Our agreement was that we would make a final decision whether to camp or push through at this lunch stop. Even the yak men knew we couldn't make it, but Kinna was still pushing us to try since there would be additional costs and flight rearrangements if we could not make it by early in the morning. I was firm and told him we had no choice since Marcia could not do an 1800 meter (6000 foot) descent on top of an already long morning. He agreed to stay with the yaks and keep them behind us so that we could stop at or before the first water if Marcia's health required it.
Almost immediately the situation again got out of control. Around the next bend, an avalanche had created an icy patch that was difficult to cross. The yak men cut enough steps for the yaks, and they were off like a shot. Kinna and Sonam stayed to help me and Marcia across, which was necessary but allowed the yaks a kilometer's head start. On top of everything, Marcia and I were hit with almost simultaneous bouts of diarrhea, which slowed us further.
The trail was long, even in descent. We crossed two more drainages before a slight climb across the final shoulder of the mountain. From that point, the view was spectacular, stretching from the desert canyons of Mustang past the Thorung La (pass) where the Annapurna loop crosses the divide to the full massif of Annapurna to our right. The Kali Gandaki valley and various towns lay tantalizingly close below us. One loses a sense of scale in such huge surroundings, and it's only through experience and map-reading that I knew that it would take us at least 4 hours to reach the bottom, which was almost 2 kilometers below.
When the yaks disappeared, I knew Kinna might again have trouble enforcing our agreement to stop at the first water. To begin, there was no water or campsite on this steep slope. The yak men had told Sonam that there was water just around the bend of the mountain, but that was not the case. In fact, they were clearly proceeding to the first real campsite in Phalyak, which was almost all the way to Jomsom and too far for Marcia. I do not think that the yak men were intentionally misleading us. More likely they were just oblivious to the distances and vertical changes that are nothing to them but exhausting to us. But either way, it was clear that their focus was on their yaks' pasture and not on our health.
I did what Kinna should have done and ordered Sonam to run ahead and stop the yaks at the first water. This saved the day because he found a small stream in a deep chasm just at the point where daylight ended and Marcia ran out of steam. There was no campsite, but Sonam found a flat place about 500 meters further on and set up our tents in the middle of the trail, having the kitchen staff haul up water from the stream. Had he not caught the yaks and made them unload, we would have had another exhausting moonlight walk downhill.
My US cell phone had reception from a village across the valley, so Kinna called Ngima in Kathmandu and asked him to take care of all the hotel and flight rebookings. With some luck, we should be relaxing in Jomsom by lunchtime and flying to Kathmandu the next day.
