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Running the Great Himalayan Trail
‘That can’t be ice.’
This was my first and most immediate thought. I don’t know why I thought it wasn’t a possibility. Maybe I was just overwhelmed. Since arriving in Nepal things hadn’t gone our way. Bad weather had delayed flights, narrowing our window. The plan was for Ryan and Ryno to set a Fastest Known Time (FKT) on a section of the Great Himalaya Trail – west to east, traversing Nepal through the Himalaya and its foothills, covering a distance of over 1,400km with an accumulated elevation gain of over 70,000m. That was the plan.
When Ryan first proposed the idea to me almost two years before, I had romanticised it. All I heard was ‘traverse’ and ‘Himalaya’ and almost immediately I agreed. Those two words alone conjure so many images and emotions. I have always been fascinated by humanity’s nomadic roots and the unrest many now feel in their sedentary lifestyles. For a decade this fascination has directly influenced the films I’ve made, and I doubt there is a better playground for this to play out than the Himalaya. I knew this project would be tough, but I always believed it was possible.
We were just over two days into our hike in. Just below us lay the village of Hilsa, situated in the far west of Nepal, on the Tibetan border. This was meant to be our start point. The stretch of glistening blue ice that lay directly in our path was not in itself a concern, rather its gentle slope leading to a slow-motion slide into 1,000ft of thin air. There was no way around it. In mountaineering terms, it was nothing – but we were in running shoes, we had no rope and no crampons, and one ice axe between eight of us.
A late winter had caught us off guard and we had recently learned that no-one had crossed the pass this season. A fact that might have been good to know beforehand. But that’s the way things seem to work in Nepal – information is relayed in bite-sized pieces, often after the fact. Nepali people try so hard to please; they don’t want to burden others with problems or difficulties. They make decisions assuming they know what’s best for you. And sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t. It can be both endearing and infuriating.
I stumbled and slid over to Ryan and Ryno, trying to hide my irritation. Our guide and porters stood talking amongst themselves. Occasionally, one of them would walk precariously over the ice, hugging the rock wall and sprinkling dirt. The Karnali River snaked through its namesake valley thousands of feet below. A slip here and you were dead. It was undeniable. Make a mistake and die.
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Maybe I was naive coming into this, but I didn’t think it would be life threatening. I don’t want to dramatise this into a death-defying adventure. It wasn’t like that. It was more an increased risk of death and I hadn’t prepared myself for that; I don’t think any of us had. I stood there, struggling to rationalise the choice facing us, thinking how stupid it would be if I died trying to make a film that no-one would even remember. The risk didn’t feel worth it. I could see from Ryan’s expression he wasn’t so sure either. But Ryno was far more determined. Unassailable, even. One look at his face and I knew we were crossing.
https://www.sidetracked.com/beyond-the-edge/