I set personal altitude records three times during this trip. This was the last one, the record that still stands: the top of Gokyo Ri, somewhere between 17,500 and 18,000 feet above sea level. Gokyo Ri is a hill that rises 2000’ from Gokyo, the last yak-herding/trekker-lodging village on the Gokyo Valley trail. Beyond Gokyo, the valley turns to nothing but glacial rubble swept by frigid winds off the Tibetan Plateau.

That highest peak on the horizon is Mt. Everest. It’s only from this altitude that I could really see the predominance of Everest. Viewed from down in the valley, it’s flanked by peaks that look higher only because they’re closer. From the vantage point shown in this picture, a British fellow trekker named Giles was able to visually trace, and describe to me, the route used by Hillary and Tenzing on their first successful ascent of the mountain.

The night before in Gokyo, I’d set personal sleeping-altitude and drunk-altitude records (approx. 15,500’). A couple from St. Moritz, Switzerland celebrated their arrival at their trekking destination with a plastic bottle of Johnny Walker Red, which they shared with four or five others they’d been walking with. As if two or three shots at 15,500’ weren’t enough, the innkeeper announced a few minutes later that he was celebrating his son’s first birthday back in Kathmandu—and presented us with another bottle of the exact same thing. I guess alcohol at that altitude leaves the system as quickly as it enters the system, since I felt surprisingly okay the next morning.

All images ©2002-2003 by Dietrich Neuman