Shimla to Leh

Here's a bit of an update on a trip I'm planning this September!

The Concept

I'm planning on doing a bit of cycling in India this fall - from Shimla on the south side of the Himalayas, across to Leh in Ladakh, on the north side of the Himalayas, essentially in the Indian part of geographic Tibet.

Why

Ever since I pulled out of the Bugaboos to Roger's Pass traverse trip, I've been looking for another trip to do. I tossed around possibilities of kayaking up the sunshine coast, and various hiking alternatives, before my mind migrated to India. I pulled out the trekking in India Lonely Planet guide and started thinking about doing some hiking over there.

But, the more I read, I slowly started learning about the trans-himalayan valley of Spiti (trans-himalayan essentially meaning in the middle of the Himalaya). Then, I learned that there is a road through there that hooks up with the Manali to Leh highway. Then I read that people have done cycle tours through there.

So, I thought it might be a fun idea to link up a bike route through Spiti with the Manali-Leh highway - a route of about 1000km across the Himalaya.

The Plan

Here's a google maps view of the route:


View Shimla to Leh Cycling Route in a larger map

I'll start by flying out from Vancouver to Delhi via Toronto & Brussels. One night in Delhi, then a 9 (or more) hour bus ride to Shimla.

From Shimla, I'll start to cycle. The route first heads east, following the Sutlej river, and slowly climbs in altitude until it crosses through into the Spiti valley. From there, the route continues through Buddhist villages and climbs up the Kunzum La at ~4500m, the first major pass on the route. It then descends down (what sounds like) a pretty rough road, eventually meeting the Manali-Leh highway. This first part should take around 10 days to 2 weeks.

Then, the fun starts on the Manali-Leh highway. There's 4 major passes to cross - the Baralacha La at 4918m, the Nakeela La at 4937m, Lachulung La at 5077m, and finally the Taglang La at 5300m. Pretty high cycling. The area between the Lachulung La and the Taglang La should be very cool - the terrain is actually geographically part of the massive Changtang - the high plateau of Tibet.

Finally, I'll end up in Leh - the capital city of the region.

As I mentioned, it's about 1000km, and I'll have 25 days of cycling. Hopefully I'll average ~50km/day with a rest day every 5 days.

When To Go?

Figuring out when to do this trip was a challenge! There's two opposing weather forces - the monsoon - lasting through to "the beginning of September", and the winter snows, which generally don't come until later in October, but have been known to come as early as early to mid-September.

After much consideration and consulatation on the Internet, I figured that it would likely be better to brave the rain rather than snow, so I'll start at the end of August and go 'til the end of September.

The Bike

I was expecting that I'd just take the same bike that I cycled the Karakoram Highway on back in 1998. Unfortunately, it was on extended loan to a friend, and it was stolen from him. So, I first had to find an appropriate bike!

For a trip like this, the ideal bike has:

• a steel frame (more resilient than aluminum);
• a rigid front fork (less maintenance than a shock);
• cable-actuated brakes (which I can fix on the road - unlike hydraulic brakes);
• decent components.

After a few weeks of lurking on Craigslist, I eventually found close-to the right bike - a Kona Hahanna. Then, after a fair amount of work, I replaced the drivetrain, replaced the wheels with wheels from Killaine's old bike (much stronger), replaced the stem to make it fit better, worked on the gearing, adjusted the brakes, put on my water bottle carriers and racks and, to top it all off, put on some new Schwalbe Marathon Tour Plus tires.

Alternative Plans

Travelling in India is never straightforward nor easy, and sticking to a pre-determined plan can be challenging! The weather could slow me down, or I might just find that my plan is overly-ambitious. I might decide to dawdle along the first half of the route slowly and enjoy the area, or it could be that I'll be delayed starting and might have to be happy just doing the Manali to Leh portion.

Or, I could have a catastrophic bike failure (or lose it!), and have to revert just to having a bus-borne holiday interspersed with some trekking. That's India!

Very Cool Fog Pictures

Very cool pictures of the fog that's been sitting over Vancouver for some time now - both were taken from Cypress Mountain and were not taken by me (forwarded on to me from other friends):

Sunrise

At Night

Tweedsmuir Park - Rainbow Range

Finally finished the story on our trip to Tweedsmuir park back in August.

Hanging Lake

Mike, Simon & I headed out for an exploratory trip to the west side of Mt. Sproatt, accessing it from the new Whistler Olympic Center (where the ski jumping & x-country events for the 2010 Olympics will be held).

The great thing about the new Center is that it has an all-weather (i.e. plowed) road up to 900m, giving good alpine access to the Sproatt/Rainbow area.  I was supposed to lead an Alpine Club trip here in December to explore the area, but I canned it due to lack of snow.

We made an early start and left the Olympic Center area at around 8am.  The instructions for getting to Hanging Lake from the Olympic Center can be found here.  The route description was good, and we made pretty good time on our way up.

The conditions were a little "wierd".  It was a beautiful, blue sky day, with highs in the alpine to go into the double digits.  The concern was what the warm weather would do to the snowpack.  Sure enough, as we made our way up through the trees, we encountered areas of ice (in open areas), and soft snow (in the trees), but kind of randomly dispersed.  

There was only really one steep (but short) slope to traverse which was fine when we went up.  We debated what the warming temperatures would do to that slope later in the day.  Nevertheless, we continued upwards and got to Hanging Lake at around 11:30 (with numerous breaks to chat on the way up!).  We went up a bit higher, and had a great view across Rainbow Lake to Weart/Wedge, and were able to scope the routes up Rainbow to the north and Sproatt to the South (route up Sproatt looks very straightforward to gain the higher alpine).

However ... we saw numerous snowmobile tracks in the area, and saw a group of about 4 snowmobilers.  The whine of their machines seriously interrupted what was otherwise a tranquil area.  I was certain that the area was closed to snowmobiles and apparently it is.  Here's info on Sproatt Mountain and conflicts with snowmobiles.  Of course, it seems virtually impossible to police areas and to keep snowmobiles out.  Sigh.  

After lunch, we headed back down.  The ski down wasn't the worst I'd ever had, but it was close!  The snow hadn't softened up nearly as much as we expected, so it was hard skiing on crust, crunchy snow and the occasional soft patch.  Truly, the hazard for the day was not avalanche, but skiing in those conditions!

All in all, a great trip - the Olympic Center provides good access to the Sproatt area and is relatively safe from avalanche terrain.  The presence of snowmobiles is disappointing, however.

Oh, one last note ... the Olympic Center is a super-fantastic facility for x-country skiing.  However, it would be really great if they accepted that backcountry skiers cross the facility to access the backcountry, and would be super if they could provide marked access - that would really help build it into a "winter sports center".

Addendum: here is the document describing the recommendations for management in the Squamish / Whistler corridor, including the Sproatt/Rainbow area.

Backcountry Skiing From Home!

With all the snow that we've been having in Vancouver, we thought it might be a fun idea to do another zero-carbon trip from home.

So, on January 4th, Killaine & I put our skis on our backs, walked down our street, then hiked up Mountain Highway to the gate at the end of the road.

Killaine hiking up Mountain Highway

From there, we skied up the road in decent snow conditions.  After the 3rd switch back, we started breaking trail, then started optimizing our route by cutting the switchbacks.

Up in the forest

Our ultimate destination was the Grouse Mountain Area or Pipeline Pass, or somewhere around there.  However, as we got higher, the forecast winds moved in.  The heavy snow load in the trees had weakened some of the trees, and we started hearing and seeing big branches falling down.  The final straw was when we saw a tree, about 12" in diameter, fall over.  Not anticipating "tree fall hazard", we turned around and skied back home

All in all, a short but fun trip close to home - Mt. Fromme ski ascent in the future?

New Years Eve Search

The Christmas busy period for Search & Rescue continues.

Killaine & I were up in Pemberton for four days - in the meantime, there was a major search for a man missing from the Mt. Seymour ski area for three days.  The chap was found alive the afternoon of New Years Eve.

Killaine & I arrived home later that afternoon.  A few hours later, I received a page indicating that the aforementioned fellow may have seen other tracks in his descent down Suicide Gully, and that we needed to check them out.

Stan, Jimmy & I headed up the Mt. Seymour roadway and snowshoed into the Suicide Creek area.  We hiked up the escape trail a short distance until we met up with the fellow's footprints.  We followed his path for about an hour, back down to the road, but did not find any other footprints.  We had searched through the area that the subject described as having seen the footprints, so we were quite comfortable that there were none others to be found.

We reached our conclusion at around 10:30, and we all managed to make it home for midnight for new years celebrations!

Nadda to the Bonnington This Year

Gord, Jenny, Ron, Carole, Killaine & I were planning to do the Bonnington Range traverse, near Nelson, over New Years this year.  Unfortunately, we decided not to do it.

The initially low snowfalls for this winter had, by about December 23rd, left very little snow in the Bonnington range area - meaning that travel below treeline would have been very difficult (i.e. not enough snow to cover up the bush and rocks), and above treeline, it would have been equally tricky (same conditions, but more windblown).  This low snowpack, coupled with a period of very cold temperatures, also set up a snowpack that was very weak.

Sure enough, about a week before we were to go, it started snowing.  The new snow load on the weak base created very high avalanche conditions - boosting the hazard to at least considerable to high for the period that we would have been skiing.

We definitely made the right choice not to head out, although it was a very painful one to make.  One of the things I look forward to every winter is meeting up with my friends to do some fun backcountry skiing together.  It always pains me when a date draws near, and one has to continually start watching the weather and trying to figure out what the conditions will be like.