What I learned crossing Thorong La twelve times

Twelve crossings of a 5,416 m pass teach you something the first one can't. Mostly: slow is faster, and the mountain is never the enemy.

The first time I crossed Thorong La, I was nineteen and stubborn. I left Phedi too early, I drank too little, and by the chorten at the top I was leaning on my poles like an old man. The view didn't help. I had no breath to spend on it.

Twelve crossings later, I have a different relationship with the pass. I no longer think of it as a thing to be conquered. I think of it as a clock — a 5,416 metre clock that measures how honestly I prepared for the week before. If you slept badly at Manang, the pass will tell you. If you skipped the rest-day hike to Gangapurna Lake, the pass will tell you. If you ate three plates of dal bhat at Yak Kharka, the pass will sometimes — generously — let you skip the lecture.

Here's what I try to teach every group now. First, the day before is more important than the day of. Hydrate from the moment you arrive at Phedi. Eat carbohydrates you actually like; the wrong noodle soup at altitude is a tax. Sleep with your headlamp, water bottle and gloves inside your sleeping bag. The 3:45 am start is brutal for everyone, but the people who lose ten minutes hunting for a frozen mitten end up losing an hour.

Second, walk slower than feels natural. The high pass isn't a feat of speed; it's a long, low-grade slog where heart rate management is everything. If you can't hold a conversation, you're going too fast. I tell newcomers: imagine you're trying not to wake a sleeping baby in your chest.

Third, the descent is where injuries happen. By the time you crest the pass, you've been climbing for four hours. You're tired, the wind is sharp, and your blood sugar is on the floor. Eat something at the top — chocolate, a biscuit, anything — before you start the knee-grinding 1,600 metre descent to Muktinath. I have never met a trekker who regretted slowing down on the way down. I have met many who regretted not doing so.

There's a moment, every time I cross, where I stop just past the prayer flags and look back at the line of small bright dots picking their way up the snow. It's the same vantage every year, but the dots are always different people. Some are euphoric, some are quiet, some are crying. Almost everyone is changed.

That, in the end, is why I keep coming back. Not because the pass is a record to break — it is not — but because it's a kind of border. The people who walk back down from Thorong La are not the same people who walked up to it. After twelve crossings, I'm still learning what kind of border that is.