 4 - Langtang Trek

Today was only a half day, but due to the altitude, it still felt pretty hard. It also gets colder as you go up in altitude, so even though the sun was hot, it was still very cold. The temperature drops approximately 6.5°C per 1,000 meters of elevation gain, so it's about 27°C colder than it was at sea level, so near 1-7°C during the day.

Although challenging, it was the most beautiful day yet. We became surrounded by snow-capped peaks, and the clear sky made looking up a breathtaking experience as we became immersed in the majesty of the mountain landscape.

We arrived about midday at our teahouse at Kanjin Gompa, sitting at 3,870m above sea level. We settled into our room, which had the most stunning view yet. After a long, relaxing rest, we headed out with the group for a short 2-hour trek up to the closest peak, Kyanjin Ri, which sits at 4,604m. To help with altitude, it's good to go higher than 500m and then come back down again and sleep at the lower elevation. It was SUPER steep and REALLY hard going. As we got higher, it got windier, and James and my vertigo were starting to get to us. So, when we got to Lower Lower Kyanjin Ri at 4,300m, we decided to turn back, leaving Dil Man and Nicolas (Dad, Fredrik had already turned back) to continue to the top. We later heard from them that it took them 25 minutes to reach the top once we left them and 25 minutes to get down, whereas it took us 1 hour to get just to where we had got to and probably the same to get down. Bloody youths.

After a tasty dinner, we headed back to our room to see that it was snowing, so we stayed up to watch the largest snowflakes fall that we'd ever seen. We went to sleep wondering when it would stop and how much would remain in the morning.Read more