Before the storm

This shot was taken on Chele La (La means "pass") at just over 4000 meters (about 13,000 feet). The sign on the road said 3880 meters and we hiked up above that for this picture.

We were on our way to a sky burial site on top of a small peak but as you can see from this picture, the weather wasn't cooperating. The wind was very strong and a few minutes later, it started to hail. But it wasn't that bad, so we kept going and the hail stopped. But a while later, it started again and still we pushed ahead despite the protests of the kids. As we neared the peak, the hail and snow got worse but at that point, the best way was to continue up to the hut at the burial site. As we scrambled up the rock face to the peak and the ice was building up on the small ledges that served as footholds, I had serious concerns about how we were going to get back down. But we managed to get up and find shelter in the hut. By then the clouds had moved in and there was zero visibility, the snow wasn't falling - it was whipping sideways across the ridge and thunder was rumbling. The hut wasn't airtight either and the wind came through the cracks in the rocks. It was dark inside and we were afraid there were bones inside there, but that turned out not to be true. We huddled inside and ate our lunch. After about an hour, the wind lessened somewhat and the main cloud had passed so we ventured out into the snow.

Since I'm here to tell about it, you can guess that we made back down the rock face. By the time we got down to the car, the hail had changed to sleet and at even lower elevations, it was raining. Once we were back in the valley, the sun was shining but the tops of the mountains were dusted with fresh snow.

The last time I was up on Chele La, we (I was driving - my fault) got stuck in a ditch on a closed road because the snow was very icy. I'm developing quite a history with this particular mountain.