Walking from The Atlantic to the Mediterranean over the Pyrenees

If all you did was to listen to the news you would think that society was in such a divided state and so fraught with evil and violence that you couldn’t leave the house without risking peril. However, if you defy all that seems to be right in front of your nose and allow yourself to walk out the door and over the hills beyond the world of the familiar, you will be surelysurprised by the amount of kindness, compassion, and generosity that exists between common people who encounter each other in course of an average day. I have just flown from New York to France where I spent the night in Paris walking the streets until dark never feeling a moment of threat or danger. There were no terrorist attacks. There weren't people fist fighting on street corners over who is best to lead the country: LePen or Macron. It was in fact the same Paris that I visited on other occasions. Parisians have a reputation for being unfriendly, curt, petulant, and unhelpful. I have not found this to be the case in Paris any more than it is in New York, Tokyo, Istanbul, Lima, or Delhi. Urban spaces require one to maintain a certain focus to simply get through the mass of humanity and go from point A to point B. That Parisians do the same thing shouldn't come as a surprise. I have experienced the French to be accommodating, compassionate, extremely well mannered, lighthearted, and even playful. They are proud of their culture and sometimes suspicious of strangers. Even the smallest pleasantry or friendliness by a well-meaning traveler is almost certain to be reciprocated. I do not speak any decipherable kind of French. Yet in stilted conversations it is always my French counterpart who is apologetic. It was toward the end of June in 2017 that I took a train from Paris to the Hendaye on the border of France and Spain to begin a trek on the GR10: a long-distance hiking trail that goes over the rugged Pyrenees, west to east, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The “GR” stands for Grande Randonee (long path). There are many Grande Randonees in France with different number but always the same red and white striped waymarks. If there is a divisiveness, evil, and suspicion in the world at large, it simply becomes less and less present once you start hiking the GR10. Once on the GR10 I experience the same camaraderie that I would on any other long-distance trail in the world. The religious, economic and political divisions that cripple our social interactions in the "civilized" world seem to drop away on a long and arduous trail where we are all reduced to the common denominator of human beings simply conveying ourselves through the splendor of nature. I was hesitant on the first day. I lay in bed that morning at a seaside hotel in Hendaye, listening to the crashing surf, unable to budge. 7:30 came and went, then 8 o'clock and then 8:30. Finally at 9:00 I pried my creaking, jet-lagged body from the bed. What in god’s name was I trying to prove? I am 62 years old for heaven’s sake. It had been a beautiful night of sleeping to music of the seashore. With the balcony door open and the pounding surf coming across the unfettered Atlantic I was lulled into bliss. I hadn't realized that Hendaye was such a surfer town. Hundreds of athletic young people in slick wetsuits rode the spiraling waves. It took quite a bit of self-determination to gather all my things into a backpack. A backpack which was clearly too large but for good reason. Although my accoutrements were few. I only brought three shirts, three pair of underwear, two pairs of shorts, a pair of pants, assorted toiletries and some electronics. The reason I brought the big 70-liter rucksack was to have enough room to fit a nice-sounding but cheap violin. Just in case you had any doubts, I am the kind of nut that walks hundreds of miles over steep mountains carrying the unnecessary added weight of a violin out of pure passion for music and a way to break the ice with my fellow randoneers. The violin case itself was made from a soft, lightweight vinyl but I could surround it with my clothes and sleeping bag, shielding it from harm even if I needed to throw it off a cliff. Hopefully not. I started walking uphill with the ocean at my back and headed east into the Pyrenees with the intention of spending the first night in Olhette. I took a wrong turn and ended up going full circle. After three bewildering hours I reached a location just a few miles outside of Hendaye. Worn-out, I collapsed into a humble bed in the small town of Biriatou. The hotel manager was a comical man with wine and cigarettes on his breath who asked me to wait while he actually changed the sheets and made up the room. He seemed apologetic but the room only cost €50. It was small and there was a decent restaurant down the street. There was a also vigorous game of going on in the small centre ville . Peloto is a kind of handball that shirtless young men like to play in the evenings. The game consists of hitting a small rubber ball against a wall (with or without a racquet) while sweating, swearing and arguing. Like all towns in Basque country, the village was a collection of stucco houses, all painted white. The shutters are red, and the roofs are of terra-cotta tile. The front door, exposed to the east if possible, traditionally displays the date of construction and the name of the owner above the entrance. The extraordinary conformity of the architecture is a hard to imagine in the current world full of ego and fierce individualism. The Basque people have a long and interesting history. They managed to stay under the radar when the Phoenicians and Romans came sniffing around. Napoleon scarcely bothered with them. Their language is one of the hardest in the world to learn. In the mid 20th century Generalissimo Franco came after them with aggressive force. He tried to outlaw the teaching of their language (Euskera) in school. This led to the formation of a separatist movement called the ETA which used many of same terrorist devices as the IRA. On the morning of the second day I started uphill again, this time taking the correct turn, and after a hike of at least 8 1/2 hours I plonked myself down in a chair at a café in the center of Ohlette. I asked the woman there for a tall cold carafe of water and a Coca-Cola. She had no food but that was okay with me there were plenty of à prix réduit restaurants in town. I was so exhausted and covered with sweat from the day, which had been cloudless and 90°, that the idea of setting up camp was simply too much work. I had brought a small lightweight tent and an inflatable mattress with me although it would be several days before I actually used them. The next two days were arduous and long. The average walk was about 15 miles and took between 8 and 9 hours of going up and down steep hills. Throughout the course of these first few days I became acquainted with three other hikers all engaged in the same task as me. We all intended to hike the entire GR10 as best as we could in terms of ability, money, time, and fortitude. One was an Englishman, about my age, from Bristol. He was semi-retired and intended to hike all summer. He had walked several of the caminos in Northern Spain and this was his first hike through the GR10. He had the intention of hiking all the way to the Mediterranean and then back to the Atlantic over the high route. I met a determined young woman from Tasmania. She had been trapped in an office job in Paris for the last two years and it had been become her sustaining dream during that time to hike the GR10 before she left France. She was pleasant, purposeful, sensible and fit. Perhaps she would be the most likely to succeed. Another younger woman, about my daughter’s age, from Ireland was also in about the same rhythm as myself and the others. She was an ICU nurse from Dublin who got pissed off and quit her job. She injured her leg, causeing her to limp as far as Bidarry before hanging up her rucksack. The pass that one climbs before descending into Bidarry is significant in many ways. First of all, it is the last time you'll see the Atlantic. For three days when I looked to the west, I could still see the broadening horizon of the Atlantic. At first I could only see the cities of Hendaye and Irun across the Spainish border . After a while I could also see Saint-Jean du Luz, San Sebastian and more and more of the other coastal cities. When I reached the Col des Veaux, I could take one last look west at the at the Atlantic and also to the east get a first look at the high Pyrenees which were jagged and foreboding. The descent from the Col des Veaux into Bidarry was described in my guidebook as the most harrowing dissent on the GR10. I was glad to know there's nothing harder. There were many places where metal cables provided an opportunity to hold on for dear life so that you don’t slip and fall a thousand feet into a gorge below. All along this trepidatious section there were vertigo-inducing, narrow passages that traversed along a sheer, precipitous hillside. The path itself was never more than 2 feet wide. Someone who honestly suffered from vertigo would never be able to successfully make thier way through this endless long traverse without passing out. As a bonus, there were also large sections of rock talus to negotiate. At the bottom of this dissent I met up with the other three people that I've gotten to know all sitting in the shade. I yelled ahead to them "fucks sake!" "and they roared with laughter. The perils of mountaineering can bring a quick camaraderie. In Bidarry I stayed at a hotel next to the train tracks. It was cheap but there were profuse flies. I had noticed so far, during the last five days in Basque country, that there were an inordinate number of flies everywhere. One simply had to forgive them for crawling all over one's food or strolling up and down one's skin like shoppers at a mall. There were too many of them to even begin swatting. I was told later that the fly problem was unusual and peculiar to this particular year. The next big destination was the major tourist town Sainte-Jean-Pied-du-port; where the Gr10 intersects with the Camino Santiago de Compestella. The Camino de Santiago is a less arduous than the GR10 and it attracts people of all ages, shapes and speeds. The kind of folks you might meet on a cruise ship. They love to shop and eat. They stop along The Way in places like Saint John Pied du Port to do that. A significant number of businesses have cropped up in Saint John Pied du Port selling French berets and Basque country T-shirts. Also, you can get yourself a handy wooden walking stick: even some with bells if you really want to annoy other people on the trail. Saint John Pied du Port is also a great place to eat pizza and do your laundry. It has a supermarket in the town. This was my first experience with a mega supermarket in France. Carrefour is a modeled after ShopRite or Tops in the US. The difference is that instead of having everything together in one coherent section, stuff is spread out along the various aisles in the way that is difficult for a disoriented consumer with a language handicap to understand. Simply trying to find a suitable small bottle of shampoo turned into a scavenger hunt. I didn't know the French words used to describe the maintenance of one's coiffure. I ended up with a bottle of some amber colored substance that seemed to make my hair greasier that it was to begin with. For this I paid seven euros. It must be a style. The journey took an interesting turn after I left Sainte-Jean-Pied-du-port. I walked all day and finally, after eight hours of trekking, mostly uphill, reached the Gite Kaskoleta placed obscurely on a hilltop. The gite is a kind of trailside lodging that one encounters all over France in places where people hike. It is usually a place that offers tent sites and also a dormitory style sleeping facility. Also, as a part of the deal they will feed you a basic dinner as well as a very basic breakfast. It’s certainly not four-star lodging but usually it only costs between 40 and 50 euros per night for two meals and a bed: affordable for the lean-pocketed randoneer. As I approached the gite I heard the uproar of joyous laughter. I took this as a warm greeting at the end of a long day. As I entered the fenced-in area I saw two women from Germany who were lying side-by-side on the picnic table and gazing at the sky. We greeted each other in French and then they began to speak English to me. I asked if there was anyone inside to talk to about a room and a meal. They said they weren't sure but the woman who ran the gite said she might come by at about 6 o'clock. Inside the gite was a garrulous group of people laughing and joking in French. I greeted them in French. D'ou etes- vous ? they asked. “New York” I said. I asked them about the femme who ran the gite. They had the same answer as the German women outside. It was 5 o'clock; I was knackered as shit from the days trek and stretched out upstairs on the floor to take a nap. At around six I woke up and heard increased activity accompanied by the sound of a new animated voice. It turned out to be the mystérieuse femme who ran the gite. I approached her. Everyone was silent as I asked her in French if could I eat and sleep there. “Bien sûr” she responded. I sat down with the jovial Europeans and had an enjoyable meal where we had a lighthearted witty conversation that switched back and forth from French to German to English. Many Europeans do that with admirable aplomb. They asked me why my backpack was so big. It must be very heavy they thought. I said that most of the space was taken up by my violin. Immediately they were interested that I carried a violin in my backpack. Could I play it for them? I did. They were delighted. I played them some Gypsy music and then some Irish music and then I improvised a song called the “Gite Blues”. In the text of the song I described the pros and cons of staying at a gite. The pros being the friendly company. The cons were the fact that people in the dormitories (dortoir in French) snored at night. I changed the name to “snoretoir”. They laughed with the total delight at my rendition of the “Gite Blues”. For the next five nights, I traveled from one gite to another with the same group. We all followed the itinerary of the same guidebook. Each night we spent together laughing, music making, wine drinking, and in general feeling the highest of spirits. If only life could be this way always. The days were arduous: hiking up and down the steep hills but as soon as we stopped at night it took me only 10 minutes to recover and I felt a glow from the day that lasted into the evening with the great company of my hiking companions. The two women from Germany had done NGO work both in Africa and in South America. Two men who were teachers worked in the vicinity of Lyon. There was also an outgoing couple from Paris who were both microbiologists. They were all young, athletic, healthy and hiked quite a bit faster than me. I also got lost and took naps more often. It went on like this for six days until we got to Refuge Jeandel. The next day I trekked my nebulous way through a ski area that did not seem to support the Gr10. There were no longer waymarks (little red and white blazes painted on trees and rocks). I got lost. Really lost. I ended up skidding down a ski slope that was 100% rock scree and almost as steep as a cliff. I got to the bottom of the slope and still there were no trail markers. I was hot, tired, pissed-off, and decided that I would simply hitchhike to the nearest big town. 

                                             

In Orlon Saint Marie. I settled into a comfortable hotel, bought groceries, did my laundry, catching up on sleep and email correspondence. It took two showers to get six days of hiker grit off of my body. Almost no one I had met so far had the initial impression that I was American. Most people thought I was English. Part of this was because Americans almost never hike the GR 10. Most people were surprised to learn that I was from New York. They asked me about Donald Trump. I told them that like 90% of all French people I did not support his policies. The next day: July 14 would be Bastille Day. I wondered if Trump's arrival in Paris for a state visit with Macron might incite the masses. After a 24-hour escape from the GR10, I rejoined my comrades in the small town of Etsaut for one last night of revelry. They were a gift. Before embarking on this adventure, I thought that I would spend six weeks talking to almost no one. I had expected to be in the wilderness in a country where I barely speak the language. I thought for sure, after I had left my friends in Etsaut, that things would get quieter. After drinking schnapps in a bar until midnight I slept the “dead sleep of a mountaineer”, as John Muir used to say. A drunken mountaineer. I commenced the next morning, climbing nearly 5000 feet to the top of the col D'Ayous . This took 7 hours of huffing, puffing, and cursing under my breath. About three quarters through the climb I came upon a cabin inhabited by sheepherders. They were often visited by hikers on this popular route. This particular day, they were visited by family members who had brought them beer and an anise flavored liquor called Ricard. I took my rest beside them and drink water from their spigot. Like many before them, they asked me why I carry such a big rucksack. I told him that I carried a violin. They wanted to see and hear it. I showed it to them and then played it. They responded favorably and took lots of pictures and videos. There must be alot pictures and videos of my eccentric, violin-playing image in people’s homes all over the world. A strange and remarkable extension of my life. After the sheepherders, I spent another three hours climbing up to the top of the col. When I finally reached the top, all was forgiven. The view was perhaps one of the most breathtaking in Europe. A photograph or postcard must exist on many a refridgerator in France. From the pass you could behold grand view of the iconic Pic Midi D'ossau. Just a few hundred feet below the col was a refuge and two lakes. The refuge itself was crowded as it's a very popular spot to hike to and spend the night. During the time I passed the refuge there had been the added excitement of the helicopter rescue. I was not close enough to the building to know exactly what had happened. But the helicopter added to the mountaineering thrill of it all. I set up my tent at the second smaller lake. I was hoping to get a quiet night’s sleep there beside a stream. All went well until about 9 o'clock when five teenage men showed up with their soccer ball, loud rock 'n' roll, and cheap booze. It seemed pointless to go over and tell them to quiet down. They would have told me to f--- off just like I would've done in a similar situation when I was a teenager. I plugged my ears and tried, with limited success, to sleep. Fortunately, I had only a short downhill hike the next day to get to the next town Gabas. Walking down the mountain, I passed at least 500 people on their way up. I had arrived at the most popular area of the high Pyrenees. I felt as if I were at the Grand Canyon or Machu Picchu or a Manchester United match. It was all people in clean well-pressed casual clothing. They looked odd as if they had come from a place that I was unfamiliar with. When I reached Gabas I was given pause. I knew that I didn't have enough time to actually complete the entire 500+ miles of the GR10. At best, I had perhaps enough time to hike another 200 miles. I had to map out a plan to start 200 miles west of the Mediterranean and hike my way east. I was put off by the crowds in the High Pyrenees and I knew the next section, the Areige, would be remote, filled with deep valleys and sparse settlements with very few places to get supplies. I thought, at some later date, I'd like to do that section with someone else and not by myself. And so, I decided to take a bus north so that I might get to a train east. I sat by the road at a bus stop in Gabas. The schedule posted at the bus stop was too confusing for me to understand. Luckily, the bus driver from the same line stopped across the street from me and rolled down his window, helpfully advising me that it would be five hours before he would return to pick me up. This was disappointing news and the previous night's lack of sleep was making my eyes heavy. I decided to try hitchhiking for the next 15 minutes and if that didn't work out, I would just get a hotel room right there in the town of Gabas and catch the bus in the morning. About 10 cars went by before an old Toyota with two women in their 60s pulled over and offered me a ride to a town about 30 km north. By the time they got to the town it was decided that I should stay at their home in the beautiful town of Arudy. They had an extra room with a soft bed. They also had a refrigerator full of exquisite food and wine. I played the violin and they listened raptly. Simultaneously, they were visited by a woman from Britany and her two daughters. The youngest of whom, about 11 years old, had just taken up the violin a year and 1/2 before. I played along with her as she went through her repertoire of tunes in her school music book. We had a delicious multi-course meal, and a leisurely stroll along the Gave d’Ossau river. My hosts were, witty, thoughtful, and erudite. They were a gift from god. My head grew hazy with French wine and I slept like a baby. These two women, angels that they were, drove me out of pure kindness to the city of Pau where I caught a train north to Toulouse, then east to Foix, and then south to the famous mineral baths of Ax-les-thermes I experienced my second Pyrenees thunderstorm in the town of Ax-les-thermes. As I walked from the train station into town in search of a hotel a biblical deluge came down. A Frenchman had taught me the expression Il pleut comme cache qui pisse “rain like pissing cows” just a few weeks before in Logibar after I spent the night sleeping in my tent during a violent thunderstorm. In Ax-les-thermes there were golf ball hailstones falling from the sky. My rain gear and pack cover were put through their paces. They became necessary within the time span of about 30 seconds. For 10 minutes, I huddled under a tree and prayed to that vague entity I call god for the torrent to stop. Soaked to the point of misery, the pisse let up just enough so that I could start looking for a hotel. This little town was crowded during ski season you could tell, but in the middle of July it seemed like a ghost town. Crowds of people did crawl out of the woodwork shortly after Il pleut comme cache qui pisse had stopped. Nevertheless, finding a hotel was harder than I thought. This may be because I took a few wrong turns in my haste to get out of the storm and didn’t go to the center of the village. I did find a gite which pleased me and decided to stay two nights so that I could enjoy the pleasure le bains. I am used to hot, hot springs that turn my skin pink and leave me feeling like a marshmallow. The waters of the main bath house in town were mostly tepid although I did find one small pool that was just a few degrees over 100 F. I hadn’t brought a bathing suit but, no worries, they had a sexy, black, French one on the premises that I was able to purchase for a mere 20 euros. Mirren les Vals is a 20 minute train ride from Ax les Thermes. My guidebook said that it was an easy 12 km walk from the trailhead to the refuge Besines. It was more like a 15k walk and the trail was full of rocks. Gone were the grassy tracks and smooth roads (and sadly the Gateau Basque) of Basque Country. I was now traveling in another section of the GR 10: one in which the path is strewn with hefty rocks of granite. It felt more and more like the White Mountains of New Hampshire. There is no mountain range I have hiked in the whole world that has kicked my ass more than the White Mountains of New Hampshire. My cul was getting kicked French style. I arrived exhausted to the refuge at Besines. To my delight, I discovered that there was a number of musicians at the refuge (a refuge is really just another kind of gite) along with a recording and film crew. These four musicians were part of the band that was doing a tour of 42 different refuges in the Pyrenees. They were skilled musicians and played variations on Django Reinhardt influenced gypsy jazz. I told them I had a violin with me. They were happy to hear this, and I ended up playing with them both in their concert at the refuge and also in a very enjoyable jam session afterward. There was a good size crowd at the refuge who were attentive listeners. There was never a second of rudeness from the audience who, after all, got to attend this concert for free. I enjoyed myself immensely and I believe the others who performed with enjoyed playing with me too. 

The next day, glowing from the night before, I continued the trek. It turned out to be the most difficult day of the entire GR 10 adventure so far. Again, this was described in the guidebook as an “easy” day that featured two "easy" passes. Nothing to it. The first pass was nearly 8000 feet high and to get to the top of it there was some perilous rock scrambling which was made harder by the weight of my pack. A heavy pack will make it harder to find your balance on unstable ground. I was relieved to reach the top uninjured. Ironically after all of that difficult rock scrambling I managed to fall once I got to an easy path on my way down the other side. I simply fell because my foot got caught in an unseen little hole. My weight went forward and I fell to the ground bracing my fall with my hands. Rolling is not an option when you carry a big pack. The middle finger of my left hand became dislocated for only 1/2 a second. I could feel it pop out and then pop back in quickly. I knew from experience that this meant I was going to have limited flexibility in that finger for at least a few weeks to come. Hopefully this amounted to just a small sprain in the finger and not a complete break. A few years earlier I had broken the forefinger next to it and it had taken almost 6 months to really regain the motion and flexibility necessary to play a stringed instrument at a professional level. I was hoping to avoid going through the same kind of rehabilitation process with this finger. I spent the rest of the journey worrying about my finger: hoping for the best but dreading the worst. The next pass was just as high but did not require the same arduous rock scrambling as the first. The relief was short-lived because the dissent to the next refuge at La Bouillouses was much, much longer than had been described in my guide. It went on for what seemed like a century. And then it started to rain. My rain luck was running out. Excepting the walk from the train station in Ax-les-therme, all of the rain I encountered so far had been at night when I was tucked away in a tent or an indoor shelter of some kind. Hiking in the rain is a miserable thing to have to do. When I am at home and have a choice, I will always back away from hiking in the rain. It's cold, it's wet, and it on this particular day added to the misery of a long trip. Moreover, I was grousing to myself about my finger. Finally, I reached a lovely hotel on the edge of the lake. This idyllic place had not been in my guidebook. They had a single room that I could spend the night in. This was welcome to me because the previous two nights I had spent in bunkrooms where people snore, grunt, talk in their sleep, and do other annoying things during the night. I needed to catch up on some sleep and heal my wounds. The hotel chef prepared some stir-fried vegetables with rice for me. It tasted like the King’s feast compared to the omelets and stale bread I had been eating at the gites and refuges. The next day was also advertised in my guide as an "easy" day of about four hours walking mostly downhill. This turned out to be not true at all. Within an hour of my departure from the hotel it started to rain. Once again it was Il pleut comme cache qui pisse. My finger was swelling up and turning purple. And now I was going to have to hike perhaps all day in the Il pleut comme cache qui pisse. Adding to the list of woes, the heel of my left foot was starting to swell with pain and every step was uncomfortable. I pulled out my iPhone and called my wife. I told her of my misery while standing under a tree in the forest in the Il pleut comme cache qui pisse. I got to share my troubles for only a minute before the cellular magic ended and we were cut off. My heart sank. I reached the destination eight hours later. Thankfully the sun had come out for the last four hours the trek and I arrived in the beautiful little town of Bolquere. The hotel Lassus was run by a super friendly couple who spoke spot-on English. They we're filled with positive energy and eager to please. They had a restaurant that serves the whole village and the first night they prepared me some unbelievably delicious calamari. I was so impressed by the place that I decided to spend another night. I needed more time rest my foot. My finger looked like sausage, and now my iPhone would not charge when I plugged it in the wall. On the next day, I took the phone to little fix-it shop. The lady there said that my charging port was damaged and that she could replace it but that it would take three or four days for the part to reach her. She, using some kind of magic, managed to plug my depleted phone in her charger and got the phone to charge slowly for couple of hours so that I was up to 50%. Now I had and aching middle finger on my left hand, an expensive kind of pain in my left heel with each step that I walked, and a phone that had only 50% power and no capability charge. Putain!!! There was only one choice. Barcelona. The little town of Bolquere was about a four-hour train ride from the great city of Barcelona in Catalonia (they’ve never been comfortable with Spain). It was the nearest major city and it had the kind of things I needed. I could rest in a comfortable hotel for a few days, get my phone fixed at the Apple store, and get a splint for my finger as well as some anti-inflammatory pills and creams. I boarded a train at a station that was just over the border in Spain. I purchased a ticket at the window. I walked out to the platform and began to wait. The man who had been in the ticket line behind me was speaking in an angry voice to a woman on the platform. I was confused at first when she came over to me and began speaking in English. The guy behind me in the ticket line didn’t speak any English but he wanted the woman the explain to me that the clerk in the ticket booth had shortchanged me by 5 euros. She led me back up to the counter and gave the clerk a piece of her mind. The clerk sheepishly took out 5 euros and returned it to me. I thanked the woman profusely. She told me that they often take advantage of foreigners who are not familiar with the currency. These were my first moments on Spanish/Catalonian soil and already I was impressed by the dogged pursuit of decency. It turned out that the hotel at that I had booked through Expedia was full. Rather than just turn me out on the street they had transferred my booking to a hotel in the center of the city that belonged to the same company. It was a four-star hotel that had a sauna, steam room, and Jacuzzi that I could utilize to help my bones heal from the rocky road I had traveled. Things were starting to look up again. During this time, I stayed in contact with my wife despite the dwindling battery power of my phone. She gave me useful medical advice. I went out and bought heel inserts for my shoes. I got a splint for my finger, and I replaced my phone at the Apple store around the corner from the hotel. Barcelona itself is overrun with tourists. They seem like the same tourists I encounter in Times Square New York City. People of the middle classes and upper middle classes of Asia, Europe, and US were all there in full force: on the beaches, at the tapas bars, and shopping on the Ramblas. They all wear brightly colored, sensible clothes and love to shop and eat. Their obsession with taking photographs of themselves was fully evident at all places of interest. "Selfie sticks" that lengthen the distance between camera and subject, are an extension of this rampant self-love. There are some people who simply make iPhone videos of their every movement as they travel through the world so as to document an experience that they aren't really having. I was healing: my phone worked again, my foot was getting better and even my finger wasn't too bad. I decided to go back to the GR 10 and try to make my way to the end. If my foot starts to hurt too much than I will have to pack it in, but I don’t want to go out like that. I took a train from Barcelona to Vernet les Bains and continued my progress from there. My intention had been to only hike four or five hours each day. I wanted to take it easy on my heel and not rush through Paradise like it’s the Long Island Expressway. I plotted out an 11-day course that would lead me in the terminal city of Banyuls sur Mer on the Mediterranean. But, surprisingly, four or five hours passed and I still felt good enough to carry-on. The first night I spent in an eco-gite. The family who ran the place made all the meals they served from local organic vegetables and natural materials in general. They even made their own organic wine which was damn good. That night I became friendly with a tall blonde Dutch couple who had actually been living in Norway for the past 20 years. They were immediate admirers of my music and we struck up an easy rapport. Concurrently, the three of us became friends with a French woman who worked for the European Union in Brussels. These were just plain old good folks to sit down and talk with and have a laugh. I had embarked upon this journey not expecting to interface with much of anyone. The remoteness of the region and my lack of facility with the language made me think that conversation was not going to be my main activity. That was OK. I have been a teacher for many years, and the job requires intense social interaction every day. It’s not so bad to spend some time alone with my thoughts. In retrospect, it might’ve been awfully depressing if there had been no one to talk to. It is it those quiet moments when I am not active that my heart aches for my family the most. Thankfully, in this day and age, we have social media so that I can post pictures and they can comment on them. This ability to keep in touch was interrupted once again after a few days back on the trail by the malfunction of the phone I had just acquired in Barcelona. The iPhone 6s plus, is known to have trouble the touchscreen. I was attempting to call home from atop a high col when the touchscreen simply stopped working. This brought on a frantic state of frustration: tapping away hopelessly, trying can’t get any kind of response from the lifeless phone. My biggest concern was that I maintain contact with my wife who, if she doesn’t hear from me after a few days, starts to worry. I ended up borrowing other people’s phones just so that I could either have a short conversation with my wife or leave a reassuring message. Another sad thing about the malfunction of my phone was that I could no longer take pictures. My Facebook followers had been enjoying the GR10 photos and I hoped to give them a visual representation of what the final days of the trip was like. The final days were indeed worth photographing. With the silhouette of Canigo to the west; the sun setting behind it, and the Mediterranean getting closer and closer to the east: like cobalt blue glass from the high points along the path. The terrain was semi-arid like Colorado. There was the same kind of slippery sand and rock scree. There is also plenty of lovely coniferous forests like you see along the Colorado Trail. I felt at one with the trail. My foot pain magically disappeared. I glowed with the peace and satisfaction having made it this far. I’d skipped some parts of the GR 10 but still, had walked most of it. Over 300 miles of it for sure. I met lots of great folks and played the fiddle at night in the gites for them. I’ve gone through several different geographic and temperate zones to get to this final stage. It was a great feeling of satisfaction. My skin had turned tawny from the summer sun. Along the way I had eaten all kinds of different food: some good, some of it bad but it all made a safe trip though my digestive tract. I never got sick to my stomach. I usually slept well at night even in the dormitories. There were people who snored but many nights I was so tired I couldn’t even pay attention. Walking up and down steep hills for 15 or 20 miles each day will bring on the heavy Z’s. The last days felt bittersweet. I’ve grown accustomed to the long walk each day. There was a routine to it all. I would assemble my gear in the afoe-mentioned oversized 70 L Dueter backpack. After a, typically unspectacular, breakfast of bread jam, butter, and coffee. I secured enough water and I slowly set out walking no more than 2 mph at first to get my body in motion. If I started out to fast, I would feel sore in my legs and short of breath. It took an hour of warming up before I could get the engine running at full capacity. There were many young, athletic people in their 20s who would race past me like Lamborghinis on the Autobahn. One day a young German man fell into step with me and we talked a lot about our hiking experiences. He was impressed at all the places I’ve gone and all the hiking I had done, but he still had one question in his mind. He asked me why, with all my experience, that I carry such a big and heavy rucksack. I told him about the violin inside and that it was more cumbersome and big than it was heavy. Although I did in fact carry somewhere between 15 and 20 kg in my bag depending on how much water and food I had had on board. He had told me that his goal for the day was to get another 25 miles down the trail. I wondered why he needed to rush through paradise. He said he felt bored if he didn’t keep moving. I wondered if he was just afraid of himself. If you slow down, you will start to hear your own mind working; you’ll start to get in touch with your own inner dialogue. To many people, this is a difficult thing. One of the most meaningful experiences for me when I am hiking down the trail is to stop and simply observe my surroundings: to see it, smell it, and feel the wind against my face. This is what life is. Life is what happens when you stop in a natural setting where there’s nothing man-made to look at and you simply take in the truth and beauty. We spend most of our lives either producing or consuming. We’re used to life being a construction: some virtual reality created by digital media. Everything in that world is designed to entertain and enthrall. To fill the canvas completely so that there is no empty space: no place where the imagination can cut loose. I come to the woods to let my mind off the leash. I feel privileged to take in these rare moments when nothing man-made can interfere with my experience of the world. It could easily have been 100°F the day I walked the final 22k to the seaside town Banyuls sur Mer on the Mediterranean coast. There was no place to get water during the last 15k of the walk. By the time I reached the beautiful coastal city I was in a potentially dangerous state of dehydration. I found a supermarket and immediately bought a cold, one-and-a-half-liter bottle of water. Triumphantly I walked down the street towards the Mediterranean to claim my victorious completion of the GR 10. Conveniently, the terminal point is across the street from the tourist office. Thanks to the people who worked there, I managed to reserve a room at the same hotel where two of my Dutch/Norwegian trail buddies were also staying. I took them out for a fancy dinner by the shore where we drank delicious local wine and ate delicious local seafood. I knew I would have to say goodbye to the trail, and I would have to find some other purpose to life. For the past month or so the only purpose in my life was to get up walk, reach a destination, unpack, shower wash my clothes, eat, play some fiddle, go to sleep and repeat the next day. After a tearful goodbye to Banyuls, my first destination was Paris. In the City of Lights, I could replace the broken phone that I got in Barcelona with a new one for free. I could get my laundry done insofar as washing my clothes in the sink each night was not adequate to keep them from smelling like a sock that has been in your gym locker for a year. I could also organize next phase of my trip. With the few days I had leftover until my August 10 departure from Charles de Gaulle airport I planned to visit the Brittany coast and do a little hiking on the GR 34. The Hotel I stayed in Paris was one that I simply stumbled upon. I had made no reservation. It was called the Drawing Hotel. It had a drawing museum and bookstore in the hotel and a very friendly staff who appointed me with a nice room. They had an abundant breakfast buffet which they gave to me complementary because I told them I completed the GR 10. It was a nice change of pace from the stale baguette and jam that I had reconciled myself to in the gites. The hotel was and about a one hour walk from Gare Montparnasse where I would catch series of trains up to the Brittany coast. Since I was no stranger to walking for an hour with my heavy pack, I took on the task with eagerness and excitement. Montparnasse is a posh section of Paris and I got to see the high-end designer stores and all the fashionable people while I was walking to the train station. I proudly strutted past these lightweight city slickers in my worn hiking clothes, never for a minute envious of their high-priced threads. The Brittany coast has wide impressive beaches, but it's also quite rocky in other places and reminds me of the Maine coast. The temperature was a good 20° cooler then the part of southern France where I was on the Mediterranean. The town of Sainte Malo is a crowded one. The beaches are vast and beautiful, the old city is medieval surrounded by ancient stone walls. It’s not the kind of place where I like to hang out for more than a day or so. There were “cruise ship” people everywhere - lots of families with small children. The kids made me miss my grandkids and I enjoyed just watching them run around joyously. It did not surprise me to observe the amount of bickering families do during their vacations. I have witnessed this in many resort communities during the summer. Every member of the family has their own set of expectations. Sooner or later someone becomes a hindrance by keeping other family members from the things that make them happy. Still it is when I’m in communities that are full of lovely families and I am by myself that I feel the loneliest. There are very few people here that are on their own. On the trails of the GR10 was not at all unusual to see someone hiking by themselves however, in Saint Malo, there were very few people who walked alone as I did.

The Wild Road to Everest Base Camp October 2018

The Wild Road to Everest Base Camp October 2018

Kathmandu is an assault to the senses. It rivals cities in India for nihilistic traffic, pollution, dust- borne pathogens, impossible crosswalks, and crowded store fronts - always with the obligatory guy sitting on the steps in front urging you to come in and buy his counterfeit stuff. In theory, traffic is supposed to keep to the left, as it does in England or Japan. In practice: any open space is fair game. Traffic is ostensibly controlled by ineffectual men in uniform that spend most of their time cowering in small wooden booths but do sometimes immerge to waive long red wands in the air until they are tired of being ignored.

Almost immediately upon exiting the hotel I met the universal young man who approaches:

“Hello sir. How are you?
Where are you from?
What are you looking for today? 
“These guys are everywhere: Istanbul, Dar es Salaam, Delhi, and Buenos Aires. I have learned how to politely decline their advances. Most of them are just trying to make ends meet by shaking me down. Countries like India and Nepal are powerfully spiritual, and the idea of actually robbing someone is beyond the morality of most people. They will only commit the robbery that you agree to. They will try to provide a service at an exorbitant cost hoping that your ignorance of local prices will provide an opportunity. I don’t disapprove. Most are in dire financial straits and I am a rich man by comparison. I don’t mind paying a little extra if it helps them through their lives.

Kathmandu is relentless. Humanity keeps coming toward you like an ocean: endless and bountiful. Many streets overflow with buzzing swarms of cheap motorcycles. Motorcycle ridership is not restricted to young rebels or paunchy old man seeking to pursue a midlife fantasy. Women and men of all varieties take to the road on motorcycles and motor scooters as a cheap way to get to the hardware store or take a little girl in a tutu to dance class. There are also small, battered, privately-owned, buses that the humble people of the city crunch themselves into. They are never air-conditioned and always unbearably crowded. Riders have to touch each other a lot. They look miserable.

Tourists gravitate to the Thamel section of town. This area was hippy heaven in the 1960s and 70s. There are endless narrow streets with small store fronts that sell climbing and trekking gear: some of which is counterfeit and made in neighboring China. I’ve heard that the counterfeit gear is of good quality. I once purchased a counterfeit Northface backpack in Kashmir for $35. It was well-made and probably came from the same factory as the real one.
There are plenty of restaurants that will offer spicy food to challenge your digestive track. The tap water is tainted. Between- spicy food, air pollution, dust, and funky water, one stands good chance of either getting a bellyache or a respiratory infection. Many people walk around the city wearing ominous-looking face masks to filter out the pollution and dust. I pull a Buff that I wear around my neck over my nose when I’m walking down a dirty, dusty street. I don’t want to throw too much shade on Kathmandu. The people are friendly and playful. The city is full of ancient temples and gardens. Tourists swarm to these landmarks even though they charge you a small fee to enter. In many cases it is entirely worth it to check these places out for their religious and historical significance as well as for the fact that they provide a respite from the noise and chaos of the city.

On Monday, October 1st we got 4AM a wakeup call to catch plane to Lukla. The tiny airstrip in Lukla is tough for even the most experiences pilots. It is often called the “most dangerous airport in the world.”  At the drop of a hat, flights can be delayed because of poor visibility. Jane from Sheffield, England confesses to premedication with Valium and talked non- stop showing pictures of her dog on Facebook. The Tribhuvan airport waiting room is bustling with people of all ages, nationalities, and body types.

Lukla is too foggy and so we fly to an airport 7 miles away from there and wait in a field by the runway for a many hours. We’re at 8000ft and the air is cool and clean: a welcome relief from Kathmandu. Everyone stands around like it’s a cocktail party. It was named Phaulu Karanga. But after experiencing long delays we rechristened the place as “Phukal” airport (not a real Nepali name). Every 10 minutes or so our guide Pasang Sherpa gave us an update. We were waiting to get a helicopter to Lukla since it was too foggy to land a plane there. Since there was 14 of us, we needed three helicopters. The group was divided in terms of collective weight. The first group, of which I was not included, took off about six hours after we had landed in Phukal airport. The second group departed roughly an hour later leaving just me and three women in their 30s from North London. We waited in the blistering sun while sitting on 50-gallon barrels filled with helicopter fuel. The airport had no real waiting room, concessions or convenient restrooms. We sat all day: baking in the sun talking, laughing, and wishing we had actual chairs to sit in. The fair-skinned among us suffered from the first sunburn of many throughout the trip. Those who forgot to reapply sunscreen in the afternoon were condemned to the fires of Phukal.

The sun began to slowly set and there were about 75 people still waiting (with diminished hopes) that a helicopter would come around the bend to rescue them. Things got quiet. A group from Austrailia started doing yoga in the middle of the runway. No one even tried to stop them. The third helicopter never came and the three women from North London drooped their shoulders and shuffled along with me and Pasang up the hill to spend the night at a very primitive lodging facility. We ordered boiled potatoes with cheese, thinking it was the tamest thing on the menu. Within minutes we confirmed that it was the most disgusting meal we’d ever consumed.

It looked like we had displaced the children of the house for the night. The beds we slept on had comforters emblazoned with little cartoon characters. The one bathroom for the entire floor was flooded in about two inches of water. I couldn’t bear to think what it was that we were wading in. The smell of urine was overwhelming.

Despite our misfortunes, we hit it off well. The North London trio had a quick sense of humor and an invincible dedication to having fun. They referred to our dilemma “helegate”. We became thick as thieves. Adversity makes people closer. The next morning, Pasang frantically knocked on our doors at 6 AM insisting that we mobilize immediately and run down to the airport where we would be taking the first helicopter of the day to Lukla so that we could finally begin our trek. Dutifully we rushed down to the airfield, with one of the north London women actually brushing her teeth as she ran down the street. Breathlessly we arrived at the airfield only to find that we were not going to be on the first flight to Lukla and were free take an hour for breakfast. It was revealed over breakfast, that all three of the women had gone to a Catholic school together and had been close friends for the past 20 years. I asked them if they had ever heard the song “Catholic School Girls Rule “ by the Red Hot Chile Peppers. They hadn’t. From that point on I referred to them as the Catholic School Girls. They didn’t seem to mind. In fact, a few days later, I wrote a catchy tune for them. Pretty soon everyone called them the Catholic School Girls (CSG). They had nothing to be ashamed of I told them: My wife had been a Catholic school girl too.

It was 8 o’clock in the morning. The CSG and I were beginning to think that we would be led down the garden path again as we had been the day before; and that we would be stuck forever at Phukal airport.

I took a stroll to the far end of town. Pasang came running up to me breathless: He had been looking all over for me! Our helicopter was due to arrive within a half an hour. He ran off down the street again towards the airfield. I took my time; it was really only about a five-minute walk. I was at the top of a long staircase that lead down to the airfield when I could hear Pasang shout frantically out to me “Richard !!!!!!“. I gave a friendly wave. There was no helicopter in the air or on the ground. This meant that I had at least another half an hour to walk about 200 yards. Pasang was beside himself with worry. Miraculously, about 20 minutes later a helicopter came around the bend like the cavalry. Pasang told us this was Our Helicopter. We jumped up and down with laughter and joy. We would be released from the clutches of this refugee camp/airport. Helegate was over!

The CSG and I were giddy with excitement as we climbed inside the chopper. The engine whirred and the propellers reached a frenzy of deafening noise as we lifted up into the air. We rose rapidly above the jagged contours of the Himalaya, expertly navigating the high narrow passes until we reached the impossibly short runway at Lukla Airport. Thankfully, we arrived by helicopter and avoided the death-defying challenge having to land an airplane on an aircraft carrier length runway that is considerably higher at the far end. Did I mention that Lukla is commonly referred to as “the most dangerous airport in the world.”

At Lukla we could put the unpredictability of air travel behind us and set about walking which was, after all, the purpose of our visit.
The first 5k was downhill and right away we noticed people who were just finishing their trek to EBC making their weary way up the last long hill to Lukla. They looked pretty beat up. I would say 85% of them looked knackered and pissed off. Obviously, there would be a change in mood as soon as they entered the arched gateway into the town of Lukla that marked the successful end of the journey.

It gave me pause.
Is this trek going to be so long and arduous that I won’t have any fun? I began to worry. The walk itself is only 39 km each way. This is a little bit over 24 miles. But it is 24 miles uphill at high elevation. That means as you go along there is less, and less oxygen and it gets colder and colder. Walking just a mile or two can take hours if you’re going uphill. The path itself is ancient and dates back centuries to when it was a vibrant trade route between Tibet and a Nepal. A lot of the path is built up with stone stairs. The stairs are steep and made from irregular rocks. This makes them treacherous to navigate downward without falling down and breaking your neck. Going up is slow. One foot in front of another using baby steps. In many high altitude regions, the local people have a word for the slow pace you should take when ascending a slope. In South America the word is despacio. In Africa they say Pole Pole when you climb Kilimanjaro. In Kashmir the term is Coolee Coolee. The Nepali phrase is Bistarai Bistarai. I had a t-shirt made in Khatmandu with just the word Bistarai on the front in large letters. Most high-altitude guides will require you to ascend at a pace that seems almost comically slow. They do so to avoid: vomiting, shortness of breath, extreme headache, and, in the worst case, edema. Going too quickly makes you tired, irritable and prone to making bad decisions.

The first night we spent in a little town called Monjo. The tea house/hotel had no heating and the temperature in my bedroom was probably 40 F that night. I had two blankets to cover myself and stayed pretty warm until I had got up to pee. The digs in general were 100% better than we had encountered at Phukal airport. There was edible food, a bathroom that didn’t cause you to vomit. The CSG and I were reveling in the comparative luxury of our new location. One of the guides had agreed to carry my violin but he had gone ahead with the other part of the group in one of the earlier helicopters. This left me to use whatever I could. That night we composed the first draft of our sing-

along composition “Catholic School Girls “. The first rendition was performed and composed on a broken, plastic ukulele that despite its deficiencies was good enough for rehearsal purposes.
By the next morning we were eager to re-join our fellow trackers in Namche Bazar. What lay between us was a good five hours of steady uphill trekking to a final altitude of 11,286 ft. I went at a bistarai, bistarai pace and the CSG followed along. We navigated up the steep inclines and over wobbly suspension bridges. There were scores of wobbly suspension bridges that crossed over deep gorges. The bridges felt strong and reliable to me. They supported hundreds of trekkers, porters, and yaks every day. The CSG and I shared cheerful banter and they treated me to their renditions of Beyoncé songs. We reached Namche at noon. This was just in time for us to meet up with the rest of the group who were having lunch at the tea house where we were staying. The group met us with uproarious cheering as well as hugs and kisses. We were all reunited, and the party was in full swing.

It was a lively group that consisted of:

• Two middle-aged Canadian brothers (Serge, and Remy) from Saskatchewan and their 80-

year-old father (Phillipe) who was a man of clever wit and iron determination.

• A dark-eyed, olive-skinned, thirtyish, Kiwi woman, presently living and working as a Pilates

instructor in Kuwait. Nicole had an irresistible warmth and cheerfulness that helped all of us

make it through the adventure.

• A woman, Named Dee, in her early 20s from Ireland who was fabulously foul-mouth in the

way that is so beautiful in Irish women.

• A middle-aged woman, former flight attendant, from Yorkshire (Sheffield) England. Jane had meticulously done makeup and hair. We all enjoyed her bawdy sense of humor and irresistible Yorkshire accent.
• Also from Yorkshire, (Hull) was a 47-year-old man who lived in Singapore with his Japanese wife and small daughter. His voice was reedy and strident. James loved to entertain us with his singing, free-style rapping, and over-the top wit.
• A quiet woman (Elsa) in her twenties from Finland who lost her shit after she sat on her iphone.
• Martin: young financial adviser from Melbourne, Australia and a handsome devil.
• Phillip a beer-loving Volkswagen engineer from Berlin.
  I played music for folks in the dining room at dinnertime. Sometimes I strummed the violin like a ukulele and spontaneously composed three or four sing-a-long songs for the group. One of them was an ode to Catholic School Girls. Another was about the Himalayan mountain gods and goddesses who would “fuck you up“ if you did not observe the rituals and customs of the Buddhist faith. For this number, I was able to get the group to sing in a brilliant call-and-response that brought us all to tears of laughter.
  The small city of Namche Bazar is a combination of many worlds. It is not accessible by motor vehicle. Everything gets there on the back of a human porter, a pack animal, or in a helicopter. The first thing you see when you walk into town are large groups of people doing their laundry in the river the way their ancestors would have done it 1000 years ago. There are temples, prayer wheels, and Bhuddist statuary everywhere. One had to be always careful to navigate the statuary in a clockwise direction so as not to create bad karma. Juxtaposed with the ancient Sherpa culture is the booming new business community of restaurants, hotels, and gear shops that cater to the wealthy trekkers

from all over the world who stop by here on the way to Everest Base Camp. The dirt streets are overflowing with healthy, wealthy, westerners (and Easterners) in expensive outdoor gear casually strolling, acclimatizing, enjoying chocolate carrot cake, pizza, fancy booze, and Yak dung all served up together in a strange festival of multiculturalism.

Since we were a day behind the rest of the group, we did not reap the benefits of an acclimatization day or any rest that may have come with it. We were however, required to take an acclimatization hike in the afternoon. Even though we were all still knackered from the mornings trek. The afternoon hike took us up to a monastery and a large statue of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa climber who was the first to summit Everest along with Sir Edmund Hillary. Tenzing and Hillary have become like Gods in this region. Not only were they the first to conquer Everest, but they used their new-found fame to raise money from international sponsors to build infrastructure, schools, and hospitals in the Khumbu Valley region: home to Everest as well as Tenzing Norgay’s Sherpa culture.

Now reunited, the group begin to develop a dynamic and character. We were awash with wild personalities. The two who had come in separate packages from Yorkshire: James and Jane were the loudest and liveliest of the group. Their voices were always the most audible. I called them the yammering Yorkies. Thankfully they were both entertaining to be in the company of. Jane was willing to tell you everything that was going through her mind at any given time. Most of it was interesting and humorous; some of it fell short of that. By the end of the trip it was impossible not to have affection for all of the members of our party regardless of what their personality flaws or strengths may have been. James was currently employed as a teacher in Singapore where he lived with his Japanese wife and daughter, had an English horn of a voice that was hilarious when he sang his inexhaustible repertoire of pop songs and astonishing when he freestyle rapped. James and Jane

were almost always engaged in playful volleys of verbiage. The CSG and I had become tightly-knit quartet after the trauma of our time at Phukal airport bound us together permanently. No doubt there were some who thought I was a dirty old man. That may be true, but the CSG were more like my daughters than anything untoward.

From Namche we continued up the path to Temboche. At this point the trail opens up into vast, sweeping Himalayan views. Progress was slowed by the fact that we had stop every 100 yards, take pictures, and gasp with astonishment. Although it is not nearly the highest mountain in this range, Ama Dablam is ,without a doubt, the most splendid. It’s Mutt and Jeff spires poke into the sky like a double Matterhorn. Its slopes are caked with freshly powdered snow. Climbing it (no goal of mine) would require rope, ice axes and the kinds of things that a man my age doesn’t mess with. We were also treated to towering views of Lhotse, Nuptse, and the other mountains that form the Everest massif. The great heights of the mountains were set off by the depth of the Khumbu Valley below. From the long view you could see the change in elevation from the base of the valley to the summit of the mountains which must’ve been at least 15 or 20,000 feet.

Past the city of Dingboche, the terrain becomes barren like a desert. There is no more oxygen emitting green vegetation of any kind. The slow recession of the Khumbu glacier left a rugged, rocky topography in its wake. You struggle to keep an even balance as the trail is often covered in talus. The wind is free to blow as it wishes. In the late afternoon it picks up and cuts through all manner of spiffy hiking attire. The sun is bright. The usual protective layers of atmosphere at lower altitude are not present, and unencumbered UV rays are free to have their way with your skin. The air is dry; the wind is cutting; and the sun is merciless. My nose first peeled and then bled, making me look like I just wrestled with a snow leopard. The grandeur of the terrain matches and sometimes exceeds other landscapes (the Alps, Pyrenees, Andes, Sierra Nevadas) formed by the collision of tectonic plates. You can see for hundreds of miles if the weather is clear. The disruption of geography made possible by the collision between the Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate is abundantly there for all to see.
The rugged path through the Khumbu Valley, plus increasing altitude caused Phillipe, our 80-year- old trekker friend, to stop at Gorak Shep just 5 km short of Everest base camp. This may have felt like a failure to him, but it was considerable victory for man his age. In fact, it would be an impressive accomplishment for someone in their 20s.
There’s a Long Ridge that you hike along right before you reach Everest base camp. From there you can look down and see the tiny figures of people gathering in a crowd to celebrate the terminal point of their journey. Despite its grandiose surroundings and storied history: base camp itself isn’t much more than a flat rocky area where people put up tents sometimes. When we got there we all hugged and congratulated each other for having made it all the way. Most people were focused on taking photographs of themselves or their groups in front of the little sign and collection of prayer flags that marked Mark Everest base camp. It seemed more like a social media event then the end of the quest. The greatest concern with the largest number of people seem to be photographic record and broadcast of the moment. I stepped aside and looked down upon the great Khumbu ice fall where there are massive chunks of ice that shift at the whims of the glacier. Every spring a hot shot group of Sherpas called the “ice doctors”, with the blessing of the mountain goddess Chomolungma, install a treacherous system of ladders and ropes that aid those seeking to summit Everest during the months of April and May. Many of the “ice doctors” have themselves summited Everest 10 to 20 times. I look down at the Icefall in wonder and appreciation of those super elite Sherpas. After a brief celebration and photo session at base camp we all went back to our frozen lodgings at Gorak Shep.

Nine days into our journey, our group had turned into a tight little choir. We had honed a repertoire of spontaineous sing-alongs. Perhaps our most successful one was about going slowly.
When you’re walking up the hill you go
slowly slowly slowly slowly

Even if you take some pills you go
slowly slowly slowly slowly.
The tune itself was a kind of earworm and stuck in everybody’s head. I suppose I’m to blame for that. I would also play some Irish and Gypsy music on my violin for the crowds in the dining room at night gathered around the yak dung stove.
We commenced the four-day trek back to Lukla and stopped for three hours during the second day of our dissent in Namche Bazar. Released from constraints of high altitude, two of the expeditions thirstiest members went on a Nepali booze bender in Namche that continued to the end of the journey. We had gone 10 days without drinking any alcohol in as much is alcohol can seriously exacerbate the effects of altitude. 10 days without booze creates a pent-up desire in many folks. It was time to celebrate. These two guys James from Singapore and Phillip from Berlin quickly stacked up their empty cans of Everest beer. By the time they were through drinking at our three-hour stopover they had drank seven cans of beer each. There were many attempts to stack the cans vertically so that they reached the ceiling of the restaurant. It took at least 12 tries before one of the Catholic school girls did it successfully. As we were making our way down, there were legions of people coming up the trail. There had been several days when airplanes were unable to land at Lukla airport due to fog and the poor percentages of a ridiculously short runway. The dam had burst and here were dramatically increased numbers of delayed expeditions that were coming in the opposite direction. We would sometimes offer words of encouragement to them. I would slap fives with anyone who looked over 60 years old and encourage them to carry-on until they have reached their goal.
Our two drunken friends were just ahead of us and singing ghetto rap songs at the tops of their voices with special emphasis on the barrage of obscenies that those songs are known for. I was pissing my pants watching those struggling up the hill pass our drunken companions curiously staring in wonder. On down the hill they went with the recitations of Tupac, Biggie, Dr. Dre, and Ice T. By the time we reached our destination that night in Monjo, James and Philip were psychotically drunk. They engaged in things that I will not embarrass them to recall at this time. The final day of the trek was upon us it seemed impossible that we had just spent 13 days trekking to Everest base camp and back but indeed we had. There was another celebration for us all when we crossed the archway into the town of Lukla where we would spend our last night before hopefully catching a plane in the morning.

In the back of my mind, there is always the fear that we would reach Lukla and be stuck there for days waiting for the weather to clear enough for the planes to take off. If this happened, it would create a domino effect and disrupt my travel plans for the next several days. I would have to reschedule my flight back to New York which would probably cost a lot of money. My wife and I were celebrating our 38th anniversary on 18 October and if I were stuck in Lukla I would miss our anniversary. Thankfully we made it onto the second airplane out of Lukla the next morning and had just one day left in Kathmandu to cause some trouble.

Old Geezer on the John Muir Trail

                                           

In the spring of 2012, I read Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild: a memoir of her 3-month hiking journey on the Pacific Crest Trail. Many people have hiked the PCT, but few of them have described the experience in such an intimate and compelling way. She successfully juxtaposed the challenges and obstacles of her personal life with those encountered on the long dusty trail. My first thought was to get out there before the mobs of people who learn about this story from Oprah’s Book Club to lace up their boots.

There is a mountain out there waiting for all of us. To be alive is to struggle. Sooner or later everybody has to walk uphill: fight the powers that be and overcome the obstacles. In the high Sierra, you zigzag up steep switchbacks over loose gravel and talus at altitudes of 10, 12 or even 14,000 feet. The blazing, unobstructed California, summer sun will dry the throat and cloud the mind.

The air is thin: containing sometimes as little as 50% of the oxygen available at sea level. So much of success depends on pacing: the steady rhythm of steps, breathing, and hiking poles scraping the arid earth. Too fast, and you fall short of breath; and your heart will pound. Step, breath, step, breath. Slowly, calmly, deliberately winding your way to the top of the pass. The magnitude of the goal will make it seem utterly impossible. Pay it no mind. Bear down and proceed. Put one foot in front of another. No bravado necessary, only persistence. The first step requires the most effort.

For me the first step was boarding a jet from Newark, New Jersey to Reno. I felt downright daft, sitting at a bus stop with a 40-pound backpack, waiting for a bus to carry me from the Reno airport south through the sizzling Owens Valley to the desert town of Lone Pine, CA. It was July and, and unlike 22-year-old Cheryl Strayed, I was 57 years old. I had six weeks and wanted to follow the Pacific Crest/John Muir trail from Mt. Whitney to Yosemite and possibly beyond.

57 years old and alone, I knew that normal people don’t do this kind of stuff. I felt self-conscious of my nuttiness when I stopped by the post office in Lone Pine to pick up my first supply box. The woman at the counter was non-plussed. She had seen my kind and worse over the years, and cheerfully passed the over-sized parcel to me.

I had climbed Mt. Whitney a few years before and I already knew what the arduous journey would be like on the first day. After 11 miles of walking uphill with the big bag, capped off by 99 high-altitude switchbacks, the hike reached its highest point at Trailcrest (13,645).  

Looking west, 2000 feet below Trailcrest, lies a lake shaped like a guitar. Not surprisingly, it’s called Guitar Lake. I descended from just south of the Whitney Summit, to make my first nights camp at Guitar Lake. A steady 15 mph wind blew across the lake from the west and brought a welcome chill to the late afternoon air. My knees were still waffling from the long dissent. I gingerly set up my tent near an unoccupied one which was shielded from the wind by a large boulder. I went about my business eating dehydrated trail food (hunger is the best sauce) and enjoying the early evening alpenglow. I never saw signs of the neighbor in the tent by the rock. I settled into my sleeping bag after the sun went down and dozed off. An hour later I was startled awake by the sound of footsteps crunching in the gravel next to my tent: one set of rapid steps and then another. I lifted the tent flap and saw two more head lamps coming like bats out of hell down the dark trail from the summit. I quickly determined that these people must be fucked in the head to descend from the summit of Whitney in the dark with only headlamps and the bright sierra stars to help them navigate through the steep talus without breaking their necks.

I met these carefree souls the next morning. They were all through-hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail. They had monikers (trail names) like: Apocalypse, Pitfall, Link, and Snacks.

They were young men in their 20s, deeply tanned with mud-caked skin and dusty clothes. They carried with them only the bare necessities of food, shelter, and the worn clothing upon their backs. I liked them immediately and in turn they exhibited a friendly camaraderie. They laughed easily and rolled their own cigarettes. They liked their weed as well. I broke camp and started walking west toward Crabtree Meadow. They bounded ahead of me like long-horned sheep across the plateau and were quickly out of sight.  Since I was 30 years older than all of them, it came as no surprise that their foot speed was superior.

Later that afternoon, I encountered the same foursome under a cool shady tree admiring the broad expenses of the Big Horn Plateau. We, once again, bumped fists and I went off on my way through the alpine wilderness.

The backcountry of the high Sierra is so mysterious, and otherworldly it’s hard to imagine being on the same planet as, say, New Jersey. Life becomes a series of ascents and descents. I walked throughout the day, stopping occasionally to rest, eat a Cliff Bar and take in the splendor. Undistracted by the complexities of adult contemporary life, my mind was galvanized by the power of nature. The rhythm of my steps lulled me into a deep, hypnotic state of singularity.

Five days of alpine nirvana float past and, my food supplies are depleted. I cross over Bishop pass into town.

To get to Bishop from the trailhead I have no choice but to hitchhike, something I hadn't done since I was in my 20s. The driver of the pickup truck that stopped to offer a ride, laughed as I groaned while lifting myself with 40-pound backpack on to the tailgate. He was about my age and understood the orthopedic limitations of the situation. He took me into town enjoying stories of a hapless old man on the trail. Descending from the mountains into the town of Bishop you descend a series of switchbacks. You feel like a feather slowly floating down into the flat basin of the Owens Valley. The temperature increases nearly 20°. 

I spend two nights in a humble, clean hotel run by an ambitious Indian (from India) woman who actually grew up in South Africa. My hands were chapped and cracked from the dry air of the high Sierras. Despite this I was eager to play my violin which I had mailed to myself in a “bounce box” from the town of the Lone Pine to the post office in Bishop. For two days, I rested and prepared for the next segment of the hike. It was the fourth of July weekend and I passed the hours watching several innings of heart-warming, entertaining, amateur softball being played in the searing mid-day heat at the town recreation center. Bishop is a trail town with a half dozen gear shops and decent Mexican food. The world-famous, adventure photographer, Galen Rowell was a longtime resident of Bishop. After his death in 2002, a gallery of his work was opened on the main street in town. I enjoyed the permanent display of his work housed there.

I hired a car to take me back to the trailhead in so far as I felt awkward hitchhiking back out there. That day turned out to be one of the most strenuous of the trip because I had to hike over Bishop pass, nearly 12,000 feet, and then descend nearly 3000 feet into Le

Conte Canyon. The climb up to the pass was slow and deliberate over well-maintained talus, followed by a long, knee-cracking, dusty descent over slippery scree. I was almost always in the company of pack animals and their drivers. Pack animal waste was abundant enough for some people to call it the “John Manure Trail”.  

The air in LeConte Canyon was hot and thick as guacamole due relatively low altitude. Despite the uncomfortable heat, I fell asleep like a bag of wet cement. The next day my legs felt like they were stuck in quicksand and the prospect of climbing out of the canyon and over Muir pass was too much for me to handle. I logged in a measly 4 miles that day, resting for the afternoon in a pleasant campsite. I met a ranger, a woman in her 20s, who stopped by to look at my permit. With impressive strength, she dismantled a fire ring that had been illegally built, as the campsite was above 10,000 feet. The fire ring was made out of large granite rocks that must have weighed at least 30 pounds each. She hurled about ten of them twenty feet into the woods. I asked her if she ever threw shot put.

The next day I made a slow step by breathless step ascent over Muir pass stopping to have my picture taken by the stone hut at the top.

The hut had a curious round shape like a yurt. Inside, there were benches and a non-functioning fireplace that had deer antlers above the mantle. Also, on the mantle, were various handwritten journals and artifacts left by other hikers. The descent from Muir Pass was long and onerous. I stopped to camp at Lake Wanda, named after one of John Muir's daughters. The lake was windswept and lovely with numerous islands and peninsulas surrounded by the mountains (Mount Darwin, Mount Mendel, Mount Fiske, Mount Haeckel, Mount Huxley, Mount Wallace, and Mount Lamarck) of the Evolution group.

Going down 4000 feet over the course of about 14 ten miles, I was quick enough to reach the Muir Trail Ranch at the bottom of the hill in time to pick up a resupply by 5 PM. The ranch is run by a miserly, curmudgeonly, old woman named Pat. She possesses a wit that is as dry as the dust that covers the ground. For the service of holding your resupply bucket she will charge you $55. In fact, she seems to have a fee for just about every little hiker's service she provides. She reminded of the Bob Dylan song “Maggie’s Farm”

She hands a nickel

She hands you a dime

She asks you if you’re having a good time

She’s 66 but she swears she’s 54

If you were craving chocolate, beer or Coca-Cola, forget about it, she doesn't have any. The ranch has a collection of cabins that look like a throwback to the pioneer west. There is a Protestant feeling to the place. One expects to hear a church hymn being sung out of tune by a congregation somewhere on the premises. Wading across the river you will encounter many informal camp sites next to a small group of hot springs. The springs were spare and almost dried up when I visited. This is probably not always the case. The people who I met at the Muir Trail Ranch all seemed restless. One either hikes over the pass to get there, or takes a boat across Florence Lake and then hikes 7 miles to get there. There were people who were begging for soda pop, ice cream, or a motorized vehicle to take them away. I chose to take my backpack, now heavy with new supplies, up four miles and 2000 vertical feet of switchbacks to camp by a stream, halfway up Seldon pass. I fell into my tent at 8:30 PM with gentle rain falling on the tent. Just as the raindrops had lulled me to sleep I heard a woman’s voice outside the tent. Through the fabric of the tent she said that her name was Blue Sky. She asked if she could set up her tent at my site. She seemed pleasant enough, although I couldn't actually see her. It was raining and she had as much right to camp there as I did. The helpful thing to do would have been to assist her in setting up her camp. Dry and warm and cozy in my tent, I selfishly stayed put. When the rain had let up, I got out of my tent and went to greet her. She was 50-ish with dyed brown hair and vibrant blue eyes. Hence her trail name. We savored dehydrated dinners together and shared trail stories. I was happy for the company even in the mosquito infested drizzle. She had hiked the entire Appalachian trail the summer before and seemed a lot more trail tough than me. The steady, light, rain did not dissuade her from hunkering down and enjoying a leisurely meal. She was divorced with 2 grown kids. Like a lot of folks I met on the trail, she seemed to be escaping from a life that she wanted to forget. I sat with her for a while until the rain drove me back into my tent. Many nights on the trail I ended up someplace where people congregated with their tents seeking the comfort and safety of having other humans around.

The next day began with a long ascent over yet another pass. Just one mile down the other side, I was already tired enough to set up camp for the night. I just ran out of mojo and had to rest. After 12 hours of sleep, I hiked 15 miles downhill to the shores of Edison Lake where I caught the ferry to Vermillion Valley resort. The boat ride across the lake was beautiful in the late afternoon sunlight. My fellow passengers were all hikers laden with heavy backpacks such as my own. The water level of the lake was disturbingly low, and the boat had to land nearly a half a mile from the resort. This forced us withering travelers to trudge across a half a mile of low-traction beach sand. When we arrived at the main building, the resort owner informed us that there were no available lodging facilities except for a small backpacker area where we could set up our tents and camp for no charge. All of us did just that. Unlike the Muir Trail ranch, the resort had plenty of beer and abundant quantities of junk food. The beer and food were served by a wonderfully snarky waitress named Olive. She dished out wholesome food along with stinging sarcasm at no extra charge. We were all entertained by her frank, irreverent commentary and I for one enjoyed dishing it right back.

It was a young crowd at the bar. Olive loudly proclaimed that she absolutely loathed people in their twenties. They adjourned to a large campfire at about 9PM and partied into the wee hours. I drank one bottle of beer that made me dizzy with delirium and sent me crawling in my sleeping bag at dusk. A trio of recently graduated guys from Santa Clara University in California were in good company with a duo of female hikers who had just finished up at Harvard College. Olive told them that they were spoiled brats. But she didn't mean it.

The resort was a wonderful place for through hikers to bond and to feel the warmth and camaraderie that the PCT and the JMT are well known for.

A small tear fell from the corner my eye when I boarded the ferry to re-embark on my journey. I would miss Olive. During dinner, we exchanged pleasantries:

Olive: Hey New York asshole. What’s your name?

Me: Richard.

Olive: Do people call you Dick?

Me: Not people I like.

Olive: Hey Dick!!

Me: At least have the decency to call Big Dick.

Olive: Why don’t you like being called Dick?

Me: I don’t want to stick out.

The trail between the ferry landing and Silver Pass was steep and insistent. Clouds were beginning to gather, and rain was imminent. I set up my tent at 6 PM in a small meadow by a lazy stream with way too many mosquitoes. I was lucky because the downpour did not occur until I was safe and dry in my small cozy tent.

The next morning, I spent four hours slogging my way up sun baked switchbacks to the top of Silver Pass. Mid way to the top five young hikers passed me. One of the hikers (trail-named Pitfall), immediately recognized me from Guitar Lake and called me by my name. The rest of his crew had earbuds on and were pushing their way quickly to the top of the pass. The last hiker in the procession actually had a boom box that he was loudly listening to on his way up. The guy must have been deaf. I continued at my steady 57-year-old pace and an hour later I was warmly greeted at the top of the pass by the same quintet of hikers. They were passing a joint. We spoke briefly about our first meeting at Guitar Lake and then he introduced me to his entourage. The group consisted of Pitfall, his girlfriend Pinchot, Apocalypse, Stone, and Preppy. They reminded me of the 20-year-old friends that my own children brought around the house to visit. We exchanged another 20 minutes of mirthful conversation until I picked up my backpack and continued down the other side of the pass.

They must have idled away quite a bit of time, smoking roll-your-own cigarettes and passing spiffs. About 6PM that night they glided past my campsite at Tully Hole: this time joined by, guitar-toting, “Tuscan Raider”, and his pretty blonde girlfriend, “Smiles”. Pitfall shouted, " See you in Mammoth. Beer at Base Camp!!" The next day I walked 16 miles to Red's Meadow slowly circumnavigating the copious blow-down on the trail. The campground was shabby and depressing but I spent a perfunctory night there waiting for the store to open up at 7AM so I could pick up my supply box and another box with the violin I had bounced up from Bishop. Nobody in the store believed it was really a violin, so I had to take out of the box and play it. One woman said it reminded her of the Titanic. It seemed like a California thing to say.

Since my visit to Bishop, I hadn't been in the "civilized world" for more than a week. The denizens of this world seemed softer, cleaner, and shallower than I had remembered. I observed them with detached wonder as I boarded the National Park Service shuttle bus that would take me to Mammoth Lakes and the motel room that I had reserved, via IPhone, for the next two nights. With a 40-pound backpack and an awkward box carrying my violin I had to change buses 3 times under the watchful curiosity of many National Park tourists. I was worried that the staff at the Best Western hotel might turn me away in my awkward, unwashed state, but they were actually quite accustomed to PCT hiker types and were cheerful and friendly.

The dirt that was caked on my legs and feet was so ground into the skin that it took two showers over the course of the evening to even get 80% of the lower half of my body clean.

While my trail friends were ether staying at the youth Hostel or squatting in the town park, I was living it up in the Best Western. The room was spacious and quite classy. The shower was fully equipped, and the flat-screen TV was full of the latest ball scores and political posturing. On that account, I had missed little.

What I had missed most was my family and my violin. My mother was undergoing initial treatments for breast cancer and I was anxious to get the latest news. Whenever I go away there is always an ache in my heart for my wife. We had a wonderful, hilarious talk for a half an hour, and I felt so much lighter afterword. The world just seemed like a better place knowing she was there. My appetite took off like a rocket. I wanted to eat the junkiest food I could find. I wanted calories: thousands of them. Tacos, beans, rice, fries, pie, chocolate, muffins, scones, eggs, home fries, Doritos and cafe mocha.

I ran into Pitfall, Tuscan Raider, and Stone just walking around town. It was embarrassing to tell them where I was staying. I gave them my cell # but none of them had phones.

I must have spent five or six hours playing the violin over the next two days. It was like catching up with an old friend.

The hike from Mammoth Lakes to Tuolumne was supposed to be three days in duration however it ended up being 2 1/2. I could have done it in two days easily, but I was so enraptured with the Thousand Lakes area that I took my time. The entire Yosemite area was overrun with tourists. Most of them seemed more interested in shopping, talking on cell phones, and eating than anything else. An interest in nature seemed secondary to most of them. There are regular shuttle buses that will distribute the otherwise distracted tourists through a gamut of natural wonders presented like paintings in a museum that one breezes through. Lodging and services are not cheap and demand for them is nearly frantic during the peak summer months. I tried to ignore the masses and enjoy the natural beauty of the Valley. I was able to do this for a 24-hour period before I became inpatient with the crowds, prices, and insistent heat. I happily hitchhiked back up to Tuolumne Meadows, insofar as the bus only runs twice per day. I was fortunate enough to make it there fleetingly with the aid of two quick rides. The first ride was with a backcountry ranger who offered a wide range of insights about the park and what it is like to work there. The second ride was with a middle-aged Australian man who had many questions about the United States and its political issues. I was more than happy to expound upon my political beliefs.

Once I was dropped off at the Tuolumne Meadows store, I commenced with my hike North on the PCT. I camped that night at a designated area called Glen Aulin. It had a number of tent cabins that you could rent for the usual exorbitant cost or you could simply walk up the hill and camp for free at a beautiful site overlooking a deep rocky gorge. I chose the latter option and I have no regrets. The tourist element was still quite prevalent, but the numbers were thinning due to the increasing remoteness of the area. The section of the trail from Glen Aulin to Sonora Pass is long and remote. 68 miles and no towns or roads. I had no way of packing enough food. The clouds above were becoming more organized and thunderclaps were rumbling in the distance. At this point is seemed wiser to turn around. And so, I returned to the Tuolumne store where I waited four hours for the bus back to Mammoth Lakes. One of the store employees was playing a guitar seated on a bench in front of the store. I approached him and reassured him that people appreciated his contribution to the scene even if they seemed to be it ignoring him. I told him that I had been a musician my whole life and I knew his position. Since he lived in a tent cabin behind the store, he offered to retrieve a mandolin that he had so that we could jam. We played music for the entertainment of ourselves and curious passersby. In this way, we managed to pass the time pleasantly until I had to catch my bus and he had to go to something he referred to as a “safety meeting” with his coworkers.

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