I knew I would need a lot of gear for the trip. Had I known what all it was, I probably would have bought some of it for my Alaska trip rather then renting most of my gear there. I will put a list of the gear at the bottom of this post. The main thing with any of the gear to consider is weight. For my flight into Lukla, I only have a baggage allotment of 15kg (roughly 33 pounds). That includes my spare clothes, backpack, medical supplies, and any electronics/personal gear. I chose to weigh everything that I was taking so I don’t have a surprise when I check in for the final leg of my air trip (Kathmandu to Lukla/Tenzing Hillary Airport). The reason they are so strict on weight is that Lukla is a high altitude (9,334 feet), short airstrip (1729 feet). Only two models of aircraft are allowed to land there because of these factors, and they want to know exactly how much that aircraft will weigh. They’ll weigh me as well (First time I ever had to weigh-in for an aircraft ride was when I took my air tour of Denali). I’ll make a post about Lukla after we land there and settle in for the night (*if I have internet).

I spent months researching gear, looking for it on sale. Black Friday provided some great opportunities to save some money; I picked up both my jackets (my lightweight insulated for the trail) and my heavy down jacket for the cold nights at the lodges and base camp (the lodges/tea houses our group will be staying at do not have heat). One of the few things I paid full price for was my sleeping bag. I ended up getting a Magma 10 (REI brand); it is rated to 10 degrees F and only weighs 2 pounds. It has also received several awards. My one complaint about the sleeping bag is it is very “fitted”. Once you zip up, there is not a lot of room to move your arms around. That will take some getting used to, but more fabric/insulation means more weight.

Early on, I thought I had all sorts of extra room for weight, but as I started adding in all the little things (medications, etc, it grew to the limit rather quickly). I ended up choosing to buy a new camera for this trip. The camera that I wanted to take is good, but with the extra battery, extra telephoto lens, charging sled, I was at 900 grams. And that wasn’t even with a case for the extra lens/battery/sled. That’s almost 2 pounds! Plus it wasn’t weather proof. I ended up going with an Olympus TG-5. The camera, case, spare battery come in at 325 grams, saving me almost a third of my camera weight. The other benefits is this new camera is environmental-proof (water/cold/dust), has a GPS so I can choose to geotag my pictures if I want, and a built in temperature sensor so I can also stamp my pictures with a temperature. Normally, good security practices are to not stamp photos with location, but I think for a trip like this it is proper. I also had to pull a pair of sandals from my gear and replace with a pair of super light flip flops from Walmart. I’ll need something to let my feet air out and wear in shower facilities, but they don’t need to kill pound of my weight limit.

This has definitely changed the way I look at outdoor gear. Now when walking through the outdoor section at Walmart or Costco, the first thing that comes to mind is “how much does that weigh?”. Below is a partial screenshot of my tracking spreadsheet I made to keep up with my gear weight. Don’t grade me on spelling please (doesn’t change the numbers…). If you count everything, I’m 800 grams over. If you take out what I plan on wearing on the plane, that puts me at 14.3kg. That leaves me a little spare room and I can add in a few food items just in case I need them and remind me of home.

Big gear list. It doesn’t seem like that much, but once you start breaking it down into all the sub-items, it does get quite large.

One of the things I hadn’t thought about was the medical preparations for a trip to a country like Nepal.

First there were the vaccinations:

• Hepatitis A – Took 2 rounds of shots
• Hepatitis B – Took 2 rounds of shots
• Tetanus
• Typhoid
• Flu

I scheduled a visit with a travel doctor. I really liked her, she seemed exited about my trip (too bad she is moving to Austin). She prescribed me medicine to help with altitude sickness, antibiotics, and sleeping pills in case the altitude kept me awake. She also suggested that I get a gym membership and start hitting the stair master, and stepping sideways on it. It was good advice. She also told me to get on probiotics the month before I head out to help prevent stomach issues while on the trip. I had no idea that “gut health” packs would have so many pills!

I also went to my optometrist and got contacts. Actually, just contact. My right eye needs the most correction, so I went with the one contact so I have a mix of good vision for near/far. I can go 7 days at a time (according to my optometrist) without removing it. This let me get a non-prescription set of glacier glasses. Not only were they cheaper, I don’t have to worry about their prescription becoming obsolete. It did take me a while to get to where I could pull my contact out and put it back in without issues.

Finally, the one visit I was not looking forward to – the dentist. But my new dentist proved me wrong; she is very good. Very conscientious. A couple of fillings and I was good to go (not bad for all the years I skipped of visiting a dentist).

With all that out of the way, one step closer to my trip!

I had already been exercising (walking on the treadmill) before plans were set for my EBC trip. Now that I was looking at a 32 mile hike from 9000 feet to 17,600 feet and back, I needed to come up with a plan to get ready.

For November, I decided to get comfortable with walking 4 miles at a good pace. I hit that goal, and started bringing up the incline on the treadmill before the end of the month. My December goal was to finish the month doing 4 miles at full incline (10%), which I made. Of course, my pace was a little slower than November with the incline, but calories burned went up significantly.

For January, I added another challenge, a training mask that restricts your breathing to strengthen your lungs. It had 4 different settings selectable by a lever on the front: 4,000, 8,000, 12,000 and 16,000 feet. I kicked off the new year by hitting the treadmill with the mask set to 4,000. I was getting accustomed to reduced airflow, and then one day I hit a real wall, the mask was kicking my butt! It turned out the lever had been set to 8,000 feet accidentally. By the end of third week of January, I was only using the 16,000 foot selection.

February, I decided to get a gym membership, so I could have access to some additional equipment beyond my tread mill that tops out at 10% incline. I found a gym that had locations in Rockwall and Kaufman, so I could workout wherever I wanted. So I started hitting the stair master to condition my legs for all the upwards hiking. The stair master looks a bit mean. I started at 15 minutes, and that was enough! I tried to get in an hour by mixing between the stair machine, summit machine (similar to an elliptical), and stationary bike. I grew to like using the climbing machine and elliptical cross trainer.

By mid March, I was able to go a whole hour on both the stair master and climbing machine (but not on the same day!). While I know I could have trained harder, I feel pretty good about what I’ve accomplished since October of 2017. I also started hitting the treadmill at 10%, with the training mask and my backpack with a load.

Here’s some charts from my exercise journaling:
I’m not done with March, but you can definitely see a downtrend from January. I wish I would have peaked a little later.

 

I had already started my diet/exercise effort well before I committed to this Everest trip. In May 2017 at 250 pounds, I decided that I was tired of being unconfortable and needed to do something about it. I started by giving up junk food and restricting my diet to 1600-1900 calories a day. I dropped 10 pounds the first week, the next two weeks another 5 pounds each lost. I had started walking on the treadmill as well. My first walk was only 3/4 mile, not very impressive, but it was a start.

I had lost 25 pounds by time we went on our vacation to San Francisco in June. I made the mistake of going off diet while on vacation, under the impression it would make it more enjoyable; that set me back almost a month. At least the exercise before the trip made it easy for me to get around San Francisco on foot.

Things did eventually get back on track. One thing that helped me was this book: The Power of Habit. It does give you a lot to think about in terms of what drives our habits and decisions, and how programmable we really are. As an experiment, I chose Reese’s mini peanut butter cups as my reward for treadmill time; I get one for every 1/2 mile I walk. I burn about 100 calories at speed and full incline on the treadmill, and one cup is 19 calories. So even with the reward, I’m making positive calorie burning progress. And it has worked for me; I find myself wanting to get on the treadmill and looking forward to that reward. It did lose a bit of its allure when I started working out in the gym because it would be a bit odd to slam down several peanut butter cups in front of everyone right after getting off the stair master.

I hit my goal of 50 pounds by the end of 2017 (I actually lost 52 before the end of the year), followed by another 10 in January. After January, I started slightly increasing my caloric intake, so I only lost 3 pounds for February. I’m ok with that, as I figure I could lose another 10 while on my EBC trip.

So as it stands now, I’m 68 pounds lighter and went from a maxed out size 40 waist (I was closer to a 42) to a loose 35 inch waist. Below is a picture stepping from 40, 38, 36, finally to 35. I hope someone I know has stock in LL Bean.

I’m not sure I would have gotten here had I not had the incentive of the Everest Trip. I had made the deal with myself that if I didn’t lose at least 50 pounds, I was going to call the trip off and lose my deposit.

So, before I talk about anything else, let’s go ahead and get the “why” out of the way. It’s something I’ve always thought about, but wasn’t sure I’d ever get the chance. After sitting in the passenger seat watching Jasmine take on cancer in 2016 followed by unexpectedly losing 2 people out of my life before their time in 2017, I decided it was time to get on with it. I had always wanted to go to Alaska and see it, so I crossed that off in my own style in 2017 (I lone-wolfed it from Anchorage up the Dalton Highway well into the Arctic Circle). Photos from that journey here. Shortly before going on the Alaska trip in October, I called and talked to the folks at Adventure Consultants (AC) about the trip and what the physical requirements were; they were very helpful in not only making my decision, but providing everything I needed along the way. I secured the last slot available in group 1, the last available on any team when I registered.

TO BE CLEAR: I’m stopping at base camp. That scratches my itch, and at this point in my life I’m scared to death of the next thing in the way of the mountain – the Khumbu Ice Falls; I don’t care to cross crevasses on aluminum ladders lashed together with rope.

While I was in Alaska, I got an email from AC letting me know that a spot on group 2 had opened up, offering it to me. What makes group 2 special is we get to accompany the summit team from AC to Everest Base Camp (EBC). I was stoked when this worked out. And to cap it off, I finally got to see and photograph the Northern Lights the next morning, my last day in Alaska (was a good 24 hours for me).

Now the pressure was on to start putting all my gear together, learning what I need to be ready and to get in physical shape so that I can try to enjoy the hike up to 17,600 feet.