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Monday 13 June 2016

Trip report for Kanchenjunga Circuit trek led by Ade Summers and Jhire Rai in April 2016

Photo: trail to Pangpema

In April, we organised our Kanchenjunga Circuit trek in eastern Nepal and this trek was led by Ade Summers (UK) and Jhire Rai (Nepal). Ade has led this trek three times before and Jhire has done this trek many times. Our assistant guide was Raj who comes from Taplejung and this works well for organisation to have a local in the leadership team. The cook was Sangram who has also completed this trek many times before.

For our April 2016 Kanchenjunga Circuit group there were five trekkers coming from New Zealand and USA. The first day of the trip was April 12th and next morning Ade gave his trek briefing and I also attended. On April 14th the group flew to Bhadrapur in east of Nepal and in afternoon drove up to Ilam for the night. This group stuck to the itinerary walking up as planned to Pangpema at Kanchenjunga northside Base Camp on April 25th and then returned to Ghunsa on the next day. The group decided not to have a rest day at Gunsa and on 26th head up to High Camp before Mirgin La. They successfully crossed over Mirgin La on April 27th arriving to Tseram village in late afternoon.

On April 28th the group walked up to Oktang for the impressive viewpoint of the south west face of Kanchenjunga and descending to camp at Ramche. From here there is a long walk out and on May 5th arrived to Suketar (near Taplejung). They drove back down through Ilam down to the plains to stay the night at a hotel in Birtamod before flying back to Kathmandu on May 7th.

On their return I met up with the group at Hotel Tibet for debrief on the trek and to hear their feedback. Overall the feedback received has been positive as this group had good weather throughout the trip and they successfully completed the trek by crossing Mirgin La.

As with all of TMC western led treks we track their progress while in the field through SPOT gps check ins, you can see the map of this trek on SPOT Adventure website

Throughout the course of Kanchenjunga Circuit trek we received bespoke weather forecasts from Michael Fagin at www.everestweather.com and this information is sent through to Ade on his satellite phone. Having professional weather forecasts is essential for safety in crossing high passes and for decision making in the field.


Thanks very much to Ade, Jhire, Raj and Sangram and the rest of the team for their hard work on this trek.

The Mountain Company is promoting Kanchenjunga Circuit trek for November 2016 and April 2017. Our November departure is nearly guaranteed to run so please get in touch soon if you like to join this group.

Roland Hunter


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