42 Snow-Trek

Snow Trek in Kumaon

Snowfall in Himalayas on 7th February 2011 was predicted. So I decided to fulfill my long-time dream to do Snow Trek. We did a successful and perfect 4-day snow-trek over Dhakuri-ChitlaTop (3000M) and Bajling Dhar (3016M) in Kumaon.

I had been dreaming a snow-trek in the Himalayas for years. This year I made it ! Sadananad (SK) and I planned this trek in Kumaon area - as soon as we hear of some good snowfall there.

We learnt from Weather Forecasts that a Western Disturbance (WD) was going to dump snow all-over Himalayas, above alt: 2500M, around 6-7th Feb 2011.

So we booked our train tickets, accordingly, to arrive in Kathgodam on 8th Feb early morning. Surendra Kamath (Surya), SK's cousin, also decided to join us. So we made a nice three-some group, to fill a "booking taxi" from Kathgodam to Bageshwar; to meet our Guide Debu and his team of Porters, to take us for the trek.

We hired some good "feather" jackets at KMVN- Bageshwar and set off the same day to reach Loharkhet-KMVN by evening of 8th Feb.


Actual Trek Path from GPS Logs (click to enlarge)

In this trek, I was carrying my new P&S camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS6 camera. It has awesome zoom capability (equivalent to 300MM) and you can see that in some of the pictures captured in the Flicker Picture Sets displayed below:

Dhakuri Top:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ks_bluechip/albums/72157625844697665

Bajling Dhar:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ks_bluechip/albums/72157626066649494

Our Trek Schedule & Itinerary was:

9th Feb Trek Day-1:

Loharkhet > Dhakuri-Top > Chilta-Top (3006M) > Dhakuri-TRH

Trek of 10.5Kms

10th Feb Trek Day-2:

Dhakuri-TRH > Sangam-GH in Khati Village Trek of 7.9Kms

11th Feb Trek Day-3:

Khati > Kaluwa-Tanki-Top > Bajling-Dhar (3016M) Trek of 5.5Kms

12th Feb Trek Day-4:

Bajling Dhar > Supi Village trek of 6.4Kms and then Maxx Jeep back to Bageshwar

Luckily for us, there had been good 3-4 feet of snow fall on 7th night and the regions above 2500M had deep snow at Dhakuri, Chilta and Bajling Dhar.

We didn't face any snowfall while walking. It was mostly sunny during daytime . . . but cold (2*C Min & 15*C Max) weather during the 4-day trek.

On 13th Feb 2011 we got a 'booking' taxi from Bageshwar to Kathgodam (Rs 1400/-) and got the Ranikhet Express at 8:40PM to Delhi. On 14th Feb at 16:45 we got into A.K. Rajdhani at Hazrat Nizamuddin satation and reached Borivali, Mumbai at 9:30AM on 15th Feb 2011.

For a detailed diary and narration of this snow trek, please read the excellent report by Sadanand Kamath in his Wanderlust blog.