Day 9

The temperature dropped to -4 degrees Celsius in the night and Sue’s pants (washed) froze as stiff as a board while hanging in the tent. We continued up the valley in glorious sunshine and by 9am the partially frozen river was already full of melting ice from the glacier above. After the initial steep climb the valley opened out to a wide yak herder pasture. There were now two other groups heading for the pass so although there is a ‘sense of remoteness’, this pass is clearly not, as described in the KE notes, ‘seldom visited’.

At the end of the valley our trail climbed up over a black rock band into another smaller valley where we camped at about 4600m. We were now well above the tree line and, while making a short acclimatisation walk on the afternoon, we caught a glimpse of the great peaks towards Kanchenjunga as well as our route up to the Lumbasumba pass.
Distance 5km 3hrs



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