like clockwork, the sun sets and the rain starts. We are still in the monsoon here and the weather pattern is characterized by regular all night long rain storms. For my part, I have been sleeping like a baby as the steady sound of raindrops fall on our MSR tents.

Luckily, the rain stopped in the morning and we woke to mostly sunny skies. Unfortunately, the rain had created several new mudslides along the road to Gonkurkahn so we were forced to begin trekking from our roadside 'bivy'. We had the usual bit of sitting around while Tshering and our cook GoPaul wrangled porters and then we were off and hiking.

A few locals had already walked down the road and reported waist deep mudslides. The first two slides, we were able to hop across keeping our shoes relatively dry. The next slide was a huge swath of oozing mud that engulfed the road. There was no way around so we took off our shoes, rolled up our shorts and post holes through the thigh-deep mud. It was a fairly sketchy procedure knowing that the entire slide was so new and still fairly unstable. Like most of these situations my philosophy is simple: you just can't think about it too much.

We hiked for several hours in the heat and humidity marveling at the steep canyon walls, waterfalls cascading down from nearly 1,000 feet above. We passed over more rock slides than we could count. Eventually, we reached a small side trail the crossed spanned the river by a suspension bridge.

The trail to Simigaun was definitely the road less traveled. In the Khumbu you can see how rock steps have been worn out by hundreds of thousands of steps. Here, the steps were completely overgrown except s narrow trail where the moss had been worn off.

After over an hour steady climb out of the valley, we reached the outskirts of the village. Three young girls smiled in greeting as they sat chewing on cornstalks ripping them lengthwise, chewing the finer then spitting it out after they getting what little bit of sweetness was inside.

We had been on the trail for nearly 10 hours and it starting to get dark. Like clock work, the clouds rolled in and a light mist increased into a steady rain. Tshering managed to find our way to a 'camping' spot just as the skies completely opened up. A woman greeted us and ushered us into a small shed-like room with several bunks.

As we started pulling off our wet clothes, Ryan casually mentioned, 'check for leaches. I've got three stuck to my feet.'