Hey, good afternoon or good morning, wherever you may be. This is TA calling in from day 34 of the great big walk. We are located at 4123 m above sea level near a lake called kalo, black lake. Kalo pokhari. We’ve had a very adventurous day. You might recall yesterday we were camped at adventure camp and today we went over adventure pass. Our climbing (inaudible) went ahead and set up a fixed line to protect everyone as they crossed over the pass. It was a little bit steep with a pretty good run up that you wouldn’t wanna fall down. So we got to use our climbing harnesses and ascenders. Ascenders are kind of like this device that has little teeth that jump, that grab and bite into the rope so that as you climb up you bring your ascender with you and if you were to fall you would just be caught by the rope. So kind of a technical day for us.

We are at the halfway mark in terms of days for the great big walk today so we’re kind of in disbelief at that. But we’re well on our way to making our goals of a million steps. Since we’re over 600 000 and 600 km, we’re at 357. So that’s always good to check in with our goals. I wanted to say a a big special hello to the grade 4s at Holy Trinity Elementary in Torbay. I had a great visit with them earlier and we’re once again (inaudible) in our little white home, our little North Face tent because it is snowing for the 6th day in a row. We got here at around noon so kind of a nice shorter little bit of a day for us. 5 918 steps for Marian, fitbits had 45 floors and just over 4 km for her. 7 362 for me in the step department so I was the winner today. 45 floors and almost 5 km, and Cam came in at 6852 and 4.5 km and yesterday she had 15 000 even. How cool is that? And 10 km. We’re looking at our elevation gain, that we actually did gain, we were probably closer to 120 floors but you know who’s counting, well we’re counting probably counting everything. One of the things that is interesting was that its snowing all the time so we may run out of power. So if you don’t hear from us one day just know that we’re waiting for sun so we can recharge the SAT phone.

We also have to dry all of our wet gear each day. We try our best not to sweat very much but our socks usually do get wet from being in the snow all day so sometimes we dry it on our shoulders and sometimes we dry them on our bellies and sometimes we use hot water bottles to warm up both ourselves and our gear. If you don’t dry your gear every day, pretty soon all your clothes will be wet and that would be no fun because one of the things I definitely look forward to after a big walk out in the himalayas is coming home to some dry warm clothes in the tent.

It is important that we have lots of good systems. We use layers when we’re outside so we dress in a base layer and then differing amounts of insulation layers. Depending on the weather and how fast and hard we’re moving and we take off those layers and put on those layers and take off those layers and put on those layers, trying to make sure that we’re just warm enough. Not too warm, not too cold just like Goldilocks we want it just right and if we’ve done it well then there is not too much to dry at the end of the day. When we do stop like we did today it was starting to snow so we got in. We quickly put on our shell layers so we wouldn’t wet. Captured all that heat and while we’re waiting to get in and get move into our wonderful little homes that keep us safe from the elements. Pretty exciting, last night we figured out a new system for our boots because our boots haven’t been drying for 6 or 7 days but we were able to keep them from freezing by putting them in a bag and keeping them between us. A little cold to cuddle up with but definitely much nicer in the morning not to have to shove your feet in frozen boots. So its been a pretty decent adventure day here, just over adventure pass. We hear the mountains  and the Nepal are beautiful and we’re excited to see them someday once this weather system lets us. This morning we did have a little bit of sunshine for about an hour or two and then it closed in, let us get over the pass and started snowing quite hard since we hit camp. Wanted to send my condolences to the (inaudible) family I’ve climbed with them and heard they had a loss. So I was thinking of them and to all of you. Thanks for following along. Hope you’ve had a great big walk and we’ll catch you from tomorrow which is again, of course, already, can you believe it? Find your fit Friday. So we’ll catch you tomorrow. Bye!

Total Steps for TA: 7 362 steps, 45 floors

Total Steps for Marian:  5 918 steps, 45 floors

Total Distance for TA:5 km

Total Distance for Marian: 4 km

Great Big Walk acknowledges the support of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Quick Start Fund for Public Engagement in making these updates from the field possible.