Milarepa Cave
The Madison Mountaineering Manaslu expedition team kept up the acclimatization work with a hike to a sacred cave nearby their tea house. The team enjoyed views of Manaslu high above them throughout the day. Everyone is doing great so far! It won’t be long before they make the move up to base camp in just a few days time. Expedition leader, Terray Sylvester checks in with this dispatch from the Himalayas:
Hello! This is Terray calling in for the 2026 Madison Mountaineering Manaslu (8156m/26,759ft) expedition. Today is September 12th.
Today, we woke up to a nice day: partly cloudy, blue sky, some sunshine. So we went for a hike up to the Milarepa Cave, which is a sacred cave between Sama Village (3530m/11,581ft) where we’re staying, and Samdo, the next village up the valley toward Larkey Pass (5106m/16,752ft). The cave is really nice, very peaceful, set in the forests at about 4,000 meters. And then after spending some time at the cave, we came back down to our lodge, and we’ve been resting this afternoon.
Today was another good acclimatization day for the team. Yesterday, we climbed to above 4,000 meters in the Pungen Valley, and today we went above 4,000 meters again. That’s about 13,000 feet plus.
So, we’re preparing well for our move to base camp in a couple of days. The team’s doing well and we’re looking forward to a rest day tomorrow. Maybe we’ll visit the monastery complex here in Sama, before we potentially move to base camp the next day! We’ll be in touch tomorrow.
Sama Village (photo by Terray Sylvester)
Approaching 4000m (photo by Terray Sylvester)
Lush forests in the Nubri Valley (photo by Terray Sylvester)
In addition to these expedition dispatches, you can also follow our teams as they make their attempts on the world’s most formidable mountains on:
– Amazon Alexa devices with the Madison Mountaineering Flash Briefing skill:
- Enable the skill and add to your flash briefing to hear our daily audio expedition updates on select expeditions. Just say, “Alexa, play my flash briefing.“
– Instagram:
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