Helicopter came in and took Fletcher, me and our kit - after a trial lift without our kit to see if we could get off the ground. He managed it, though it was a little hairy, as he was travelling horizontally about 10cm off the ground towards very large boulders, which were higher than the door to the helicopter. Lifting off was very slow, navigating round the boulders, and had the two off us jammed on the floor behind the pilots with the kit jammed in around us. There were no seats in the helicopter other than the pilot and copilots seats. We flew down for five or so minutes, dropping off about 400m. At this point we landed to have some more fuel poured into the helicopter from 20 litre plastic jerrycans which the pilot had left there on the way up the mountain. He had gone from this point to where he picked us up with the absolute bare minimum of fuel and the seats stripped out of the helicopter. We then flew down to Shyangboche (altitude around 3400m) airport where we took on 300 litres of fuel - all of it hand loaded - poured from jerrycans again, and lifted up from the ground to an intermediate person and then up to the person actually pouring it into the helicopter - they did not even have a hand pump. They also put the seats back into the helicopter for us to fly down to Katmandu. At this point the pilots found that the helicopter would not start, as either the battery had failed, or there was a starter motor glitch. We waited around for about three hours, waiting for the temperature to rise sufficiently to give the batteries a boost. When this did not work, they arranged for another helicopter to fly a replacement battery in, meaning we had to wait for another hour and a half. We had taken off from Lobuche at 07:30 and it was midday before the replacement battery was flown in. The pilot said that battery failure was a common problem, given the high altitude and low temperatures they encountered. When the battery arrived it replaced the duff one and we finally took off. Sitting on seats, it was possible to get a very good view out and down from the helicopter - it was a bubble dome type of helicopter. While we were at the airport, I was watching what was going on at the airfield. This airport is the highest that non military helicopters are permitted to operate, and they were using big freight Russian based helicopters to ferry building materials into the airport for new development that was going on. These had to land like an aircraft, along the runway, when the were coming in full, at this altitude. The airport is on top of a ridge that is at the confluence of three vallies. The freight helicopters were coming up one valley, curving round and struggling for altitude gain the whole time, landing on the strip. One of the helicopters came in to land and was about three feet too low. In order to make another attempt, the pilot had to make a very extended figure of eight pattern up each of the three vallies, gaining height fractionally in each valley, until he had increased his altitude by the three to five feet needed to land properly. Anyway, eventually, the new battery for the helicopter arrived; they fitted it; and we set off to fly down to Katmandu - in comfort, sitting in seats. The journey down to Katmandu was fascinating. Last night, after Fraser booked the helicopter, the locals had been speculating that the person who would be flying the helicopter would be a specific colonel from the Nepal forces, who is the acknowledged specialist in high altitude flying. It indeed turned out to be him, and he was employing all his skills and expertise on the flight back. We had to go over a couple of very high ridges between the airfield and Katmandu, and he was employing glider techniques - searching out thermals to assist the helicopter over the ridges. As we had a superb view, each of these manoevres was very obvious. In fact, I was asked if I was not frightened by the flight, given all the hazards. I was far too fascinated and absorbed by the flight and the skill of the pilot to be frightened. Eventually we arrived at Katmandu, and were taken to the hotel, and did our neurophysio tests. An interesting day!
