Before you dive in, I wanted to say thanks to all you loyal readers and the support you've shown on the message board and in email, I miss you all and am looking forward to my return! Now buckle up, cause this is a long one with a lot of excitement... September 26th We got to sleep in till 9, but packs were soon on again as I volunteered to lead the day solo. My biggest challenge was getting everyone filled up with water before heading out to break trail and s...

September 25th Our packs are all on again with camp all packed up and we're off on the trail ready to crest Kaphne Cal pass. This time, with a new twist... We get to our cache that we set up the day before and actually plan to carry EVERYTHING up and over. If you didn't have an idea before of what our cache is like, it's basically another half pack full in weight. So to try and pull my own and help out the team, I took an extra food bag and a half, as well as a t...

September 21st So why exactly are we roped together like school children? The simple answer is safety and the more complicated one is crevasse rescue. Today we did mock rescues and we basically use the team to self arrest and the pull them out tug-of-war style with one person trying to make sure the downed individual doesn't smack their head on the way up. Here's my somber journal entry from the day "I'm living in a place where the bug dig their own graves. ...

September 18th As we passed our cache from the day before, I dreaded how much longer we would have to hike before arriving at camp. The going was extra slow since we had to break trail and kick step our way up the mountain. Luckily, the rocky stuff I used my sneakers on helped me have a less painful experience.Today I was hiking again with Gaurav and Charlie was leading the troop and doing to brunt of the work in the untouched snow. We actually got to our site mu...

September 15th The day was pretty eventful. We had another Hindi lesson and I'm proud to say I'm not too shabby at pronunciation. After that, we discussed altitude sickness and all of the talk about it may have messed with me because on the short hike after wards, I was definitely feeling it. In any case, we passed the steepest drop off I've ever been just inches away from on our way to have a class on risk assessment and safety. I chose to head back to camp with...