Kiwis Crossing The Khumbu

We had nowhere to go. As darkness began to descend and the high altitude freeze tightened its grip, our trekking group surveyed the Gokyo Glacier before us.

- Derek Cheng

We were somewhere between Renjo La and Cho La, two mountain passes in the Khumbu Valley, Nepal, somewhere west of Everest Base Camp. We had crossed 90 per cent of the glacier, but large bodies of freezing water and impassable walls of ice blocked the final leg to the other side.

We trudged far and wide, searching for a way through, always returning to the same spot. We were getting desperate. A member of our quartet, perhaps delirious with fatigue, made the laughable suggestion that we throw huge boulders into one of the lakes to allow us to step-stone across.

"Damn you, global warming!" cried Andy, a trail-runner from Colorado, lamenting the glacier-melt and the impenetrable, watery obstacles at every turn.

With darkness approaching, we conceded defeat and trudged two hours back to the Namaste Lodge in the small mountain hamlet of Gokyo. Inside the lodge, we found an updated map. It showed a new path across the glacier – far higher than the one on our map.

This is one of the risks of trekking unassisted in the Himalayas. Usually, there are enough guided parties around and, if in doubt, you can just follow one. But this day, we had ventured off on our own, oblivious to the dead-end ahead. And yet, nestled among glaciers and the most aesthetic peaks in the world, it wasn't a bad place to be stuck.

Lukla airport is the beginning of the adventure for most hikers in the Khumbu Valley, home to Mt Everest and its surroundings of incomparable beauty.

It also has the infamous reputation of having one of the world's most challenging airstrips to navigate. It comprises a thin, short lick of pavement, literally cut into the side of a steep mountain gorge that faces another cliff face.