Solang Hike

Today we hiked up to a glacier/boulder field above the ski village called Solang. A group of 9 of us set out for a full days hike at 8:00am and had two jeeps take us to the trail head. The jeep that I was riding in blew out the transmission half way so the rest of the drive up were spent in 1st gear going a record-breaking 10km/hr. A little ways past Solang and about 6 km from the trail head there were a few shops on either side of the road and a rope that was held up by 2 branches standing vertical on both sides. The "road block" was manned by a short, but stout, Indian man. At first we though this was going to be a simple matter of bribing and we would be on our way. We were told, however, that there was military blasting going on and that we would not be able to cross. So we called Hem, partially for translation services, and got the full scoop from him. For a minute it looked liked we would have to find another place to hike for the day, but shortly after speaking with Hem, the rope man took down the rope and let us through. We had no idea why we had been allowed passage. We found out later that night after talking with Hem about what happened that he had called up a military general that was in charge of the area and had a little chat with him. (WOW)

The scale of this boulder field is completely lost. Many of the boulders in this picture are much much large than me. Also, the top of this picture is not nearly the top of the mountain. Fog clung to the peaks almost the entire time we were there so we only got glimpses of the mighty peaks above us.


At the top we stopped under this enormous boulder and had lunch because it was raining. Looking out from the boulder was the rest of the boulder field and mountains forming a bowl around them with glaciers dipping down all the way around.



Shortly after we had gotten on the trail we could see a large glacier off in the distance and we were all excited about getting as close as we could. The hike took us over the same creek several times and by little rock and tarp houses whose children would run out to greet us and ask for biscuits. Early on a few dogs befriended us and one stayed with us the whole time, all the way to the top. We named him Sherpa. The uphills were pretty hard on the lungs, at a snails pace I felt like I could keep going without having to stop every 10 ft or so. Once we had all made it to the top we had lunch under a giant rectangular boulder that was situated on a ridge looking down onto a boulder field, surrounded by mountains with glaciers coming down them. We actually never got go see the tops of the mountains around us because the clouds never completely lifted. It rained about 5 different times throughout the day so we were constantly taking on and off rain gear as different cloud systems would role in. It took about 3 hours to make it to the "top" and about 2.5 hours to get back down. This hike completely wore me out so I went to bed around 8:30pm again.
Taking the picture was Nate Montgomery. We didn't want him to set the timer and run over, partially because we were on a steep ridge line and partially because the rocks were slippery and wet.