Annapurna Circuit: Changing Conditions on Thorung La

Annapurna Circuit Second Time Around.

Just a short post I've finally bothered to sort out the photo's properly. I've not posting the latest trek, but it can be found in all it's "here's what I could be bothered to upload" glory here.

Anyway ... this was my second trip round the circuit. The first with my father in late September 2008; the second with my wife in late October 2012.

I just wanted to show the difference in conditions a month can make up in the mountains. Ignore the dates on the pictures..one of the cameras appears to have had the date set incorrectly, these are definitely 2008!

Thorung La 

The pass (la) is the apparent climax of the trek (not that the weeks or so walk out it's also spectacular...I'm not getting into any conversations about the new road in this post; we all hate it as trekkers, it's good for the locals, etc.); and at 5416 meters, 17,769 feet it's one of the highest trekking passes in the World.

Here were the conditions in 2008:

Between high camp and the pass

Snow at Thorung La

My second go at the circuit in 2012 was within 2 weeks in the year of the 2008 trek and I expected very similar conditions. The monsoon this year was especially late however. This meant we had exceptionally clear skies every day as the rains ended (we had one wet day in Kathmandu before the trek), but in turn temperatures plummeted without the cloud cover. Every night was cold.

At high camp (around 4,500 meters) we recorded -17C at 4:30pm, making getting water a challenge:

Water was available by smashing through the ice plugging the container with an old saucepan

The extreme cold (-30C by the time we starting heading to the pass at 5am the following morning) had some trekkers short of water as it froze in their bottles. despite the cold, the exceptionally dry air left us to trek through a moonscape compared to the previous trip:

Needless to say, the Mars bars we'd saved for the top had to wait until half way down the other side. Our teeth would never have got through them...