Walking across a Himalayan Glacier Part 2

Thanks for the encouragement on my first post on watch crunch. Seems like there is interest in learning more about the trip, so I will share some details here:

This trip was done in the Mount Gongga region of West Sichuan in China. It is considered the Eastern Himalayas, and generally considered to be one of the most beautiful alpine areas in the world. Mount Gongga is famous for being extremely prominent due to it being much higher (more than 1000m) than its surrounding peaks. It also has the dubious distinction of having more people die attempting to summit than have summitted it.

I was not summit-ing it, but I was walking and camping in its shadow for the 5 days 4 nights during the first week of May 2024.

We started the journey at Kangding, Sichuan, which is generally considered the gateway town to the eastern Himalayas. From there (2500+m), we walked up to our first campsite almost 20km away and +1100m up to around 3600m. I live at almost sea-level, so the first day was really a long slow hike to get acclimatized. Every subsequent day follows the same MO: wake up early, pack your tents, hike up to the next campsite, and prepare early so you can sleep before the sunsets. The day/night temperature variation can be extreme and so you want to be in the tents once the sunsets!

Day 3 we walked across 3km of glacier around 4800m or so. It was brutal! If you have not walked across thick snow or glaciers before, know that your steps are extremely small in the snow crampons, and the ground is not “flat” but undulating like rolling hills. I covered 3km in almost 3h!

Rest of the times were pretty much the same as described above.

I really liked the watch set up. Due to thick clothings, I could not really access the screen of the Garmin easily, but yet I wanted to record heart rate information for the data nerd in me. I also needed an accessible timer to time my efforts and short rests. Enter the dive watch on a cheap Velcro strap that I synched onto the outside of my jacket and had the face on the inner forearm so you could easily see the time without pronating your wrist. It was a set up that worked flawlessly for me and I will definitely take a diver as my non-Garmin option next time! I used to run a g-shock/protek in previous trips, but I find buttons on digital watches harder to manipulate in thick gloves vs bezels.

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading!