I had entitled this 5 months to go, but when I looked at the calendar I realised that it's now less than 4 months away. Eeek! How exciting.
Already the Base Camp trip has entered into my everyday thinking. Yesterday, Saturday morning, I walked from home down to the Gorge and across the back of the Cliff Grounds right down to Cafe Culture at Trevallyn. Damien met me there for a late breakfast and then I walked back home again via the zigzag track.
It was the gentle beginnings of the training to increase my fitness before we go. Damien thinks that we are sufficiently practiced at walking for long periods to be physically capable of doing the Base Camp trek, but that the more improved our fitness is before we go, the more comfortable we'll be while we're on the trek.
Given that we have 16 days of hiking at altitude, I figure that anything we can do now to make those days more comfortable is a worthwhile effort.
Even though it's four months off, we're already starting to think about our kit. It was the down jackets that got us started. Many of the Base Camp blogs refer to down jackets as being a must have. We rationalised to ourselves the other day that if we're going to get down jackets for our October trip, there's no sense waiting until then to get them given that we have a long cold winter ahead of us here.
We started our down jacket research at Paddy Pallins one afternoon. A slow browse through an outdoors shop has become our favourite way of treating ourselves after we get our jobs done. We didn't like the short length of Paddy's North Face jackets, nor the bright blue colour of the Berghaus ones. A couple of days later we checked out Mountain Designs range. They were better but we weren't wowed by them. And given that they cost $399 we figure we should be able to expect a wow.
Kathmandu is located just a street behind Mountain Designs, so while we were on a roll we figured it made sense to complete our research then and there. The down jackets were right at the front of the store and they had a good range. Both Damo and I found the style we liked. They looked good. There was a spring in our step. I was weighing up between a 700 loft goosedown one and another of unknown loft, and I asked the sales assistant the price of the untagged mystery loft jacket. 'You want to know the sale price right?' she asked me tantalisingly. Sale - what sale? This was news to Damien and me.
It turns out that next Wednesday Kathmandu's down jackets are half price. That's right - down from $500 to $250! Not only did we locate the jackets we liked the best; the jackets we had both silently decided we'd purchase at the appropriate time, but we were now virtually being given $250 back in each of our pockets. We've put the Kathmandu sale in our electronic diaries. We wouldn't miss it for the world. And we've already planned to spend Damien's $250 unspent down jacket dollars on a new pair of hiking pants for him. I'm too excited to even think about what I'll spend my unspent dollars on yet.
We're putting together a packing list and then we plan to take a look at what we already have so we can work out the things that we need to acquire. This way we can spread out the spending over a few months and also take advantage of any sales that come up. So today I've pulled out my gear bag and started sorting through it. When I do something like that, with Base Camp in mind, I start getting all excited about the trip. Wondering what it will be like. Imagining the terrain, the culture, the people we'll encounter along the way. It's really quite intoxicating. I am almost high just at the thought of it.
I had entitled this 5 months to go, but when I looked at the calendar I realised that it's now less than 4 months away. Eeek! How exciting.
Already the Base Camp trip has entered into my everyday thinking. Yesterday, Saturday morning, I walked from home down to the Gorge and across the back of the Cliff Grounds right down to Cafe Culture at Trevallyn. Damien met me there for a late breakfast and then I walked back home again via the zigzag track.
It was the gentle beginnings of the training to increase my fitness before we go. Damien thinks that we are sufficiently practiced at walking for long periods to be physically capable of doing the Base Camp trek, but that the more improved our fitness is before we go, the more comfortable we'll be while we're on the trek.
Given that we have 16 days of hiking at altitude, I figure that anything we can do now to make those days more comfortable is a worthwhile effort.
Even though it's four months off, we're already starting to think about our kit. It was the down jackets that got us started. Many of the Base Camp blogs refer to down jackets as being a must have. We rationalised to ourselves the other day that if we're going to get down jackets for our October trip, there's no sense waiting until then to get them given that we have a long cold winter ahead of us here.
We started our down jacket research at Paddy Pallins one afternoon. A slow browse through an outdoors shop has become our favourite way of treating ourselves after we get our jobs done. We didn't like the short length of Paddy's North Face jackets, nor the bright blue colour of the Berghaus ones. A couple of days later we checked out Mountain Designs range. They were better but we weren't wowed by them. And given that they cost $399 we figure we should be able to expect a wow.
Kathmandu is located just a street behind Mountain Designs, so while we were on a roll we figured it made sense to complete our research then and there. The down jackets were right at the front of the store and they had a good range. Both Damo and I found the style we liked. They looked good. There was a spring in our step. I was weighing up between a 700 loft goosedown one and another of unknown loft, and I asked the sales assistant the price of the untagged mystery loft jacket. 'You want to know the sale price right?' she asked me tantalisingly. Sale - what sale? This was news to Damien and me.
It turns out that next Wednesday Kathmandu's down jackets are half price. That's right - down from $500 to $250! Not only did we locate the jackets we liked the best; the jackets we had both silently decided we'd purchase at the appropriate time, but we were now virtually being given $250 back in each of our pockets. We've put the Kathmandu sale in our electronic diaries. We wouldn't miss it for the world. And we've already planned to spend Damien's $250 unspent down jacket dollars on a new pair of hiking pants for him. I'm too excited to even think about what I'll spend my unspent dollars on yet.
We're putting together a packing list and then we plan to take a look at what we already have so we can work out the things that we need to acquire. This way we can spread out the spending over a few months and also take advantage of any sales that come up. So today I've pulled out my gear bag and started sorting through it. When I do something like that, with Base Camp in mind, I start getting all excited about the trip. Wondering what it will be like. Imagining the terrain, the culture, the people we'll encounter along the way. It's really quite intoxicating. I am almost high just at the thought of it.