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Hi all.

Firstly my apologies because i know questions have been asked about this many times but i am hoping for more opinions.

I have been asked by a travel buddy i met recently to join him for the Three Passes trek in Nepal.

I have little experience in trekking and hiking, but i have done some over the past few years in New Zealand and Indonesia. I am 26, relatively fit i guess although i dont do much excercise and do occasionally smoke. I was an avid runner about 4 years ago but have not done much excercise since then. He says i will be fine if i do some running everyday before hand, take my time and the biggest risk is not acclimatising.

It looks incredible, i do love to challenge myself and he has said that due to my height and build it will be easier for me, i am 5'5/5'6 and weight about 65kg.

Could anyone please give me their thoughts? Should i give it a go? Would a newbie to trekking and hiking find it difficult, near on impossible? We do plan on leaving our backpacks in Kathmandu so just carry day packs.

Any advice or thoughts would be great, thank you so much.

Edited by ismaeel.salim
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Mingalaba (Hi in Burmese)

You should generally have no problems physically and as you are a previous runner you can easily do some basic pre exercise and be ready to do it. The 3 passes are very very demanding physically and the average Everest base camp Trekker does not do them as they are at the more extreme range of normal trekking activities. However, many people have done the passes and are at higher levels of fitness and ability than most Trekkers. You can try the first pass and if you have difficulty change the trekking plans and do the normal EBC and other sections.

No matter how fit anyone is it is unsure whether someone with no experience of high altitude will acclimatise but if you read and follow the many online forums, advice and information plus read a trekking guidebook you have a better chance of success. You will not know how you respond to altitude of around above 2500m until you are there and your body tries it out. Most people can function at altitude if you go slowly and on these Nepal treks there are 100,000 plus Trekkers every year do it but not the extreme high passes.

As a general indication there is a previous forum post discussing average USA population high altitude health statics and about 60% of people feel moderate affects and about 25% experience more than moderate affects, with about 10% who simply cannot do it. These affects are influenced by how one manages themselves properly, so for some people they can easily do it but miss-manage themselves by going too high too fast and fail, while others who are less good at high altitude succeeed because they manage themselves better. The figures I have given are very general so nobody get upset about them and are welcome scientifically and statistically to suggest otherwise.

For equipment list refer to past post below and you have option of carrying yourself a medium size backpack or use porter to carry for you https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/forums/asia-indian-subcontinent/nepal/trekking-gear-list

If you have a porter hired at $20 per day you will need a small pack to carry daily items like water bottle, money and passport, etc. you can also hire many equipment items cheaply for around $1 a day each item in Kathmandu.

Once you have done more research and reading you can come back with specific questions.

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Young people should be a bit adventurous, so yes do it without guide or porter. Or at least attempt it but i'm 90 % sure you will succeed.

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He says i will be fine if i do some running everyday before hand, take my time and the biggest risk is not acclimatising.

I would agree to that, except that 'doing some running everyday' isn't really necessary. Any person who is normally fit can do EBC with the 3 passes. Proper acclimatisation on the trek is more important. You need to count 17-19 days for such a trek, at normal pace.

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OP: I have put up a post on the other forum, which "copyright" rules prevent from repeating here, so I hope you will also look at that.

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it's not that hard just don't put a tight timeline on it.when we did it walked in from Jiri which I believe really helps later on.i did loose about 15 kg but having done quite a few treks in the last 6 years it's still our favorite trek of them all.
to date anyway

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