Hey good afternoon. Good morning. Good day from day 35 of the great big walk. We are located here at approximately 4105 m above sea level in a place called grazing kharka. You’ll remember a kharka is a place where they bring animals to pasture. At the moment, the animals would have a little bit of a hard go since once again it is covered in snow but we’ve had an awesome, awesome, awesome, did I say awesome day? The sun actually came out this morning and stayed out our entire travel so we got to have the most amazing mountain views, the classic high altitude gorgeously beautiful blue skies, white and black mountains and little colorful dots of climbers and trekkers as we made our way across.

It was funny today as we walked, we actually haven’t seen any other humans but our group for the last 7 days, but there was helicopters probably flying into makalu base camp. So it was kind of jarring to have this mechanical noise but we will be there in about a week or so it will be interesting to see what ( inaudible) expeditions there on the go. It’s find your fit Friday here on the great big walk and we definitely found our fit today. Marian did around 11 656 steps, 100 floors. I did 13 230 steps, 102 floors and Cam did 14 001. She’s the master of the odometer with her steps and we went around 8 to 9 km. We went up and over two passes so indeed our floor count might have been a little bit higher but we will leave it at that for today. As it is find your fit Friday today I was thinking about all of the folks who contributed to my being fairly physically literate and so my parents, my family, my community members, teachers, coaches, activity instructors. Doing this kind of a great big adventure, great big walk, we have to climb, step, move, descend, balance and I wouldn’t have been able to do it if all of those wonderful folks in my life hadn’t supported me becoming a very physically literate child, physically literate young adult and then physically literate adult. So big thanks to all of you.

It was as I said an amazing day out here. We actually saw some snow leopard tracks today. Mingma pointed those out and also he said he had seen bear tracks near our camp last night. We did get to look down on the black lake, Kalo pokhari, this morning but it was actually white white. So I forget actually the Nepali word at the moment for white but it was pretty fun to look down in there.

And I am thinking in terms of a find your fit Friday lesson for today, I think sometimes when we’re out finding our fit we get amazing views ie. like from the top of signal hill and sometimes we can have amazing view of our progress. Things are going well, we are finding out fit. Things are getting easier and then other days like the last days we’ve had before today where it has been whited out and its been hard to tell we’re making progress, we’ve had to just trust and keep stepping and know that we’re getting closer to our destination. So whether you’re having amazing views of your fitness at the moment or whether you’re finding your way, just trust and keep taking some steps and hopefully you’re stepping along with us. Thanks to Bishop Abraham, glad to hear that you made it around the gym once again. That makes us very excited to hear that you’re stepping along with us. And  tonight is the last night of our stage one. We did a little ceremony today where we thanked all of our amazing support staff and we thank all of you supporters who’ve seen us through these 33 days of incredible mountain walking, climbing, traversing. We are all feeling so privileged to be here and so privileged to be seeing what we’re seeing, what we’re experiencing and also for all of the hard lessons we get when we’re feeling cold, when we’re feeling tired, when we have to struggle up yet another Nepali flat (inaudible) which really isn’t flat at all. but its an amazing experience and we are so grateful that you are with us and that you’re following along and hopefully you’re taking some great big walks and some great big steps along with us on this find your fit Friday. Take good care and we will catch you from tomorrow. Thanks Bye!

Total Steps for TA: 13 230 steps, 102 floors

Total Steps for Marian: 11 656 steps, 100 floors

Total Distance for TA:

Total Distance for Marian:

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.