Trek: Day 3

6:00:00 AM Out And About Global 8 Comments

Trek Day 3: Poon Hill/Ghorepani to Tadapani
Written by: Trish Johnson

Today we had a 4:00 am wake-up call for our summit trek to see sunrise on Poon Hill. It's the highlight of the trek, from the top of the hill there are views of the entire Annapurna range. The climb would have been easier except most of us were sleepless from a night in the noisiest guest house in Nepal.

The views more than made up for it though! The skies were clear and we could see the entire Annapurna Range.

After Poon Hill we had a quick breakfast of porridge then hiked out for the long, long trek to Tadapani. Today's hike featured more steep ascents and descents through rhododendron forests, spectacular stands of hardwoods, rivers, and waterfalls. It was incredibly hard, maybe harder than our first day of straight vertical climbing. My legs & feet burnt with every step. We walked up stone steps, down muddy pathways, over bridges. As Brooke said today with about an hour to go on today's hike: Let's talk about something besides going up or going down. (Even our Sherpa laughed.) It was completely exhausting.

This is the hardest physical thing I've ever done. Harder than marathons, harder than Ragnar. I feel like I have 26 different communicable diseases, I'm dehydrated, I'm sunburned, I'm windburned, I've seen 1 flush toilet and had 1 shower in the last 3 days, barely brushed my teeth, eaten nothing but rice, curry veg, lentils, granola, and porridge, and have slept about 4 hours a night in the most insane conditions, all while hiking up to 8 hours a day.