— March/April 201812 Comment
THIS ISSUE’S COVER PICKS OUT SOME OF THE BIG-DEAL
adventure experiences that commonly feature on people’s bucket lists.
We’ve not collated these in a single story though, but rather woven them
through the issue.
You find the sharks within the story on Markus Roth’s voyage about
Fiji, for instance. Kilimanjaro appears in a new section starting this
issue called ‘Summits Of Your Life’. As it says on the tin, it’s about those
irresistible peaks that ask questions of you but still lie within most people’s
reach. The desert ultras are presented, chafing and all, in pictorial form:
the best way to enjoy the spectacles that these incredible races present.
That leaves my own trip to Everest Base Camp, realised as part of the
Khumbu High Passes trek. Talking about it with friends on my return
home, I found it difficult to ‘sell’ the experience.
The Himalayas are stunning of course. But generic adjectives pale even
as you use them. Words like ‘amazing’ and ‘incredible’ are overused and
undescriptive; we add ‘really’ and ‘totally’ to underline how much we mean
it this time, but still add no information.
Visceral details are easier, they grab people more. And so I told stories
of the trail dust and mornings noisy with coughing and nose-blowing. It
was gritty and real, it got laughs. But I knew I was shortchanging my trip.
In the writing of the story, I rediscovered some of the beauty and awe.
Walking it again in my head brought back details I’d forgotten but also
recalled feelings that didn’t belong to a single instant. They related to the
effect the trip had as a whole. The way the air is and sounds work in the
mountains, the different sense of the passing of time on expedition, the
camaraderie in camp. Hopefully some of this comes across in the story but
my own limitations as a writer mean I still feel much is left unsaid.
There’s only one thing for it, I guess. Unamazing as it may sound,
perfectly credible, I have to go back.Steve White
Editor-in-chief
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @ActionAsiaMagBasic camp musings
PHOTOS: STEVE WHITE; CLAY COX (GROUP)KHUMBU CLASS OF 2017
Top: the full High Passes team; and photographer
Clay Cox at work below Ama Dablam.