For whatever reason, the more adverse the conditions, the more I tend to enjoy the experience and today was no exception.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not like we're on some sort of epic Journey right now getting by solely on our wits and luck. We purposely divided our Rolwaling First Ascents Expedition into two distinct parts. The first, the trek up the Rolwaling Valley, we have hired several porters and Tshering is along to help coordinate the myriad details of moving our loads through the forested hills and valleys to our base camp past Na Village somewhere on the Drolambu Glacier.

The second part of our expedition is substantially more low budget. Ryan and I will be on our own for nearly two weeks with the goal of summiting two previously unclimbed peaks: Jaou Ri and Thakar Go East.

We spent the day winding up and down the steep valleys of the Rolwaling. While the morning started clear, the skies clouded over in the early afternoon and it rained intermittently throughout the remainder of the day.

The wet conditions seemed to embolden an army of leaches positioned along the trail. Stopping for a quick rest, it was easy to spot several of the little demon blood suckers in the trail, waving their long worm-like bodies back and forth waiting for some unsuspecting shoe or shin to brush past. Near the end of the day we were stopping every five minutes to pick off leaches from our shoes and socks.

Peter suffered the worst with several tunneling into his ankles leaving large bloody patches on his socks. My Wigwam socks proved to be leach proof and I got off fairly lucky today.

Despite the creepiness of an onslaught spineless vampires, I enjoyed the day. The scenery was spectacular, at least the parts that weren't shrouded in clouds and the leaches, in my opinion, we're just another example of our place in the world. Out here, we are not in charge.

We stopped for the evening in Dongang, not really a village just a small tea house and few small shacks. One of the walls of the small sitting/dining areas had collapsed from the earthquake and had been haphazardly repaired. Everyone has been very nice and several people have said how appreciative they are of us being here and bringing tourism back to the Rolwaling.