Relong along the ridge

Relong along the ridge

Early morning start to reach one of the pickc (as far as we manage basically).

This was our 7th day of the trip and 3rd consecutive day of staying above 3000m altitude.

My friend athlete did not suffer any altitude sickness on this trip, i was however feeling short breath while hiking above 3000m at first so we kept out hikes under 3700 up to now.

On this last hike we reached 4100 or so and I was fine, although definitely had to slower down once we passed 3800m.

The first kilometer of the hike is pretty crowded. You are required to buy a ticket and show your passports to get a permit. We didn't expect the permit so didn't take our passports with us. However we had our park entrance tickets from valley park entrance we did for the first two days which seemed to work as a sufficient confirmation of a permit.

In the morning hours the path and mountains were fully covered with snow. On the way back however there was no signs on snow and it was actually hard to believe its the same trail we are walking. No doubt walking down along the ridge is far more spectacular in terms of views than climbing up - so if you would prefer to change this hike into a loop - i would suggest go up through a valley but make your way back along the ridge.

As I was dealing with short breathing my friend left me behind and we both walked in few hundred meters apart from each other.

Both of us were at some point attacked by an alpha male yak who was part of 2 males 2 females and a calf small herd. The charging bull didn't actually physically pushed any of us but he definitely scared us both. My friend encounter him first and run up the hill. As i was far behind i wasn't aware of the whole situation and continued directly towards the planes herd was feeding. As there were some bushes along my path - me and the animal only saw each other when we were already 5-8m apart. The angry bull charged at first which terrified. Unfortunately as we were above 3900m i was already short breath and rather slow. I wanted to run but stumbled and fell on my knee. Instead i raised my hands and hiking sticks up and screamed and bull stopped 2m in front of my. I got up and walked away as fast as i could. Later on my friend told me bull also stopped short distance in front of him so we figured he didn't intent to hurt us, but only wanted to scare us which he definitely did.

It was a good lesson for future as in the past we several time walked right through much larder herds of yaks and though those are peaceful animals. After this encounter we circumnavigated all the future herds we met.

We kind of figures out that when yak has it's tail raised UP like a flag might mean he is an alpha male - potentially aggressive . We are not sure if this is correct - but that's how the angry one carried himself.


After we reached the very top of our hike we wanted to divert along the north west slope so we could hike down a different path. This didn't end up very well. We reached ruins of small farm house where we expected to find a path, but there was none. We walked a bit south from that ruins until we reached rather dense vegetation that slowed us down - and the slope started to get steeper. We decided to go climb back to the ridge but it was bit hard through the vegetation. Eventually i checked on the Satellite photo that if we climb bit to the north vegetation is much less dense there. So we did and not long after indeed it all cleared up.

To be fair we could see there was a trail down the valley but it was at lest 200m down in altitude from where we were.
Anyways i was happy we were back on the ridge as the views are way better than anything you can see while walking along the slope.