Himalayan Expedition
The expedition begins

After weeks of planning and preparation, your expedition is finally going to begin. First you land in Kathmandu, Nepal. You've planned to spend two days here, gathering together the rest of your gear and paying for a climbing permit. It's a bit disappointing that you are unable to see the mountains from the city. On some days, people can. On other days, like today, they are hidden behind air pollution. Because Kathmandu is in a valley, pollutants get trapped here, not only blocking sight of the mountains but also threatening the health of people and the environment.

On the third day, you board a very small plane for Tumlingtar, the closest air strip to Tamku. From Tumlingtar, you take a 20-kilometer bus ride to Tamku, the village where you will begin your expedition. How many miles is this?

If 1 kilometer = 0.6214 miles,
then 400 kilometers = __________ miles.

Tamku is located in the Makalu-Barun National Park. Over the past few years, more and more people from around the world have started visiting the park to sightsee, hike, and climb in the mountains. Do you think it is a good thing that tourists are visiting the park? With your teammates, create two lists in your journal. On one list, write down the ways you think tourism could benefit the park. On the second list, write down the unfavorable impacts tourism might have. Share this information with the rest of the class.

In Tamku, you are greeted by Laxmi, one of your Sherpa porters. He is a young Sherpa apprentice who will be joining your expedition team. Born and raised in the mountains of Tibet, Sherpas have an incredible ability to live and work at high altitudes. For many years, Sherpa porters have been hired by expedition teams to carry equipment, food, and supplies up the mountain. For every climber on your team, one Sherpa will come along on the expedition.

Mount Makalu in the background. Banana tree in the foreground. Photo: TMI

As you are introducing yourself and your teammates to Laxmi, you clearly see your destination for the first time. From a distance Mount Makalu looks like a perfect white pyramid. In fact, the top of Mount Makalu is always covered in snow and the mountain itself is composed of white rock, called Makalu granite, adding to the white appearance.

The Himalayan mountain range, located on the continent of Asia, is the highest on earth. Although only the size of Tennessee, the country of Nepal in the eastern Himalayas is home to the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. It is also home to Mount Makalu, the world's fifth-highest peak. Over the next four days, your 40-kilometer expedition will take you from 1,427 feet (435 meters) above sea level at the junction of the Arun and Sankhuwa Rivers to the summit of Mount Makalu at 27,766 feet (8,463 meters). Are you and your teammates prepared to climb on ice and snow? Check in with the Logistics Officer to make sure you have the appropriate gear.

Before the expedition can begin, Laxmi and the rest of the Sherpas must ask their god for permission to climb Mount Makalu and for protection along the way. As practitioners of the Buddhist religion, the Sherpas will not begin an expedition without this ceremony.

Next you need to register yourself and your teammates as visitors in the park. Have you ever registered yourself at a trailhead in the United States? Hiking and mountain climbing can be very dangerous, especially at high altitudes, so park officials need to know who is in the park and what they are doing. That way, in case of an emergency, like an avalanche or a landslide, they will know who needs to be rescued.

Finally you are ready to begin climbing! After taking just a few steps you already see the incredible plant diversity that exists in the Makalu-Barun region. Looking at the snowcapped peak of Mount Makalu, only 40 kilometers away, you are amazed to be standing in the middle of a tropical forest! As a visitor to this area, you know you should not damage any of the plant life by collecting samples. Instead, you decide to keep track of the plants you encounter as you climb Mount Makalu in your Mountain Plant Log. Make sure you have your altimeter turned on so you can identify the elevation at which these plants are growing.

At 3,281 feet (1,000 meters), the vegetation begins to change. Up until now you've been surrounded by large deciduous trees, about 75 feet tall. The leaves are shiny and oval. The bark has deep and wide cracks in it and looks dark brown sometimes, black others. Local people have told you that these "sal" trees are very important for construction. Using your guide to Himalayan flora, you identify the trees as Shorea robusta.

Himalayan tahr. Photo: TMI

Although the sal trees still dominate the forest at this elevation, now there are some other trees mixed in with them. The most common has needles, in bundles of three, instead of leaves. It is an evergreen tree with cones, some of which have fallen on the forest floor. These trees are called the chir pine (Pinus roxburghii). This seems like the perfect habitat for the red panda or the Himalayan black bear so you keep a watchful eye on the forest. You've already seen the tracks of many animals. You recognized the bear, deer, and leopard tracks, but your guide had to help you identify the tracks of gorals, serows, takins, tahrs, and barking deer. You had never heard of these animals before, much less seen their tracks! What a place!

Musk deer. Photo: TMI

Stopping for a moment to take a drink of water and eat some snack mix, you lean up against a tree. Suddenly, the hand that is touching the tree begins to itch. You look up and realize it's an evergreen tree, but not one you've seen so far. This one has larger leaves and small white flowers. Even though the flowers are small, you can smell them as you walk through the forest. It is called the chilaune or needlewood tree (Schima wallichii).

Flowers of the chilaune tree. Photo: Oleg Polunin & Adam Stainton

This tree, too, is very important for construction. It's easy to find the places where people have harvested some trees. In these disturbed areas, the remaining chilaune trees are only about 35 feet tall. In places where it doesn't look like people have been, the trees are as tall as 80 feet. You recognize the seeds from the tree the chilaune is growing next to-some type of chestnut. You look up chestnut tree in your guide and, sure enough, there are two species growing around this elevation, the Indian chestnut (Castanopsis indica) and the hill chestnut (Castanopsis tribuloides).

Quercus lamellosa. Photo: Oleg Polunin & Adam Stainton

You've entered a section (6,600 feet/2,000 meters) where even more of the trees look familiar. The forest must be somewhat humid because it is carpeted with moss and ferns. In the leaf litter you recognize oak and maple leaves. Looking up, you see the top of an oak tree, 130 feet up. It is difficult to identify the characteristics, but eventually you narrow it down to Quercus lamellosa. You recall reading about another oak species, called Lithocarpus fenestratus, recently discovered in Nepal that was previously unrecorded. You make a mental note to keep an eye out for this tree.

There are also some fairly large patches of bamboo at this elevation. This is the first time you've encountered bamboo and the first time you've encountered cattle grazing. You wonder if the two are related. You ask Laxmi if the bamboo is growing in the areas that have been disturbed by cattle grazing? Yes.

At about 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) something starts to smell really good, almost fruity. It must be the beautiful white flowers on those 30-foot trees in front of you. Too bad these magnolia (Magnolia campbellii) trees are so tall! You'd really like to smell them up close.

A little higher up, at approximately 9,900 feet (3,000 meters), the oaks and maples begin to disappear and are replaced by other familiar-looking trees and some unfamiliar smaller bush-like plants. The first thing you notice is the number of trees and branches lying on the ground. The second thing you notice is the presence of rock and ice. These observations combined with the colder temperature make you think maybe this section receives enough snow to cause this kind of tree damage. It certainly receives enough moisture for this to be true, you think, as the clouds move even lower and it starts to drizzle.

Rhododendron anthropogon. Photo: Oleg Polunin & Adam Stainton

The trees you recognize are birch and fir trees. The plants you don't immediately recognize are shrubs about 3 feet (1 meter) tall that are growing so close together they are tangled up and wrapped around one another. The white flowers and green leaves are in bunches at the end of the branches. Using your field guide, you identify them as Rhododendron anthopogon.

On some of the steeper slopes there is evidence that landslides have taken place. The surface looks like frozen waterfalls of rock and dirt. They seem to occur in places where the forest has been disturbed and little or no vegetation is present.

As you climb past 13,200 feet (4,000 meters), the rhododendrons start to shrink. They are still a tangled mess, but now only about half a meter tall. When your team walks by it, you disturb the birds that must make their home in the rhododendrons and they start to flutter around. Some of them land on nearby low-growing shrubs that have needle-like leaves. They begin to feed on the berries of this plant. As you look around you realize that these juniper shrubs (Juniperus indica) are scattered about the landscape. Can you think of how these plants might get dispersed across the mountain slope?

Eventually (13,800 feet/4,200 meters), the landscape opens up and you have to stop to take in the breathtaking array of colors that paint the mountainside. Rocky slopes are interrupted by grassy meadows where more wildflowers are growing than you have ever seen before! This must be the place where more than 450 flowering plant species have been recorded by botanists from around the world. You recognize alpine gentian (Gentiana nivalis) by its bright blue flowers. Because it is only about 2 inches tall, you take care not to step on this beautiful herb.

Huddled close to the ground are several cushion-like plants with white flowers. When the wind blows, they don't even move! The leaves of this particular plant, edelweiss (Leontopodium alpinum), are leathery and hairy. How do you think these characteristics might help this plant at high elevations?

Gradually, the ground beneath you is becoming thinner and more rocky. You note this change as taking place at 14,760 feet (4,500 meters). All of the trees have disappeared.

Not too much further on, the ground is completely covered in ice and snow. At 16,500 feet (5,000 meters), you've reached the nival zone, where snow falls year-round and never melts. Instead of evidence of landslides here, there is evidence of avalanches. The rock and dirt falls have been replaced by snow and ice falls.

Take a moment now to look at the list of plants you recorded in your Mountain Plant Log. On the basis of some of your observations, can you categorize the plants you found at different elevations? Are you able to divide these plants into groups and decide what the common characteristics are for plants in each group? Why do you think the same plants are not found growing everywhere on the mountain?