It was quite a relief to emerge from the trees and arrive at Laban Rata.
The angle of the path reduced and the stairway gave way to a gravel path. I arrived early in the afternoon, the sun was still high in the sky and there wasn't a cloud in front of me. There would have been plenty of time to go on to the summit before nightfall, but not enough to have returned back to Laban Rata and, as you can see, there's no shelter at all up on the rocks and I had no tent. I didn't even have gloves or a hat!
After all, at this point I was at about 11,000 ft with about another 2,500 ft more to go for the summit. Having come from sea level in about 24 hours, that's quite a climate change.
Some of the other trekkers I'd tagged onto walked on up the trail a little further but they returned shortly after to rest up at the guesthouse.
You notice it from the Park HQ but up close, the transition from vegetation cover to bare rock is quite stark. As with yesterday's photo, the notch between the peaks was also evident when viewed from the Park HQ.
This photo is a great example of why I loved Fujichrome slide films. This one is on ISO 100 Provia (Later the ISO 50 Velvia became my slide film of choice). I just loved the saturated greens and blues.
