The snow didn’t fall all night but in the morning there was about 6 inches on the ground. Before breakfast Reece had decided not to continue up but there were people drifting past our lodge into the whiteness and so he changed his mind and decided to go up. The porters can’t remember the weather being this bad in November; it really is exceptionally bad. Terry and Inca were heading down from Deurali to Bamboo while our plan was to go slightly further to Sinuwa. Snow was falling as we left the lodge and the path was terribly slippery. We still had to test every footstep and it was very slow going. But people were coming up the path including a group of about 8 Japanese OAPs. We met them at an iced-up rickety bridge. They paused but still continued onwards despite our advice that path ahead was much worse. There were also Koreans and Europeans going up and the porters exchanged hurried words but few people turned back. At Hinko Cave Reece caught us up. He had gone about an hour further up the trail but the snow was much worse and he had given up reaching ABC. Reece had done about 90% of the Annapurna Circuit and although he regretted not seeing the mountains from ABC, he was keen to get down to Pokhara. Julian and I too are quite keen to get back to civilisation. Unfortunately, our pace was slow today and on the porter grapevine we heard that our destination, Sinuwa, was going to be full of trekkers so we settled for Bamboo. Tomorrow we will have to walk a long way up and down to get to Jhinu. We are starting to run out of money and so we should try and get down in 3 days. We are below the snowline now but it must have rained a lot recently because all the streams and waterfalls are torrents and the path is really boggy. Julian has run out of dry socks and he has some blisters. We’re in good spirits but it is time to get down…
Yeti Fan 2011 